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Showing posts from 2012

Raindrops on roses

Did you know the Rose Capital of the World is a smallish city in Texas?  Nope, us neither.  Until we took a trip to Tyler, that is.   We were one weekend shy of the annual rose festival, which meant we got all the roses with none of the crowds.  In the early morning sunshine, the Rose Gardens unfolded quietly and beautifully before us.  Paths curled around small splashing fountains and stretched luxuriously through lines of scented petals.  There were roses of every size and colour, from delicate lilac to candy-striped pink and white, and plenty of other plants as well.   From nature to science: we spent the afternoon at the Discovery Science Center, equally marvellous in its own way.  No sweeps of plate glass and polished steel, no 3D interactive computer displays here.  The building was unassuming brick and most of the exhibits looked like they had been put together on a shoe-string - a pile of bolts and washers there, a line of golf balls an

Making a mess

My friend Ellie writes a blog which I now shamelessly crib ideas from, when I am stuck for something new to do with Toby.  Some time ago she wrote about a substance with the poetic moniker of cloud dough .  It sounded simple to make and fun to play with, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind. The recipe is childishly simple: 8 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of vegetable oil, and mix.  It comes out kind of sandy, although softer and more powdery. Now, Ellie has two gorgeous girls.  Her blog entries were full of photos of them adding pretty objects and creating cute little landscapes.  I, on the other hand, have a full-on hands-on get-stuck-in-as-far-as-possible boy.  This is what happens when you let him loose on a scatterable substance. We make it and it all starts well.  Notice I have prepared for mess with a large tarpaulin and lack of shorts. A few minutes in, and the mess is spreading up the T-shirt.  It's still mostly in the tray though.  From that point o

Grapevine Botanic Garden

For some reason our photos this year wound up being dumped in one large folder, imaginatively entitled 2012 .  Nine months into the year, I finally have been getting around to categorising them, and thereby discovering a few blog posts I should have written.  This is one. Grapevine Botanic Gardens is not on the scale of its Fort Worth or Dallas counterparts, being more of a glorified park, but a very pretty one nonetheless.  We first went there on a sunny Saturday earlier this year, after driving past the signpost many times, and it was packed with people taking bridal photos and picnicking on the grass.  We've been a few times since then, and every time Toby heads straight for the fountain with the handy toddler-height overflow. Once we manage to detach him from that, the next stop is usually the pretty little pond system with footbridges, splashy waterfalls, and huge spotty fish.  On our latest visit we noticed a little snake nestled comfortably under a rock, too.

Family Fun

One evening this summer, our church hosted a family fun night.  It was just starting to get into the hundred-degree temperatures by then, so we enjoyed hamburgers and hot dogs inside the air-conditioned church hall, and then ventured out to see what kind of family fun was on offer. Toby made a beeline for the messiest stuff around - sidewalk paints made from shaving foam mixed with liquid watercolour. Look at all these pretty colours! Let's see how many I can mix up. Don't eat it, Toby! Fun for adults, too. Busy painting. Fortunately there were some water slides available as well!  He was a bit small for the proper slide, but enjoyed the horizontal one. We liked the shaving foam idea so much we tried it again at home.  I couldn't find the liquid watercolours, but we had some washable paint which worked OK.  It definitely falls into the category of, "is it really worth the clean-up" activities, though. I think it&