Finally Outside

What a beautiful weekend. I was finally able to take the kiddos outside because the temperature was finally in the 50's. The botanical garden in Nashville was offering a $1 admission for the month of January and since I was a work widow Travis encouraged me to take the girls. I'd wanted to go since we've lived here but the admission always seemed too steep considering I'd been able to take Amanda to Bok Tower Gardens for a couple bucks a piece several years ago. Although they've raised their prices considerably since then. Anyway, most anything is expensive when your family multiplies to five.


It's pretty obvious though why they'd offer reduced admission in January- nearly everything is dormant and it's usually pretty darn cold. But the sun was shining and we really only needed light jackets to enjoy the day. The grounds were still pretty although the grass is brown and there were no leaves on the trees. Just the opportunity to get outside was enough. The garden used to be the estate of the family that was part of Maxwell House coffee and it is expansive. The old mansion itself is 30,ooo square feet and now houses the museum. We saw lots of interesting art, the scholastic series is on display right now which is by students all over this area. That was a little disappointing *but* I got butterflies in my stomach when I realized that they had a Faberge' exhibit! It was very impressive. I've never been to a prestigious museum but this was nice. I wasn't allowed to take pictures although I saw a couple of people brazenly carrying around cameras and snapping photos. All in all it was a wonderful day and I'd like to go back when things are blooming.

Here's Chloe with a statue of a 19th century woman as Sphinx. I wondered how she'd actually do her hair and put on that lovely dress with those claws. The kiddos in the herb garden. I liked the twisty-ness of the grape vines and the shadows.This is part of the mansion's garden.The japanese garden.
The kiddos...When I walked into the seasonal garden I gasped. The red berries was a huge contrast to the evergreen, brown grass and leaf-less trees. I'd love to have one of these trees but for the life of me I can't remember what their called. It seems like it was a "paw-paw" something. I'm probably remembering it wrong.

It's Amazing the Difference a Few Pansies Make

Pansies. I love the color for fall and for winter- especially with the dreariness of it in these parts. I considered planting mums in the urns at the front of the house but since I know that pansies last the whole winter and they have a greater variety of color than the mums I planted them instead. Actually I'm a bit disappointed in myself because I didn't do enough research before I hit the garden center at Home Depot. I put some of the cheap pansies in the cart but was concerned that they wouldn't be tall enough to actually be able to see them from the road so I searched the aisles hoping to find something to give the planter some height. I thought about ornamental grasses but I didn't see any that could handle winter here. Then Chloe came up to me with her hands full of a package of Karma Blue Butterfly pansies and they were perfect, or so I thought. I'm usually pretty good about researching flowers and seeds *before* I make a purchase but I thought that a pansy is a pansy, right? Well apparently not. The Karma Blue Butterfly is a perrennial instead of an annual that blooms in the fall and spring. Which is very cool because they're beautiful (they're the tall violet/blue/yellow flowers in the middle of the pot) but they're also the height in my planter. I know that regular pansies survive the whole winter even with snow on top of them so the shorter ones will survive (assuming I'm able to avoid killing them) but that sort of defeats the whole purpose of buying the KBB. They are really pretty though and if they bloom for the whole fall then that will buy some time for me to figure it out. I don't imagine that I'll be too terribly stressed out about it though.

I also somewhat straightened out the big planter that's attached to the house. I thought I needed a new liner-thingy but it turns out it was just mashed down and I was able to unfold it and mostly fix it. It doesn't come all the way up the sides though and I didn't have quite enough potting soil to fill it out. So there are a few pitiful looking little pansies that can't quite peek their heads over the top of the planter. At least it doesn't still have those awful silk flowers in it.

Potty training here is at a standstill. I've never met such a stubborn child in my life. Sometimes she puts herself on the potty and says, "I need to go potty". She'll even sit on the potty every two minutes- and then she pees in the floor. I'm ready to just put her back in diapers. I can't imagine having a three year old that isn't potty trained since I've never been in that boat, I just really don't know what to do. Oh and she didn't actually "go" in the hat, I just thought it was cute.

On the other end of the spectrum I've got my little Chloe who decided she wanted to help me sand the walls. I think I'll get a bunch of pictures of all of us remodeling the house a make a little scrapbook out of it.

I've wanted to post this week but it seems like I'm just too busy to get to it. And now that I've gotten to it I smell that Halle has a diaper issue- it's just been like that this week.

My parents came in this past weekend for Amanda's birthday (which is actually today) and we had a nice visit- except for Halle. She was sick and really just acted- well really bad. There were fits and tantrums and crying and fits....gaaa! Halle has a strong personality, there's no denying that but this was so incredibly out of character for her. I've never seen her act like this before. On Monday she seemed better but after she got up from her nap she screamed and screamed and screamed (50 minutes-no joke!). I held her- or tried to- I sang to her, cradled her and took her outside. Taking her outside always works but this time she just screamed, "go inside, go inside!". I finally distracted her with some flowers and we played outside for about an hour and the end of the evening was pleasant. Yesterday she seemed better but she complained a couple of times about her ear hurting. I thought that the ear drops I've been using must not be working and that I'd probably have to take her to the doctor. So last night after her bath I asked Travis to put her ear drops in and a few minutes later he called for me to come into the bedroom to look at her ear. It turns out she had a piece of cotton jammed into her ear canal. She had pushed it so far into it that you had to use a flashlight to actually see it. Wow, that explained some things! So I held her down while Travis used a tiny pair of tweezers to fish it out. She was crying and saying "Ow, ow!" and "thank you Daddy!". I-felt-awful. After that she was laughing and playing and jumping around the room- my sweet-feisty little girl was back! She was just the same this morning and I am so thankful.

I've worked on the sunflowers some more and am almost finished. I just need to fill in a little bit more and seal it, I'm actually ready to be done with it and move on to something else. I did have to fix a bit of a mishap though. Halle got some of the leftover paint when I wasn't looking and painted a huge patch of white, yellow and green on the canvas. Thankfully I was able to wipe some of it off and paint over it in the ultramarine that I used as the base color. It made the blue darker than I wanted it but it still looks OK.

So tonight will be another birthday dinner and cake for Amanda and we'll be grilling out for the very first time- fun, fun, fun! OK, now I'm off to fix that diaper issue of Halle's....

It is so difficult to get a picture of Halle that captures her personality because the flash on the camera makes her blink and that's always what I catch. So I turned the flash off and used the diffused light that was coming in the window and got several really good pics, two of which are shown here. Travis took the two photos at the bottom that I thought were cute.