Or-Kid Day At Longwood Gardens

Piper, Willow, and I all had the day off today for MLK Day, but unfortunately Andrew did not, so we three girls had to get out of the house and let Andrew have some quiet time for a few hours. What did we do? We went to Or-Kid Day at Longwood Gardens!



For those of you who have never been to Longwood Gardens before, it is a huge garden complex owned by the DuPont family, and they have different exhibits through the year. The current exhibit on orchids opened a few days ago, and it is gorgeous! Here are some of the photos I took:

   

 If you would like to see more photos, click on the slideshow link:

 

 I enjoyed this show so much more than I did the Philadelphia Flower Show last year. I think because it was MLK Day, Longwood anticipated having more kids coming (and there were plenty of kids there), so they had activities for the kids as well. There were serious photographers there with their fancy cameras and tripods, but no one was jockeying for position to see the flowers, and there was plenty of room to maneuver strollers around. I can't wait to go back when the weather gets a bit warmer and we can explore more of the outside grounds as well.

Book Review: Hex and The Single Witch

Hex and the Single Witch by Roxanne Rhoads
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish there was a way for me to give this book 3.5 stars, as right now I am wavering between a 4 for story and 3 for writing. As much as I enjoyed the story - and it was a fun story with witches, vampires, fae, and the start of an interesting back story of a 'Others' war that happened when the heroine was a child - I had serious issues with grammatical errors and loose writing. After a few times of coming across such things as 'shear' for 'sheer', 'taught' for 'taut', 'full proof' for 'fool proof,' I started to get twitchy. I'm going to continue reading this series (Mike, oh my!), and I really hope that Ms. Rhoads improves her writing style.

View all my reviews

We Will Rock This

 Presenting Willow and her cheerleading squad! They didn't get much time to go out there and strut their stuff, but they were the only cheerleaders at the basketball game and they rocked it.

My 2013 Wish List

I hate resolutions.  I've only had one year - the year I got pregnant with Willow - where I made five resolutions and kept them all.  Maybe that was it for me - I perfected it, and fate was never going to let me get that far again.  Instead, I'm creating a wish list for 2013 of all the things I hope to do or have happen in my life.

1. To become more active.  I'm feeling 40 right now, and I really shouldn't.  As part of this, I really need to work on my endurance levels.

2. To travel more, even if just locally.  We love taking day trips with the girls, but we always seem to do the same sort of things.  Let's try new places!

3.  To get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes.  That's a hard one, and ties in directly with #1.  Even though I was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight a few months after Piper was born, my body was a different shape once again, and those clothes (and some of them I really love!) are not comfortable to wear.

4. To finish craft projects!  Let me tell you, I am fantastic at starting stuff!  Finishing... um, not so much.

5. To read the books I have!  Don't get me wrong - books will still be purchased, but I think I need to reason with myself - only buy one book for every ten I read that I already own.  I also received many books as part of giveways, and to my surprise, from authors who want me to read and review their books.

6.  Ditto with the yarn.  Well, maybe that one won't be on the ten to one ratio, but I could knit from my stash and not buy anything new all year.  I didn't say that was going to happen... The problem is that I always come up with new patterns that I don't have enough of a single kind of yarn for.

7.  To not yell at my kids so much.  I'm bad about this - I have a short fuse about so many things.

8.  To clean out large chunks of the basement - it's ridiculous how much stuff we have down there.

9.  To follow through with my garden and not let the weeds get the better of me.

10. To paint the rooms in our house - we still haven't done this and we have been in this house for nearly 6 years!