What we learned:
Plants come in many different shapes and sizes
Some plants have hilarious names
Not all roses look the same
Where the Upper Manito splash pad and park is
That honey bees have a very important job and if we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone
What we did and saw:
We started our day at the lower park playground. We got a later start because we wanted our friends, Laura and Roxanne, to come and Roxy had swim lessons in the morning. So we laid out the picnic lunch right away. But the kids were more interested in the playground equipment. Soon we packed up and headed to the gardens. We first explored the Rose Garden. They had a garden full of larger roses and then a garden beyond that with baby roses. The kids had fun trying to read the different names.
Then we headed to the Japanese Gardens. I always love coming here. I like it because it's really beautiful and it is enclosed so the kids can explore on their own. I threw down the rules (no running, stepping over the barriers, or touching the water) and then just set them free. But they didn't get too far before we heard "Mommy, come check this out!" So we just let the kids be our tour guides.
Roxy and Shannon
Camp Counselor Mama and Camper Athena
Then we walked back through the rose gardens and on to the Sunken English Gardens. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the entire garden from above. It is really awesome. But I did get some of the kids having fun.
The kids found a path beyond this garden and decided to take it to see what we would find. And we found the splash pad and playground. Laura took the kids up there while I went back and got the car with all of our water gear in it. The weather was being pretty weird all day. It kept threatening to rain but never quite got there. And the area with the splash pad was pretty windy. We were finally able to talk the kids into eating lunch but we didn't stay too long. We headed back to the car with the intention of heading home but Shannon started to get really upset because he had his heart set on seeing the Lilac Gardens. It was hard to resist the kid's desire to be one with nature so we drove back down and parked once again. And it turned out to be a lot of fun for us all. The kids got to see some bees hard at work and a lot of interesting looking plants. We haven't had time to do any further learning with this at home but I hope to get to some books on plants shortly.
On the way home, both Athena and Chloe passed out pretty quickly. All this time outside sure does encourage some good napping. And a couple of hours later, Laura and I went running because we just had not had enough excitement that day.
Day 3 to come.
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