Winterthur

Election Day was really exciting this year. Barrett had the day off work!! Woo-hoo! We went and voted then headed up north to a beautiful place called Winterthur. Since living on the east coast, we have only been here one other time and were only able to get a quick feel for it. We have been desperately wanting to return. It was a pretty chilly day, but so beautiful.
(I know...I probably could have narrowed the picture selection down more)

We rode a shuttle bus over to the museum and asked for directions to the Children's garden. The person helping us was awesome...she helped us out a lot throughout the day. We were able to borrow a little backpack with all kinds of fun stuff for kids to use to enhance their experience...notebook, binoculars, pictures of things to look for in the gardens, things to listen for, and lots more fun! Tommy has entered the stage of running and not wanting to be distracted, so he ran up and down the steps and all over the courtyard overlooking the bath house. He paused long enough to see the Koi pond with gigantic fish!





The leaves were awesome. The colors were gorgeous and they were falling on us all day...it was so fun. Damon found these huge leaves and even showed me which tree they fell from.


We finally made it to the Enchanted Woods children's garden. It was sooo fun! We had the entire place to ourselves!! We loved the giant nest, the little chairs, the rocks to play on. Our absolute favorite was the fairy house. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen! There was a little table inside, so we ate our lunch there. There was a strong cinnamon smell throughout the house and it smelled so good. It must have been fairy magic because we felt like we should be little fairies living there. After our lunch, a group of girl scouts joined the fairy land and we no longer had it to ourselves. One little girl showed me some cute little surprises in the garden...she most go there often:) The boys loved exploring and running and jumping and playing.












On our way to the children's garden, we had to walk through this little hallway. Damon froze and couldn't believe the amount of gold he was looking at! He is obsessed with gold...gold jewelry, gold swords, gold crowns, people wearing gold, kings that love gold, gold treasure... So, when he saw this (see picture below) he was in heaven and HAD to have his picture taken with it. His expression doesn't show how excited he really was...it was pretty funny!

We went back into the museum and they opened up the Please Touch room just for us. Once again, we were the only ones in there, so the boys played with the food and props and old plates and bowls and baskets. They made us a feast! Other children came and went, but we were there for an hour! We tried to take a tour of the house (more like mansion/estate), but Tommy was at the end of his little rope. I'm pretty sure the tour guides were so grateful we decided to leave instead of taking the tour. We picked up some Dominos Pizza on the way home and we all devoured it!! We had such a fun day and were so glad we finally made it back to Winterthur. )