Botanic Bonanza

We celebrated Leap Day in style! We met Aunt Sue at the Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth.
We started out our car trip by visiting Empire Bakery for a picnic sandwich and some cookies...which were amazing.
Then we hit the road with our Veggie Tales CD on full blast.
45 short (but so long with that CD playing) minutes later, we arrived at the Botanic Gardens.

The Japanese Gardens were our destination this morning and W had a great time feeding the fish and ducks and running all over the place. Aunt Sue was a trooper - holding Wyatt, feeding fish, pushing strollers.

Examining the ducks from his perch on the bridge

Cohabitation

Feeding the fish from the bridge

Water features to play with...

After the Japanese Gardens, we went over to the Rose Garden to have a picnic. W loved running around the huge grassy area while eating his lunch. Oh, the freedom! We found some turtles and some fountains. We also found a sunburn! Ouch.

Sunbathing Turtles

Trying to catch the stick

Enjoying the "lake" with his new best friend, Aunt Sue

Making a wish...probably for more cookies.

KO'd on the way home...

Thanks for a great meeting, Aunt Sue! We had a wonderful day with you and we're now ready for an early bedtime! Everyone wins!!

Sort of a Sorting Game

Working it out...

I love Mailbox Magazine and when it comes every month, I flag pages to try with W. Today's activity was a sorting game. I bought a bag of small pom poms from JoAnn Fabric for about $1.50 and emptied them into a plastic container (which he then emptied onto the floor). Then I gave W a mini muffin tin. The idea was to sort the pom poms into color groups. So that didn't work very well...though OCD boy did work hard to get all of the pom poms into the tin. We named the colors while working with them, but trying to get them into the matching tin didn't gel.
We will keep trying - as with all things toddler.

Here is what it is supposed to look like.

Here is what it actually looked like upon completion.

Wyatt, working hard to figure it all out:

Wyatt tipping it over.

Jason playing the sorting game. Leading by example...

Harry the Dirty Dog

Today we did a fun craft that involved Harry the Dirty Dog. Harry hates baths. In order to skirt getting yet another boring old bath, he buries his scrub brush and runs all over town getting dirty. But when he gets home, he is so dirty that no one knows who he is. Only a bath will do.

Okay - so, cute story.

I had Dub color a clean dog and a dirty dog from a cut out I found.
Then I cut and taped up the clean and dirty dog back to back in order to make a hand puppet.

Coloring his dirty dog.

The puppet and the book.

Putting on the puppet. It took several tries to get the point of the puppet.

What? This dog hates baths? That puzzles me. Bath time is awesome.

"Reading" it again...while sitting in a basket...still puzzled about why this dog doesn't like to take a bath. Hopefully he doesn't get any nefarious ideas...

So - it was a pretty good activity. If you're interested in hearing Betty White read an abbreviated version of Harry the Dirty Dog - complete with pictures - link up here! Very cute!