Into The Thick of It: The Butterfly Garden

I have a ton of thoughts, and my brain is kind of going in circles; I will try to keep things in some resemblence of order.

The one moment today when I really wished I had my camera was at bedtime (even though I took 225 photos today - sick!) Melanie was holding Brian's face in her little hands, and said, "Daddy, give me three kisses!" She then proceeded to giggle like a little angel, which she was not so much today, and said that he had the BEST hairy lips in the world. I was a little teary over that one. Could have used the camera then!

Well, speaking of camera, we went to the Butterfly Garden today. I got a little bit crazy with the camera and the photos ::blushing::. It was a beautiful, perfect day for being in the garden, and for being outside. We went into the children's garden, and into the butterfly house. Melanie was enthralled. We literally spent about an hour in there; most people were rotating through in about 10 minutes or so. She stood as still as a little statue, waiting for the butterfly to land on her. After a while, she turned out to be the show instead of the butterflies...people were stopping to watch her watch the butterflies, instead of watching the butterflies themselves. She got so excited when one landed on her dress!

Brian had a butterfly land on his had; a big, beautiful blue one. That little booger would not get off of there, either. Even when he picked Melanie up, the butterfly did not fly away. She FREAKED though that it was on his head. You can tell in this picture that she was about to burst

into tears. She thought it was going to suck on his head. (We had already explained that butterflies did not have any teeth...but that they sucked the "juice" out of the flowers...I don't know if she thought the butterfly was going to suck Brian's brains out or what...but she did not like that blue butterfly on her daddy's head!)

We finally got her to leave the butterfly house - it took some work, I'm not ashamed to admit. She loved the rest of the garden though. Every time we passed yellow flowers, she wanted her picture taken with it because of the "matching dress". It was a beautiful day to take photos, if I do say so myself!

There were trees and trellaces, bridges and bugs. She posed (albeit reluctantly) for tons of shots for me. This is just the tip of the iceburg, ladies and gents. I took 225 pictures today. Sad, but true!

I also played around with the timer on the camera today for the first time. Got some fun shots that way.