mother's day out

First off, a little complaining about Mother's Day today.
Oh it was a nice enough day... crappy weather, but the kids were good, I got some pretty flowers, donuts for breakfast, and a great frame for a picture I wanted to blow up and frame in our bathroom. Remember this one? Ryan was going to get it framed for me as a surprise. And then found out that somehow we lost that picture. One of my all time favorites. He went to search for it, couldn't find it, and came to realize out of all our backed up images, there are about 10 days missing in one folder that somehow didn't get copied and transfered at the end of last year. I think they're gone. I think that bathtub image is gone. And all I have is the one on my blog that was resized for the web, so it's crap for printing. I was so upset. I loved that shot. It so makes me smile...
Anyway, aside from that heartbreak, guess who decided Mother's Day was a fine day to be sick?
Yep, me. I wasn't feelin' too hot yesterday but I just chalked it up to being busy. Then this morning I woke up with horribly swollen glands and I felt sooo achy and weak. Then my skin started getting that prickly painful sensation when ever anything touched... my clothes hurt me, my bed hurt me, I was just miserable. No real fever, but my eyes burned, by skin burned, I had the chills and just felt horrible.
I tried to sleep most of the afternoon, kept dosed up on the Ibuprofen and the skin stuff actually did subside by the evening. Still not feeling great, I'm still weak and achy, but at least I can move now! I even perked up enough to get out to Red Robin for dinner.
And then promptly returned home to bed.

But on to better thoughts, we had a great night Saturday night;
Pfizer put on a night at the Missouri Botanical Gardens for the employees families. The center was closed to the public and we were invited for a few hours of a huge buffet, wandering the gardens at our leisure, plus some extra fun stuff for the kids... Facepainting!! Er... Arm painting!!















Savannah got a pair of ballet slippers on her arm and Sawyer chose a St. Louis Blues blue note... which he flashed everyone who would look at him and let them know "HOCKEY!!"
















By then fortunately, it had stopped raining and we could explore...





















I've never been to any Botanical Garden before and I've heard this is one of the best ones in the country. I have to admit, Botany is not my thing, but I was in awe of the gardens, the variety, the beauty and the uniqueness of much that we saw. Very cool.

(I wanted to get some good shots of the kids by this fountain above, or on the bench behind it, but Sawyer was freaking out about the pennies!! in the water!! and so very worried about them we had to just get out of there!)

We only walked through a couple of the gardens, the Climatron and the Children's Garden, which was awesome! So much stuff for the kids to see and climb and explore; caves, slides, big suspension bridges, tree houses, rivers and gardens. Awesome stuff. We could have spent all night there and not have been bored.
But it was getting late and the kids wanted one last round of face painting...

























We had a great time and it was a fun (and free!) excuse to get to see a part of St. Louis we hadn't got around to yet...
I'm looking forward to getting back there this summer!



Hope you all had a great Mother's Day weekend!