Gardens

Last week, my aunt Kristy posted some pictures from the visit she and my cousin Lydia (who is 11) took to their local gardens and it inspired me to take Evie to ours when we had the day off together on Wednesday.  The leaves have been changing colors here and they have been really pretty to look at, and the weather has been nice, so that's what we did Wednesday afternoon.  In fact, Wednesday morning, Evie and I went to my mom's childhood home to collect some leaves from the tree in my grandparents' front yard because I had a project I was thinking of doing with them.  When we got there, we discovered the leaves had been all raked up except for some in the gutters, so we started to collect what we could, but then it occurred to us: why not just take a bag of leaves!  So I threw a bag of leaves over my shoulder like Santa Claus and Evie kept look out for me while I loaded it into the trunk.

Anyway, our trip to the Botanic Gardens was delightful.  We enjoyed looking at all the different pines that were in the evergreen section, and then spent quite a while in their My Big Backyard area which is geared for kids.  They have several little houses/shacks the kids can go into, with musical instruments or farmhouse items.  Then we went to the Japanese garden to get some gingko leaves and feed the koi fish.

She's pretending she's going on Splash Mountain!

The Koi Whisperer

Can you see her peaking out of the top window?

The paleo exhibit

Climbing the upended tree

We've been talking some this week about Christmas and I get the feeling she may be suspecting Santa isn't real.  She said to me the other day, "You know, some kids don't think Santa is real."  I said, "Oh they don't?"  She said, "No. Some kids think the parents do it."  I asked her what she thinks and she said, "Well I think he's real because I don't see how you could get all the parents all over the world to put out all those presents on one night!"