Arboretum!

We like to visit arboretums or botanical gardens when we visit a new city, and since we hadn't been to our local arboretum yet, we decided to take my parents! It was over 100 with a lot of humidity, but fortunately the mini-hike was in the shade of some very tall trees:). After slathering on the bug spray, we wandered through the silent forest, sharing it with no other visitors (who else would go outside in this heat!?).

We got the kids little magnifying boxes where they could observe nature treasures. They chose seeds, flowers, roly-polys, and ants to squeeze into the little plastic boxes and then get shaken around like an insect martini as the kids ran from rotting tree trunk to piles of sticks.

Sweaty kids! But at least I remembered Maya's socks and shoes this time (she stepped on a fire ant hill last adventure and got bitten up terribly with her sandals on).

Walking through the swampy area

Finding turtles and bullfrogs hiding under the lily pads to escape the heat

Nature's balance beam

For lunch we went to Lupe Tortilla's Restaurant, that has an outdoor sand area for the kids! This is the best invention- why don't other restaurants (besides McD's) have play areas?? Seriously, others should make little play areas- build it and they (moms and kids) will come!

1) Play in the sand 2) Walk all the way to the back of the restaurant to wash our hands 3) Eat 3 bites of quesadillas 4) repeat 50 times until you skip #2 and your quesadilla falls in the sand. Then if you're Maya, go to step 3 again and repeat.