Tessa's first day of preschool and Thanksgiving Point Gardens

I can't believe my little (size wise) girl started preschool today!  She was sooooo excited.  I stayed up much too late creating the last couple of blog posts, doing laundry, cutting my husband's hair, and sorting through clothes Tessa has outgrown.  I finally got to bed around 1:30 in the morning.  My alarm clock woke me up at 6:45 and I noticed there was an extra little body in my bed.  Guess I was too tired to notice Tessa sneak in.  It's been a super long time since that's happened so I'm guessing she was too excited to sleep well herself.  She's usually not a morning person but was bouncing on top of me when my alarm went of (even though I set it with enough time to hit snooze a couple times).  At least I didn't need to worry about running late like I usually do.

I let Tessa choose her breakfast for her first day of school and she chose pancakes.  Then she went upstairs to get dressed.  If I want Spencer to wear a certain outfit I just set it out and he'll wear it.  That rarely happens as he's 6 and can choose his own clothes.  Plus they're easy to match.  In the winter he has jeans or khaki cargo pants.  In summer he has the same choices of shorts plus a couple plaids--usually a blue-ish one and a brown-ish one.  His shirts pretty much match any choice of bottoms he has.  Except when he tries a plaid shirt with plaid shorts.  Girls are different.  Holy cow there are a million different combinations Tessa can choose that don't go together compared to the few that do.  Why do I buy such cute coordinating outfits?  If she doesn't learn to match I may have to only buy her jeans and khakis as well.  But that wouldn't be as much fun.  The bigger problem with Tessa is that she wants to choose herself and half the time I tell her she doesn't match she says "okay" and changes but the other half the time turns into a major meltdown.  So last night before bed I had her choose what she wanted to wear to school this morning and set it out so we wouldn't have a meltdown before school.  She chose her new Hello Kitty ballerina shirt, tulle skirt, and new twinkle toe Sketcher shoes.  As smoothly as that went, doing her hair didn't go so smoothly.  She wouldn't let me do anything other than comb it.  Not even put some mousse to make her curls more defined.  I did manage a cute Snuggle Luv headband with the pink lace designer blossom and pink feather puff.  I'm so sad these aren't on their website anymore as I was hoping to get a matching one for Clara.

Tessa had an absolute blast at preschool.  She doesn't remember her teacher's name and only 2 of the kids' names, but that's a start.  She played with playdough, water toys, a dollhouse, paints, basketball, the slide, a ladder, sang songs, heard a story, and had crackers for a snack.  She hasn't stopped talking about how much fun it was all day!  She even made her big brother jealous.

Straight from picking Tessa up from preschool I headed to Thanksgiving Point as it's still 2 Buck Tuesdays.  I figured since we went to Red Butte Garden last night I should go see Thanksgiving Point Gardens so I could decide which I liked better.  I already knew I'd like the price at Thanksgiving Point better with it only costing a total of $6.00 today.  I brought about a gallon of water, some towels, a change of clothes for each kid, and some food for lunch.  We entered right by the funnest looking water play area ever--Noah's Ark.  However, with the popularity of 2 Buck Tuesdays the venues are all very crowded and Thanksgiving Point prepares as best as possible for such.  In this case they were giving wristbands out with a 20-minute time window to use the Noah's Ark.  It was fenced off and there was a lady standing there who would empty out the area every 20 minutes and let the next color of wristband in.  We got there around noon and our time slot wasn't until 2:40.  We were given purple wristbands but because the time slots were so far out, they were allowing purple wristbands in at 12:40 and then again at 2:40.  So they wrote the time on the wristband.  But the lady didn't have time to check that, just the color.  So I heard from many, many mothers who just let their kids go in the first slot with their color.  And if they were still going to be around 2 hours later they'd let them in again.  I decided to play within the system they had set up so we went about for a couple of hours and I told the kids we'd play there at the end.

The Children's Garden was soooo much fun for the kids.  They ran through the mazes made by the bushes, in the bear caves, played in the stream and the pool of dirty water at the end of the stream, and played in some of the few little alcoves of play.  We also ate lunch in a nice little shaded area.  Then we went through the gate into the main gardens.  We first went to the waterfall area.  I've been here before for a concert--I'm thinking it was a Colors concert back in my pre-married college days.  The kids really enoyed seeing all the big waterfalls and running up and down the hills.  I let Clara crawl around for a while.  The breeze coming off the water helped a little with the 90+ degree weather.  Then we headed over to see some beautiful flowers.  Red Butte Garden was definitely more educational/informative.  It was also more compact--more plants and less grass.  However, Thanksgiving Point was more picturesque.  So many beautiful flowers, ponds, streams, bridges, and structures.  The kids had fun looking for frogs and fish and crossing the bridges.

However, I only brought the single stroller and it is hard carrying Tessa while pushing Clara in the stroller.  And we had done so much walking that I knew Tessa needed a break.  Then it was almost 2:00 and I had no idea where we were as I wasn't given a map when we entered and the occasional sign post wasn't much help.  I asked a few people who also didn't know where they were or where to go to get back.  I assumed eventually the trails would wrap back around to the waterfalls but after a lot of walking/pushing/carrying in the heat with a whining little girl who had fallen and scratched herself (I didn't have the diaper bag with the Band-Aids) I gave up and cut across the lawns (which are even harder to push the stroller on but less distance from point A to point B) back in the direction we had originally came from.  After what seemed like forever we finally made it back to the Ark just before our time slot.  I changed Clara into a swim diaper, but left all the kids in their regular clothes.  Oh, except I had Tessa remove her skirt back when they were playing in the dirty pool at the bottom of the stream earlier so she was just in her little shorts.

The kids had so much fun in the Noah's Ark area.  A couple goats or lamas or something were spitting water and on the other side the elephant was squirting water down.  Along the boat were lots of little "holes" leaking water out.  And all surrounding the ark was a shallow little pool.  Tessa was putting her face in the water like at swimming lessons and standing in all the squirting water.  Spencer kept trying to "plug" up the leaking holes and just had fun helping Clara play in the water.  Clara loved trying to grab the dripping water, sitting waist deep and splashing, and walking around holding my hand.  Speaking of walking she can take a good 7 or 8 steps on her own if nobody's making a big deal out of it.  Anyway there were only about 30 kids in the Noah's Ark area and it was so un-crowded.  I would have expected them to have twice as many on 2 Buck Tuesday.  Maybe some people didn't wait around 2 1/2 hours until their turn.

 

After our water play I changed all the kids clothes and we came home, very exhausted.  We drank almost the whole gallon of water I brought.  Even then we only visited the restrooms twice in over 3 hours.  I think I may take my kids back to the Children's Discovery Garden once on a non-2 Buck Tuesday so they can spend more time at each thing.  And next August on a 2 Buck Tuesday take them through the main gardens.  Regular admission price is $6 for an adult and $4 for a child just to the Children's Discovery Garden.  If you want to visit the beautiful, expansive regular garden it is $10 for an adult and $6 for a child (includes admission to both gardens).