We had a great fourth of July weekend, which included plenty of relaxation, backyard fun and of course a picnic and fireworks at Bridge Street Town Center. Here are some of my favorite pics:

On Wednesday morning Gabe was determined to go to the Botanical Garden! He kept asking over and over if we could go. I wasn’t sure about it at first because I have been sick with a cold for over a week now – add that to the heat and my ever-growing pregnant belly, and it sounded like an exhausting trip to me. But he was so excited, so I decided to just go for it. Luckily, when we got there I remembered about the free shuttle rides – what a blessing! A nice man named Dan drove us around the gardens, pointing out interesting facts and stopping wherever we wanted so we could get out and look around. Since he is a Master Gardener, I took the opportunity to ask him lots of gardening questions (in case we ever decide to do something with our landscaping ha ha). Here’s a photo of Gabe in the cart with Dan.

When we got to the children’s garden, we said goodbye to Dan and did the rest of the trip on our own. Gabe played and enjoyed the water features, while I sat on a shady bench :). We also went inside the nature center, where Gabe got to pet a turtle and he even got to release a butterfly! I didn’t catch a good photo this time, but that reminded me that I never shared any of the photos from the butterfly release party earlier this year…

To celebrate the opening of the butterfly house, they had a pancake breakfast for the kids and lots of fun games and activities for them to do, plus they each got to release a butterfly! Here’s a video of Gabe releasing a Butterfly that day:

Gabe Releases a Butterfly (4.25.09)

Here are some more photos from the Breakfast with the Butterflies Celebration:

The last photo is actually from another visit to the garden to see the Big Bugs art installation they have had up this summer – very cool!  I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

Our vacation at Gulf Shores may have ended, but we sure have enjoyed the rest of June! We have been finding plenty of fun things to do at home and around Huntsville, like: splashing in the kiddie pool; bouncing at Jump Zone; exploring the neighborhood; reading library books; enjoying delicious ice-cream; playing at Kid’s Kingdom; cooking up yummy meals; swimming at Dublin Park pool; watching movies at home and on the big screen (for FREE); grilling and eating outside; creating art with playdoh, crayons, colored pencils and with programs the computer; climbing on the neighbor’s swing set; eating at our favorite restaurants… and MORE! As promised, I have lots of Rebekah’s photos to share – the one to the left was taken by me with her camera, and the ones below were all taken by Rebekah (with cropping/edits by me).

Ready for some more photos from the gardens? There were so many to share from our April 4th visit, that I decided to just create a little photo gallery for your viewing pleasure :). You can click on the photos to see a larger version. Enjoy!

It has been officially summer for less than a week now, so I don’t think it’s too late to share some photos I took at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens this spring. We spend a lot of time at the botanical gardens and spring is my favorite time to visit. I always take tons of photos there and this spring was no exception :). Here are some from the first day of April, when the 100 Year Old Dogwood Tree was in full bloom. Gabe and I went for a nice walk through the gardens and then Chris met us for a relaxing picnic lunch under some shade trees.

Of course we stopped by the butterfly house for a bit to see the big waterfall and some turtles up close (the butterflies were not out in full force until the end of the month).

There were beautiful flowers in bloom around every corner, the lovely handiwork of our amazing Creator.

I have lots more springtime garden photos to share, but I will save them for another post… coming soon!

Summer is off to a truly wonderful start! I am blessed beyond measure as my sweet sister and niece are staying with us while we wait for my parents to wrap things up in CT and relocate here as well. I still can’t believe that our little family of three in Huntsville will be more than doubled (Lord willing) in September when my dad retires and he and my mom join Rebekah and Emma down here, and little baby Julia will be born! I am daydreaming about family cookouts with EIGHT family members instead of the usual 3 – SO EXCITING!

Here are some photos of the memories we’ve been making since Mom and Dad brought Rebekah and Emma down in the beginning of the month (Rebekah has more great photos too – I’m going to ask her permission to share those in a future post).

I just have to share this photo of Gabe with his favorite teacher of all time – “Miss Janel”! It was taken on the last full day of “school”, and I love that it shows how crazy he is about his teacher :). Last August we enrolled Gabe in the “Mother’s Day Out” program, mainly because his best buddy Jackson (our next-door neighbor) was going. It is amazing how much he learned by just being there for four hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays!  He will be going back next week for the summer school program so he can keep having fun with his friends and his beloved teacher :).

Yesterday was the last day of a week of Vacation Bible School at our church. Because I was a VBS volunteer worker, Gabe got to attend a class for worker’s kids, even though he is still too young to register in the regular VBS program. He LOVED it! Actually, because I have volunteered every year since I was pregnant with Gabe, he has been involved in VBS every summer of his little life. The older the kids get, the more they are able to do with the class – so this year he was basically doing all of the same things we were doing in the Kindergarten class. It was so cool to hear him tell me the Bible stories he learned about Jesus! I bought him the VBS T-shirt to wear too this year, which was way too big but still super cute on him :).

It is such a blessing to us that he enjoys going to school so much, I hope his love for learning stays with him throughout his life!

On our way home from the beach, we decided on a whim to visit the Birmingham Botanical Gardens (thanks Ryan, for looking up directions)! It was perfect timing, because Gabe fell asleep just as we were getting there and he actually slept through the whole visit, as Chris walked him around in the umbrella stroller and I took pictures of flowers. It had been raining before we arrived, so the roses were covered with beautiful raindrops. We got back to the car just as it started to rain again and rush hour was starting, so we stopped for dinner at our favorite pizza place that we can’t eat at at home: California Pizza Kitchen! Here are my favorite pictures from that visit:

We had wonderful weather throughout our visit to Gulf Shores, Alabama. When we arrived, we heard from others that it had been not-so-nice the week before we were there, with really strong winds. And we also found out that it had rained at home for the whole length of our trip. But it was beautiful for us while we were there right up until the day we left, when a big storm rolled in. I took a few photos of the storm clouds as seen from our balcony – even they were beautiful! It always helps when it rains on the day you leave the beach, it makes the goodbye less painful. We were so grateful to God for blessing us with perfect weather! Here are some final photos:

More from our vacation! One evening we visited the Wharf, so we could ride the Ferris wheel. It was fun, but I thought it would be soooo much better if you could see a view of the ocean from up there.

Every morning, we loaded up the wagon (borrowed from our awesome neighbors) with beach gear and Chris pulled everything out while Gabe helped push :).

Gabe had his very own tiny beach chair and umbrella – he spent hours sitting there playing in the sand and water.

Another beach ritual – countless trips to the water’s edge to fill up Gabe’s buckets…

Which were usually mostly empty by the time he got back to our spot :)!