AThe grass is starting to grow a little slower, the days are getting shorter. Summer is waving farewell as thoughts turn to school and sweaters.
In the midst of summer's long goodbye, we're squeezing what we can out of it with a family outing every weekend.
This week, we checked out our local botanical center.
The morning started like this. But, we made the effort to get things rolling, and here's what we got in return:
Giant banana leaves (complete with tiny bananas).
Lily pads floating on the water.
A tiny frog spotting.
A monarch butterfly release.
LB faced the creepy-crawly factor and let one walk on her.
And a few more.
Our fearless little Viking was not to be outdone.
She let them crawl all over her.
Until this one flew into her eye. Then she was all done!
The children's garden was our next stop.
Big sister for the assist in reaching the flower cut out :)
The children's garden is a beautifully designed miniature Mississippi River.
Complete with boat and alligators in the river delta.
Working with the dams.
If you think my kids just swore at you, I promise they're trying to tell you about this!!
Three dams over the Mississippi River Rapids allow boats safe passage. We live very close to one of these.
Catfish are big in the Mississippi, but thankfully, this isn't to scale :)
An outdoors Connect 4 (or put every circle in like SP did) ended our trip.
Their game was a little more competitive than SP and mine :)
And with one last goodbye to some newly hatched butterflies and their fellow caterpillars, we headed home to lunch.
Glad we're soaking up the last drops of summer. Prayers that your summer has been equally family-filled.
Such great pictures! I love the butterfly-in-the-eye shot and that mini Mississippi is cool! This whole place looks awesome and it seems like you had a wonderful family fun day :)
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