Friday, May 9, 2008

Flowers and Frontier Days

Nicholas and I met some friends at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. What fun! It's a great excuse to get outdoors and it's a fun way to learn about nature and the environment. We love it!

We met everyone at the entrance to the Texas Native Forest Boardwalk. The kids love playing in this pretend giant log (and the moms love the photo opportunity!).





The boardwalk is full of neat interactive stations where the children can learn about birds, plants, and bugs.







Next, we sat among some flowers and a little pond to have our snack. You really can't look anywhere here and not find a pretty patch of flowers or a beautifully designed piece of landscape.







Nicholas enjoyed hunting for bugs along our walk through the gardens. What boy doesn't?!



Of course, as always, there had to be a little bit of running along our adventure. And, as always, Nicholas is leading the pack!



Nicholas is fascinated with fish tanks so we had to spend some time looking at these fish that were located outside the Conservatory.



All children love to touch things so it's nice to have outdoor art work that is rugged and indestructible. The kids loved banging on this outdoor sculpture. It is made of hollow metal and they enjoyed the ringing sound it made.



Next, we headed up the street to the stockyards. They were having a special event called Frontier Days and there was even more activity and people dressed in old western wear than usual.

Nicholas kept talking about wanting to go to the pretend jail that he likes so much and he was so disappointed to see that it was really locked up and he couldn't go in it.

We first stopped at Riscky's BBQ for lunch. The children were more interested in riding the little horse rides than eating!



Next we went around and talked with some of the people in the Frontier Days exhibits. We learned about teepees and old forts. We talked to a wonderful lady who told us about how people used to wash their clothes by hand and women often traveled with the military and made money by washing clothes for the servicemen. We got to look at some antique irons that held hot coals for heat, and we even got to watch a real blacksmith at work. Then we stopped and listened to some western music.













Every now and then there was a cannon that would get fired. We never quite figured out the time interval but if we learned that if we saw the man at the cannon raise his arm in the air then we had better cover our ears. It was neat to watch but boy was it loud!





Nicholas found some frontier toys for sale and he wanted to get this hand carved wooden sword and sheath. But I didn't want to have to worry about him swinging it around the whole time we were at the stockyards so we had to pass on it. He really seemed to like playing with it though.



We walked around some just looking at the unusual exhibits but Nicholas still got excited over those little horse rides!











At this point it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. All of our friends had decided to head home but we wanted to hang out until 4:00 so we could watch the cattle drive down Exchange Street. So we wandered and played some more until 4:00.











Not surprising but about 5 minutes after we were on the road heading home, Nicholas was fast asleep. It was a long day, having fun with friends, and enjoying the sunshine. We were both tired but happy.

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