Our last morning at the resort was nice and relaxed. It wasn't the day the resort needed us to leave, so we weren't rushed to pack up or anything. We lazed around, finishing breakfast foods from the other two days, then took ourselves to the pool one last time. We had decided on what to do from there and things moved surprisingly well and on-schedule! I bathed the kids from chlorine while Aaron put together lunch, we ate, and the had the kids help gather our things. We had arrived with a cooler and a laundry basket full of food and left with both happily depleted (but still with a few goodies for home). The craft basket had come full of ideas and came home full of pretty things for us to look at and use. Suitcases packed with outfits and swimsuits returned dirty and well used. We were so very glad for the chance we got to split a vacation with Aaron's sister and that we all got a mostly-free vacation!
In Madison, partway home, we stopped to visit Olbrich Botanical Gardens. We were so pleased at the price - Milwaukee's gardens are $5 for the girls and $7 for adults, but at Olbrich, everyone 5+ is a whopping $2. So we paid $8 plus $.25 for a map. Yay! Everything we saw was so beautiful! Colors all around!
The kids loved finding things and pointing them out - Evie found a neat spiral vine, Cole found some leaves that nearly matched his shirt, Carson found a flower that looked like fire! Lizzie found so many things, but my camera was always looking at some one else! :(
All three older kids loved this station that had mini venus fly traps that you could look at with a magnifying glass - I thought it was pretty nifty when I took a picture through the magnifying glass myself!
We were informed early in the trek that there were several kinds of birds - two types of quail, a wax-beaked something, an canaries. The kids helped me spot them so we could say we found them all!
One of our favorite stops within the tropical conservatory was the textile table. They had all kinds of leaves, grasses, flowers and petals laid out so kids could touch things without touching the actual plants throughout the room. Great idea, especially since kids are going to want to get in and touch things anyway!
Evie waved a palm frond at me.
Lizzie smelled an orchid.
Daddy tickled Cole with a little branch of pine needles.
We ventured outside for a brief bit. The rain had let up, though it was still cloudy and very windy. The girls and Carson loved wandering around the trees and daffodils they found. Cole and Daddy stayed inside, since we'd left Cole's jacket in the van.
We stumbled upon this neat gem outside. At first we thought it was just a neat moss fairy garden or something like that, but then we noticed the funny post beside it had a viewing tube on it. Curiosity struck and we put our eyes to it, to find it was a living kaleidoscope! We spent several minutes turning the view-finder and watching the moss garden tilt and swirl into new patterns. Definitely my favorite thing here!
The other 50 minutes home were uneventful, except that we briefly saw a small section of blue sky and were overjoyed that perhaps the rain was really taking a break. Everything was such a happy time at this little vacation! There was so much good, even the rain didn't seem too terribly bad and even though we had bouts of 'I'm BORED' syndrome, we managed to get through it and have some really good memories of it!
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