botanical garden

 My brain is still half on vacation.  We're back into the swing of reality, sort of, but not too much.

These are pictures from the botanical garden.

 I love this planter, and we could totally do this with old fallen logs at the lake.

 Okay, one person, no goofing around:

 The paths up and down are like walking in Puerto Vallarta anywhere--uneven, no railings.

It's fine, just be aware of where you're placing your steps.  Take your time.Pay attention.

That's the restaurant where we had a meal we couldn't even finish, and that's sad because it was scrumptious.

 But first we hiked down the hill:

And came to the place where this clear cold river was shallow and tame enough for swimming.  A guy was swimming there, but not us.

 A picture of the bathroom, just because it was fun:

 The koi pond:

 A whole stretch of chairs for relaxing in, looking out over the valley and the mountains:

 A bus stop shrine:

 The bus stop, waiting for a ride home:

And yeah, this was blossoming all over the roof of the bus stop.  We don't have anything like this in Minneapolis..

January is on the downhill side and yet  I'm so not caught up.

Today a bunch of rowdy kids came to play and have lunch, and we had  a very nice morning.

I could have taken at least ONE picture, but I did not.  We had some chicken vegetable macaroni cheese kit meal for lunch.   It's tasty.  I looked at the wrapper and all the nutrition seemed perfectly fine, except the sodium..  It was like half a day's worth of salt in one meal.

Yeah, well they balanced it out with ice cream treats and popsicles, and  I do love kids.

They ran around, and laughed like crazy, and fought a little, and screamed, and you know.

I love you guys.  Love, Grandma, aka Val, aka MOM