Tulip Festival

So back in April (the 26th, to be exact), my Grandma, Aunt Marianne, myself and my girls went out to Thanksgiving Point to see the tulip festival. We picked a perfect day, where the weather was nice, but not too hot, and the bloom rate (or something like that) was around 70% (meaning about 70% of the flowers were blooming at that point). It was beautiful! I feel like I should apologize in advance--I didn't take many pictures of the flowers. They were so pretty, but I know that I don't love looking at pictures of flowers--I prefer pictures of the people I love, so here they (mostly) are.

What I saw a lot of (and loved):


and this:


They have a big koi fish pond, which the girls loved. Great-grandma Wilde spent a couple quarters on some fish food, and the girls had a blast tossing it in to the monstrously large fish:


The girls also loved the fountain in the Secret Garden (made to resemble the book, which I loved). Janey in particular liked to play with the fountain's spray, and since it was mostly hitting herself, we let her... :) :


The girls were also just being so funny--they love taking large amounts of pictures and making as many faces as they can...:


This is really hard to see, but there was an owl with her babies by the waterfalls:


And last, but definitely not least, while we were there we saw this snake:


which decided to not just slither under our stroller for shade and protection, but to actually climb (slither?) INTO the basket of our stroller! I freaked out, and couldn't do anything, but my grandma grabbed that snake by the tail and whipped it right out of the stroller. I was way impressed... and a little freaked out. I mean, it was a harmless garden snake, but still--in my stroller with Janey and Cailin? I don't think so! And just to give a little perspective, those pavers are at least 4 inches across--that was a monster of a garden snake!