Weekend outings

With Mike away, the Monkey and I have played. Both Saturday and Sunday we ventured out and went on some new outings. After Saturday's race and then a good Monkey nap, we headed over to Freedom Park to check out the Nature Museum, the ducks, the train and the playground. Surprisingly, I've never brought Eloise over to Freedom Park even though it's maybe 5 minutes from the house and it's a park. Duh. Of course she'd love it.  There was some sort of party/reunion going on so we even had background music.  I'll admit, we both got a little jiggy when "All the single ladies, all the single ladies. All the single ladies, all the single ladies...." was playing.  Yes, I want to have that baby who shakes her rump when Beyonce plays. And yes, I would also get it on Flip and send it to Ellen if I could.  We're working on it.

Anyway, we did a lap of the lake  (is that considered a lake?) and stopped several times to see the ducks. The Monkey was giggling away watching the ducks, which was really cute. She actually now starts giggling whenever she sees something scurry across her path so it could be a dog, a squirrel, a cat, and now we can add ducks to that list. The closer we got to them the more she laughed, which in any normal setting would have scared them but these plump feathered friends were clearly used to be being fed by the park-goers so instead, they got closer and closer, which made Eloise even happier.  At this point, she was still strapped in the stroller. Later on I let her out to run around, which then did scare the ducks into the water.  But it also scared me because she wanted to of course, follow them (right into the water).  So back into the stroller she went.  We never made it to the Nature Museum. We were having too much fun with nature outside of the building. 

After the ducks we ventured over to see the real life train engine and as you can expect, the Monkey went crazy.  She pointed and squealed and ran up to it as fast as her little chunker legs would get her there.  Adjacent to the train is the playground and sand area. I'd say sand box but it wasn't boxed. It was just this giant area full of sand.  I don't believe Eloise has ever been around sand and she went nuts over there as well. She immediately dropped to all fours and started digging. She was loving the sand and all of the little boys over there playing in it.  She was even kind enough to leave their sand structures alone. I thought for sure she'd run right through them but to my surprise, she minded her Ps and Qs and played in her own area. After letting her run around for about another 20 minutes, we hit the road and came home. A great time had by all and a perfect way to let the Monkey blow off some steam. We'll be going here often.

Sunday we took a little road trip and went out to the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. This idea I threw together at the last second. She was up that morning by 6am, exhausted again by 8am, and therefore, had to take an early morning nap. While she was sleeping I quickly jotted down directions (only 40 minutes away - not as bad as I thought) and got our bag packed. After she got up we headed to Bemont, home of the DSBG.  The trip was mostly highway and then, to my surprise, took us on a quaint little drive through historic downtown Belmont. What a cute, cute little town. I'm a little bit of a sucker for an old downtown area that has life. Like the town cared enough to restore the older buildings but left the quaintness and charm. Well Belmont did not disappoint. It was reminiscent of a movie where boy meets girl. Girl brings boy home to meet mom and dad and to show him around her "old stomping grounds."  Belmont should recruit movies or something. A movie that took place in historic downtown Belmont would be complete with all of the old buildings and bustling store fronts, flower planters and American flags, of course the perfect corner cafe, a park with kids running around, a restored fire station and then to round it all out, the town pub. Call Julia Roberts please. Ok, wait. Maybe we should call Miley Cyrus. Whatever.

Ok, ok, back on topic here. The DSBG was beautiful.  What a spread. For anyone into flowers and gardens this is the place to be in our area. It's really unbelievable. The winding paths go on for what seems like miles with flower after flower after flower all perfectly marked to tell you what they are, water fountains sprinkled throughout, more butterflies than you can imagine, and so much more. It was hot but it didn't matter. It was worth the drive to see what a great place it was.  I won't lie - the Monkey is not at the best age for the DSBG but she did have a great time. She just wanted to sink herself in every single fountain we passed. I kept her in the stroller for as long as I could but then of course let her run around with me closely on her tail. The best fountain (and totally impossible for me to capture) was an arch fountain that had maybe 10 streams of water going from one side of a path up over to the other side.  The Monkey and I held hands and ran underneath the water arch and got a little wet each time.  She squealed and giggled as we ran through.  I think we were both very thankful for the little sprinkle. Did I already say it was hot?? Here are the pics I  had a chance to take while we were there.