Botanical Gardens

One beautiful day I had a crazy idea to take the kids somewhere awesome...all by myself.  I wasn't really digging the zoo so I thought I would give the Missouri Botanical gardens a try.  Gerry and I had gone there one other time when Naomi was only 2 weeks old and I thought it was pretty cool. So I loaded up the car, packed a cooler for drinks and snacks, lathered up the sunscreen on all of us and off we went. 

About 10 minutesinto the drive, I realized I'd completely forgotten the cooler-which contained juice boxes, string cheese, a soda for me, some water and the girl's sippy cups.  Darn it...not only was I going to have to pay for lunch, but now I had to buy drinks as well.  Oh well...I wasn't turning back so we just had to deal with it.

Once we arrived and were in the actual park I realized how lucky we were to have such a beautiful place 30 minutes from our house. I can't believe this was only my second time visiting in all my 32 years.  This place is amazing...and I almost like it better than the zoo.  I told Gerry we really need to go there more often.  The park is filled with beautiful flowers, bushes, trees and plants of every kind.  It has wide open spaces with amazing landscapes, beautiful, thick green grass, colorful displays of floating glass on the pond, waterfalls, play houses for kids carved from a tree...truly breathtaking.

Unfortunately, I just missed tulip season.  Some of them were still hanging on, but a lot of storms had hit the week before we were there so they were withering.  We walked around for along time.  It wasn't too crowded with people so Maria and Naomi were able run around without me worrying they would get lost.  We eventually made it over the Children's Garden, which was really cool....but definitely a two person job when you have 2 mobile kids.  I can't wait to go when it's warmer and they have the sprinklers running for the kids to play in. 

We wound up eating lunch outside at a little cafe in the park.  We even toured an old historical home owned by Charles Shaw.  The kids thought this was really cool to walk through and see the old time furniture, piano, kitchens and staircases.  Kind of creepy...but fun. 

Although the kids ran around like crazy, I really enjoyed my day with my two daughters.  They were both very well behaved, which made it a lot more fun.  I am really enjoying taking them out with me, now that they are older.  When Maria was 2, she would just run away from us...everywhere we went.  Naomi's not like that, so it's been a lot of fun going places with them lately.

Here are some pics from our awesome day!