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| Trip to Garvan Gardens with Mom, Nonna & Pops! |
- I did get up a bit earlier this morning like I had planned. A bit earlier doesn't really amount to much but before breakfast, the trash was emptied, potties cleaned, I had a shower, the house was quickly straightened and bins of clothes had been moved out of the attic. And about the potties being cleaned-only 3 of the 4 and I don't know if it really counts because even though I scrubbed the inside, I did let Campbell finish the job by wiping down the outside-so I probably shouldn't even put cleaning the potties as something that was finished today.
- For breakfast, we had Lucky Charms and did a graph with the marshmallows. Then it was time for a bit of school. I worked with Anderson while Graham watched a video-poor thing sat through a 20 minute video of words being sounded out over and over again. He was a champ and occasionally asked it was almost over. The kiddo will get to watch another one tomorrow! Then I helped Reagan with her work until we got to her math and I was stumped at how to explain it to her. So that meant we would have to watch the video this afternoon. We did that and after the video, I explained that she would have 3 days of math to do tomorrow-she was not pleased at all. But once she understands it, she will breeze through it.
- Soon Nonna and Pops were driving up for our outing. We loaded up the van with the kids, jackets and a picnic lunch and headed out to Garvin Woodland Gardens. It took less than an hour for us to arrive and we were not the first ones there-we even had to search for a parking spot for a bit. We soon were walking in the gates and the kids were given bingo cards to complete on our walk.
- Just a bit about the bingo cards-my Reagan was determined that we see each and every item on the list. And we did, all except a squirrel, but Reagan finally just imagined that she saw a squirrel in a tree so she could mark it off. Graham also cared about how many boxes we had left to see and wanted to get to zero. I tried to explain that the lady said that if we found only 1, we would still get a prize. But it was all worth it to the kids, when we returned to the welcome center and the lady opened up a box of crap (I mean, treasures) for the kids to take one from.
- The first things we saw were beautiful peacocks and then the boys were drawn to the trains. They all watched them and ran around and around the train tracks while Nonna fixed our picnic lunch. It wasn't hardly lunch time but the kids declared that they were starving and they must have been because most everyone cleaned up their plates.
- Then we started on our walk-koi ponds, fish, tulips, daffodils, hills, hills, hills and more hills. Did I mention, there were a few hills? By the time that we left, I swear that we had walked miles and miles and of course the last few were uphill. But it was worth the last few because that is where we discovered the kids play area-a cave to climb in, rocks to walk over, a bridge to cross and they loved all of it.
- At one point in our walk, I walked past Campbell who was "reading" a sign in a field of tulips. I heard her saying "flowers. God made the flowers." Cute little thing.
- Back in the car, we passed out juice boxes and headed home. As soon as we made it home, Anderson was ready to play basketball with Pops and they played for awhile. Eventually, Nonna and Pops left and the kids stayed outside playing. Since there were 2 huge fires, a bobcat, bulldozer, 2 trucks and some other piece of heavy equipment just a few feet from the house-I stayed outside to supervise. I finally had to go inside because I was freezing, so I took the little 2 with me and gave the others a stern warning about where they could go-neighbor boy said that he would watch them and I told him that he would also not go anywhere near the other yard.
- Robby brought pizza home-otherwise, there would have been no supper around here. Next up was baths for the kids and then picking our March Madness picks. Now that was pretty funny-imagine having 4 kids fill in their brackets. Some would say only the first team Robby listed while other kids would only repeat back the second team. And Campbell would just combine both team names into one and say that was her pick.
- Then it was bedtime and the miles that the kids walked must have caught up with them because they were exhausted! (Me too!)
