The kiddos and I made at trip to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens this week for the first time. It was so lovely! A fabulous way to enjoy a glorious fall day. (Eowyn, I thought of you - you must come! You would love it!) I am so grateful to Gillian, not only that she shared a "buy one, get one free" admissions coupon, but that she took the above picture that, should I get hit by a bus, will stand as one of the the few pieces of photographic evidence that I do, in fact, exist.
I've been very into outdoorsy-ness lately and got this great idea to work on a flower bed with my Nibblet and the Precious. Things like this often end up being so perfectly charming in my mind and a little more exhausting in real life. After a bazilliondy trips to the Wal-Mart Lawn and Garden Center (sometimes with my wallet, sometimes without) and repeatedly explaining to Nib that pulling the freshly planted snapdragons back out of the ground isn't all that helpful ... also dirt dumped down the front of my shirt and discovering the planting spot was full of red clay and being bitten in payment for thwarting Nib's attempts to walk on the flowers ... I decided half a flower bed is pretty good, too. Throw in a couple of potted plants and call it a day!
A happy, togetherness moment before the biting and red clay discovery.
Not done with our outdoorsy adventures, we made a trip to the Yellow River Game Ranch with a couple of friends from our new church. All kinds of wild animals to observe very closely, if not feed from your hand - it was so fun. And right down the road - I had no idea! Below you see Andrew feeding a peanut to a very bold squirrel ... a favorite moment.
Andrew and I have been reading Charlotte's Web together in anticipation of seeing the story performed at the Atlanta Center of Puppetry Arts next week (another really neat place we will be visiting for the first time). Between that and Halloween coming up, we decided to make spiders out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners and spider webs out of cooked spaghetti noodles. I feel like this is some sort of parenting milestone, doing a egg carton and pipe cleaner project. I love the idea of arts and crafts projects but rarely come up with anything beyond crayons and watercolors. Now, thanks to Google, I have cutesy spiders and webs hanging all over the kitchen. Now if I can do a craft involving dry beans, pine cones and felt, I will have arrived.
And finally ... drum roll please ... Andrew has grown tall enough to ride the Big Wheel he got from Nannie and Papa for his birthday! He just loves it and many a beautiful afternoon will find me walking the trail near our house with Elsbeth in the jogger and Andrew in front, riding his awesome bike.
