Another Field Trip Friday

This time we visitied the Corpus Christi Botanical Gardens and Nature Center.

Loved it!

We met our new friends, who also homeschool, for an afternoon surrounded by God's beautiful handiwork, carefully cultivated into a delightful discovery of gardens and trails and observatories and habitats.

First things first: picnic lunch.




One of my favorite from the rose garden. Gorgeous! And so fragrant.



The kids brought their journals, and I encouraged them to sketch or write about their discoveries. They stopped often to observe and sketch.



The rose garden also inspired Gabe, and he took a moment to capture some of it's beauty.




All of the kiddos, forced into a group pose by two camera-toting moms. This stone seat was covered with a colorful tile mosaic.



Caleb and Seth peering over a two-story lookout tower. They were disappointed that Gator Lake had no 'gators. (And with the current Texas drought, not much lake either.)



It is always such a joy to watch my children learn and make new discoveries.



One of my favorite spots was the Arid Garden, a little corner with a wide variety of cacti and desert foiliage poking out of the hard soil. This garden felt like Texas!




God is so good to add such color and beauty to even the most desolate of places. We can't wait until springtime when blooms and blossoms will spring out from what we thought was dry and dead.



A desert congo line?



And this was my favorite picture of the day. Isn't she just lovely, my sweet Lily flower, bursting from among the rose bushes?

Comments

christina said…
Thesepictures are great! We enjoyed this field trip with your family. It was a blessed day !
February 1, 2009 at 4:47 PM
jeny said…
My sweet sweet girl, I miss you! I am so enjoying keeping up with you and the kids through your posts. I can't believe it's another friday again already!
I'm having a hard time getting back to my blog. Hard time with lots of things actually. We are making some big changes this year, including moving. We are building a home in Osceola, streamlining and expediting the renovations on the old house so we can have it ready for a june/july lease to 3 ND girls. A job similar to the one Josh almost got in Grand Rapids has opened up in the CRC and he can stay in Mish. and he has applied for it. (Please pray!)
And, just about the time we should be moving into the new house, we'll be welcoming a new little Martin!
(We haven't made this announcement public yet, so when you respond, please don't post that part to my blog or FB :) You can email me!)
I think that catches you up. Sorry for the long post, I just realized I should have just emailed you.

love you!
February 1, 2009 at 7:30 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shifting Sands

Image
You know those movie scenes where the camera is focused on a dazed and often wide-eyed character while the world zooms past in an unrecognizable blur? Or just imagine standing on the beach in springtime while chilly waves furl and curl and drag the sand right out from under your feet. That is a completely accurate description of my life this last month. I'm almost dizzy, close to fragile, barely comprehending the blur on either side of my head, toes gripping like mad to maintain balance. Sing with me, "On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand." Yes. Second week of March : the kids and I travel to Indiana to be with my mom as she goes through surgery for cancer. Though the week was emotionally and physically exhausting, God worked out great things in her life. The tumor was contained, removed, declared stage one, no further treatment needed. Our family feels like we can exhale for the first time since her diag...
Read more

The Back-to-School Post, And It's as Wordy as the School Day is Long

Image
School's been going on strong from my four little scholars for the past three weeks. This is the first year in six years of homeschooling that we "officially" started school before Labor Day. What was the difference this year? I don't know. Often the seat of my pants flies before me, and I just follow along. Actually, the local public schools started on the 23rd, two of our close homeschooling family friends decided to start up, and it's just too bloomin' hot here right now to do much else. I don't have any cute pictures of them climbing on the bus or dressed up with their oversized backpacks and squeaky new shoes. But perhaps a few candids from inside our classroom might stir-up some nostalgic back-to-school feelings. So this is what it looked like in front of my chair for the three weeks prior to school: Every year our school changes flavor a little bit to match our family. Or because something we did last year didn't quite work, or because one kid h...
Read more

A Stranger at the Door

Last week, on a Sunday afternoon, our neighbor called. This wonderful neighbor and his wife are a tremendous blessing to us, and one of our biggest sorrows about having to move is leaving them. Neighbors like these come but once in a lifetime. On that afternoon, a repairman was working on our neighbor's furnace. For some reason, God laid it on our friend's heart to share with him that the family next door--that's us--had a heat pump that had not worked for two years and we were using a wood stove to heat our home. And God then moved in this repairman's heart to say, "Well, since I'm already out here, maybe I could go over and take a look at it." So we got a phone call from our neighbor asking us if it would be okay for his repairman to stop by and take a look. I was kind of confused, because 1.) If we could afford to have it fixed ($7000), we would have done that a long time ago, and 2.) We had already had it diagnosed, by the company that installed it, no...
Read more