Butterfly Day at the Desert Botanical Gardens

A few weeks ago, we headed out to the Desert Botanical Gardens.  I love the botanical gardens.  I especially love that, once a month, they offer a free admission day.  In the spring, that even includes admission into the butterfly exhibit, which is amazing in a way that I can barely even begin to describe.

Since it's ridiculously late and this post is seriously image-heavy, I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking...

Boo, getting ready to load up and hydrating before a long, hot afternoon.

LOVE these glass sculptures.  I have no idea how they don't get broken in bad weather.

All ready to spend the afternoon looking at amazing things.

Turns out that, this year, instead of offering free admission for the day, they offer free admission for half of the day.  We ended up arriving about ten minutes before they wanted to start letting people in and, given that it would have cost quite a hefty sum for tickets for all of us, we opted to hang outside the gates and have lunch first.  There were lots of neat things to look at out there, too.

I so love this.  It makes me want one somewhere in the house.  As if that wouldn't be pretentious.

 Once inside, there was SO much to see!

Enthralled.

Riding in style.

She was happier in there than she appears to be.  Honest.

I love this tree.

Hummingbird!

And then...butterflies!

Boo was SO EXCITED.

She knew she wasn't allowed to touch the butterflies...so she bent down and kissed one instead. <3

I adore this child. <3

A Texas Mountain Laurel...which I never saw in Texas.  It smelled like grapes.

A really cool art installation.

Quail!

Bug LOVES to run!

She's chatting with a chipmunk that was in the plants.

They got SO close.

See?

 

These lovely women - who's names are escaping me - chatted with us for quite awhile.  Very nice ladies!

 

Terrible photo of me, but Bug is so stinkin' adorable.  That smile!

There was a LOT that we didn't get to see.  With only spending half of the day there, we basically saw the butterflies, took a short walk and stopped for lunch before heading out.  There's quite a lot more.  (Seriously.  We've been probably four times so far and there's still one half of the place we haven't seen, yet.)  We're looking forward to heading out again soon and taking some of the other trails.  And, of course, seeing the butterflies again!

Easter, Part I

I know it's not Easter yet, but we've already done our big family celebration.  My sister's ex-husband has their kids for the weekend, so we did the big family thing last night.

I have to admit, I'm a little surprised (and quite pleased!) that their Easter baskets are still around.  This was the third year we've used these baskets, and they're just made of felt.  I'd hoped they'd last for a few years, but I'm kind of surprised that they've survived three years, three moves and some pretty rough handling in the playroom.  Considering that I think I paid $1.50 for them, I'd say we've gotten our money out of them.

I'm not sure why but, this year, Bug and Boo were both a little obsessed with wearing their Easter baskets as hats.

 

 

Bug had a lot of fun dying eggs with his cousins.  Boo was still a little young to take part (in my opinion), but she also didn't seem terribly interested in it.  She played outside for awhile, then just kind of orbited the table as the bigger kids finished up the eggs.

Bug dyed ALL of his eggs green.  It's his favorite color.

Then it was time to hide the eggs!

I'm a little embarrassed to say that we hid eleven dozen eggs.  Yep...eleven dozen.  In my sister's backyard, which is about the size of a postage stamp.  (And we ended up leaving another 18 eggs in the fridge.  I can't even imagine where we'd have put them!)  Luckily, we were hiding eggs for little kids, so putting them in plain sight was totally acceptable.

 

I was particularly proud of this balancing act.

 

 

Eventually, we just took to tossing them onto the lawn...

 Being the youngest, Boo got first crack at the yard.  We gave her a head start of about 30 seconds or so, so she could figure out what was going on before the big kids plowed her down in their quest for eggs.  She picked up on it pretty quickly and did really well on her own, though she did have parental help in reaching some of the eggs she found but could get to on her own.

 

And the hunt is on!

Afterwards, the kids sat down and counted out their loot.  Mom gave them each a quarter for each real egg they found, and all of the plastic eggs had some change inside them.  Considering the number of eggs out there, they all banked even though most of the eggs only have a few cents inside them.

Not sure how I didn't get a picture of Bug with his eggs, too...

And then they attempted to eat ALL of the real eggs.  Before dinner.

We'll do something low key on Easter, but they really seemed to enjoy the big deal. ;)

Market and McDonalds

Perhaps not two things I'd normally put in the same sentence, but that's how our day worked out. :)

This morning was not-a-million-degrees, so we decided to head out to the farmer's market.  I called Mom to see if she wanted to come along and she said my nephew had a school holiday, so they both joined us.  We loaded the boys into the wagon (maybe not necessary, but they loved it), and Boo into the stroller (which we hardly ever use, so she was thrilled) and headed out.



It was awesome.  I've really missed going to the farmer's market regularly.

And I brought home some pretty, pretty veggies.



(In addition to what's pictured, we also brought home corn, sweet potatoes and a bunch of pretty little apples.  And Mom picked up something called a lemon cucumber...which is a cucumber that looks surprisingly like a lemon.  Go figure.)

We hung out at the park for a bit.  The boys exploring and finding treasures in the dirt.



(Bug with an eraser shaped like a cat.)

Boo ran around trying to keep up, and beelining towards the mud.



So I ended up holding her a lot.  She was not pleased.



(This is the first picture of Boo where I think she looks like me at all.)

Then it started getting hot and we were hungry, so Mom suggested we move the party to McDonald's - a rare treat!  This is the first time we've been since Boo has been even kind of mobile and she jumped out there like an old pro.

(I was right there ready to catch her the whole time.  Honest.)







She ended up making it up to the fourth step before it got too steep.  My nephew was so amazing with her.  He cheered her on the whole time she was trying to climb, and helped her down when she thought she was stuck.  Very sweet.

Bug didn't stop moving once. ;)



(Haha.  While tagging this post, I realized that ALL of the veggies were already listed.  Guess we have some solid favorites.)