time off, tulips & other stuff

shhhhh. don't tell anyone, but i took a little time off yesterday with my girlies. i picked them up from school at lunch time and we had some a family "mental health" day. after a couple of very busy weeks, the girls and i spent some time running around at one of our favorite gardens ever. i packed a lunch, and we set off for a surprise date. we couldn't have timed it better as we were one of only a few people there, and it started to pour rain as we were driving home. we picked up our traditional big bag of fresh popped kettle corn, and ran around like a bunch of crazies.

roozengaarde is one of the biggest tulip (& other bulb flower) growers in our area. they sell bulbs to people all over the world. they have over a thousand acres of tulip fields abloom in the spring. the girls and i hit their garden every year to check out all of the different kinds of tulips. there are tons of different varieties. i think this one was called "yellow crown". i'd never seen it before, but thought it was pretty dang cool lookin'. the daffodils the girls are smelling were called geranium, because you guessed it... they smelled just like geraniums. :)

i know i've been a little on the picture happy side lately, but hey, i've got some pretty dang cute subjects if you ask me. i'm not really sure what inspired torrey's little jig here, but i thought it was so stinkin' funny, that i was snapping away. she broke her hand holding sister time for a minute to busta-move, then went right back to walking the path with emma. kids are so fun!

more and more and more tulip pictures...

emma stuck a cherry blossom that had blown on the ground into her hair... so that ended up as the picture of the day. something just so magical about walking around on a windy day with cherry blossoms swirling around you.


i get pictures of the girls kissing this frog every year. this year, to my great joy, it was met with willing subjects. i mean, the frog has never been much of a problem, but for the last couple of years apparently the cool-i-don't-want-to-be-embarrassed bug hit one of my children. but this year, she ran right up, and said, "mom i'll kiss it for you without complaining!" lol. maybe it was the big bag of kettle corn i'd just purchased that spurred the sweet sentiment. i prefer to think that it must have something to do with my uncanny mothering skills {{cough}}.

today my friend's daughter came to hang out for awhile. after helping me with dinner she asked if i'd do her hair for her. which i did. twice. the first time, i put it up in a cute little hairstyle. well, at least i thought it was cute. she told me she looked like a ballarina. (and from her tone she didn't mean that to be a cool thing.) after a little begging, she convinsed me to take it out and try something more grown up (and COOL) looking. so out came the teasing comb, and we went for this look. apparently jr highers have an opinion about their hairdos. lol. anyway, she was happy with this one, and let me get a couple of pictures of her afterwards.

oh, on a sidenote, i've been having some troubles with my pictures looking desaturated on blogger. after quite a bit of google research, most of which said make sure you convert their color profile to sRGB rather than Adobe RGB, i found an answer. (if you're having troubles, try the RGB deal first... it didn't work for me, but this did.) i use firefox, and found a solution for my saturation issues here. yea!!!

sorry for the super long rambling post. :)