Tulip Festival

My mom had a few free passes to the tulip festival this year and we were going to go with my dad. But he was in Germany for awhile and we were afraid the passes would go unused and the festival unvisited, both of which would be a tragedy. So we made a girls trip out of it! My mom and Aunt Shirley and Kathryn and Laura and Logan and myself and the two munchkins went down Tuesday morning. I had never been to the gardens, let alone the tulip festival. Holy moly. It did NOT disappoint. It was incredible. The weather was perfect. There were SO many flowers. I never knew there were so many varieties and colors of tulips. And the way they had them planted and arranged was breathtaking. The garden's themselves were pretty spectacular. I'd like to go back any other time. And I'm taking Tanner there next year for sure!
Greta slept most of the time and Harvey did good for the most part. We got a flat tire on the stroller which was unfortunate but it all worked out just fine. Then we ate at Mo Bettah's for lunch. A perfect morning, really. Here's some of the photo's :)

Harvey took this one :)

The secret garden entrance

He tried climbing in soon after this - one foot got soaked

Love that face!

 

Probably one of my favorite tulip varieties

Just being it's own kind of beautiful

Harv walked up to this little pot of plants and said, "Ohhhh, tuuute!" (cute) and pointed to it like that and kind of bent over while saying it. It was awesome.

Wheeler Farm

My mom had the day off on Monday and the weather was great so we decided we'd check out Wheeler Farm. Harvey always points out barns whenever he sees anything that resembles them, and he likes animals, so we figured it would be a hit. It was. When he woke up we told him we were going to go to a farm and he got so excited. As we were pulling out of the house he raised both hands above his head and yelled "Barn!!" so excitedly! It was so cute. Then he said bye bye to pop pop's house.
The weather couldn't have been more perfect. We wandered around a bit and had a few minutes to check out some animals before we went on a wagon ride.

When we first walked in we saw these baby calves. This picture is so funny because he got nervous and didn't want to stand, so we was picking up his feet hanging from my mom, but still waving to them. Then a big mama cow in there "moo'd" REALLY loud and it scared him so bad. He gave my mom's neck a super squeeze for awhile. She was okay with that :) Since we've been there when he says we saw cows, the next thing he says is "loud!"

He also saw turkeys and chickens and big rabbits and horses. We went on a 10 minute wagon ride around the farm. It was really pretty! I don't think I'd ever been to the farm part of Wheeler Farm - just for some receptions or what not. It was cool for me too :)

His favorite part by far was sitting on some old tractors. He really got into it on the green one. He liked it better than the yellow one because apparently that one was hard to drive. It was d ifficult getting him off these to do anything else.

We bought $1 tokens to get to milk some cows. Well, they said it was a cow milking demonstration and that you'd get to try milking, but mostly they just let us try milking. I was really impressed that Harvey didn't freak out. He stood right next to the cow and watched me milk her for a minute and when I asked him if he wanted to try he stuck his hand right out and squeezed those teats. I think he was worried it was hurting her because he kept saying "hurt" and then he was really concerned about how dirty the cow was. But he milked a cow. And that was awesome. My mom even got after it and that was her first time EVER milking a cow. Totally worth the buck.

After tractors and cow milking and wagon rides, we just wandered around, threw rocks in the water, climbed a tree, ate a stick, saw some goslings, played at the park and then acquiesced to his request of pancakes for dinner. Unfortunately the Original Pancake House was closed, so we ended up at Denny's. It was quite tasty. The whole afternoon was just perfect, fun and beautiful! We'll definitely be going there again...probably when dad comes home!

Such a goof

My mom took these black and whites :)

 

Even Greta got a chance to milk a cow :) hehe

 

He was doing all sorts of talking and jumping and yelling and fanfare on this. So funny.

Mmm, pancakes!