Chapter Twenty Four- Bookworm Gardens (Travel Edition)

My wonderful parents helped me out and took the kids for a few days.  Turns out that caring for three small children when you’re hugely pregnant is tough work.  Hence the break in posting.  That said, thanks to my (many many) readers for sticking with me.  My posts may be less exciting for a while, but I’ll try to keep up with once a week.

Anyway, to pick up the kids after my two days of rest, I met everyone at Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan.  This is an awesome place that I hope to visit again in the near future.  It’s free and not terribly far away.  And beautiful!

The theme is of course children’s books, so your kids and run around and climb on things and be reminded of the stories you tell them at home.  We had a very short visit (I’ll get to that in a minute) and only saw about a third of the gardens.  There is a learning cottage with bathrooms and a gift shop, and a patio with table and chairs for your picnic lunch.  There is also plenty of shade which is DREAMY when you’re pregnant!

Visiting the Magic School Bus…

…Winnie the Pooh…

…The Three Bears…

…and One Leaf Rides the Wind.   We spent most of our time at this really cool tea house and rock garden.  Little T and J played lots in the rock garden, raking, moving stones around and generally being Zen-like.  Little A went straight for the shoes at the tea house cause the girl LOVES shoes.

Then she poured herself some tea.

Then she sat in the tea and got her pants wet and the world ended and we had to go home because everyone was miserable.

I wish I had a better ending to this adventure.  But I don’t.

I was talking with some family the other day about how everyone who blogs or has an Instagram account looks like they have a perfect or at least really beautiful and interesting life.  And then how we judge ourselves for not living up to those standards.  Now, if you’ve ever thought that my life is particularly beautiful or interesting, you’re partially right.  I get to do awesome things with my kids, friends, and family.  But in general these days you’ll catch me trying desperately to get my kids to stop screaming, and we leave the house as a group almost never.  Most of my time is spent vacuuming up dog hair and cleaning up spilled milk and counting the minutes until my husband gets home.  It’s ok, though.  I’m not complaining.  This is a challenging time, with young kids and being pregnant.  I’m ok with my kids playing inside a lot because it’s all I can do.  We make the most of it and have fun.  But I need to be honest and say that most of our adventures these days are eating peanut butter and jam on it sandwiches, or playing in our living room.

Which is to say that my kids actually are developing great imaginations and finding ways to not be bored indoors.  In the 5 hours it’s taken me to write these few paragraphs (side tracked by lunch and above-mentioned screaming kids), I’ve had the pleasure of eavesdropping on all three of them playing some game in a large cardboard box that includes Little T giving instructions to the twins (“Ok, bakers, that’s enough sugar in there.  Ok, bakers, let’s make…so we got to put this in there…”) and everyone laughing sporadically.

I can’t complain about that.

So that’s my adventure for the week.  I’ll keep posting, perhaps about adventures in our home, but I’m not going anywhere.

Enjoy the new season and best wishes for all the kids starting school,

A. Storm