Fun at the botanical gardens!

We had fun at the botanical gardens in Ft. Worth and also ran into our cousins taking family pics!

We needed to get out of the house, so spur of the moment, I decided to drive to the botanical gardens where we smelled the beautiful roses, literally. Ran around the "mazes" in the Rose gardens, as JoElle calls them.

We loved the smell of the purple wisteria growing on the arbors- so beautifully fragrant!

Both Alexa and JoElle were super excited by the water spurting up just beyond the walkway of wisteria, not to mention the pond filled with turtles piled on a hill- which we later found out was actually the fountain and once it started to work again, they scrambled off in a jiffy!

JoElle posed for a plethora of pictures, most dictated by herself, posed by herself, interesting facial expressions and questionable hand gestures...



Alexa mostly chilled in a stroller, I tried to get her to walk, but ended up back at the car for it. Those magnolia trees are gargantuous- I recall they were gigantic back when I was young, now even more so! This cute squirrel was digging up all of his nuts and munching on them- there were over 50 holes underneath the shelter of the magnolias, and also riddling the fizzled out daffodils. Alexa told the squirrel "HI!!!" but then was a bit scared of him, even with me holding her.




We went on a nature walk, found plenty of large goldfish swimming around, birds flitting from tree to tree, turtles still sunbathing..until that blasted water fountain is turned back on!



We sat under some large oak trees to eat our snacks- fruit snacks for Alexa, cheesy Doritos for JoElle, water for all.

They both loved climbing up the steps in the Rose garden, touching the water streaming down, oh yeah, a little boy tried to take off with our stroller we had abandoned at the bottom of the steps...Alexa was not happy about him touching her stroller!

We also walked to the other pond, a newer section with some beautiful functional sculptures, one a butterfly bench, as they threw acorn shells into the water and ran around the paths, smelling flowers. Before we left, Alexa had to stumble and scrape up her knees, that is the way she rolls after all :) Like her Mommy.



Tired, we ate at Galligaskin's per JoElle's request. Who can resist these most delicious Italian Cold Cut subs with fries?? yum yum.

Rest when we get home? Naw! More playing outside, in the backyard! Until JoElle had an allergic reaction to the pollen she had accidentally sniffed into her nose that I had to wipe off. The back of her neck broke out in one itchy, red, bumpy rash, her throat was itchy and dry, perhaps some anaphlaxis, so I gave her a full adult Benadryl and gave her a bath in Cetaphil, her back was also bumpy from eczema, brought on by the pollen I am sure.

She is fine, slept ok once she got past all the issues...!!

Art at the Kimbell

This morning, JoElle and I attended a free program at the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth called Pictures and Pages.

The ladies who run the program first read a book to us called "What would you do with a tail like this?" It was a great book with wonderful drawings of various parts of animals bodies, along with what they do with the body parts.

Then, we had a tour of specific paintings in the gallery, paintings which included different animals. The kids were asked to describe the strokes the painter used on various parts of the painting, then reach into the Feeling Bag to find a certain texture, such as the tiger's tail, or the pheasants feather. It was a great way to incorporate kinesthetic learning along with the sensory aspect.

Lastly, they kids chose which animal collage they would like to create. JoElle chose a monkey, I will post pics of it soon. She loved it and created a great collage.

Afterwards, we ate at the Kimbell's Cafe, oh the food is delicious! Mostly vegan, too, very healthy, and offers an array of hot teas, cold teas, lemonade to which you can add fresh mint, and of course coffee!