A Fabulous Day

Saturday the Garneaus had a fabulous day of adventure and intrigue. One of my very favorite authors, Gary Paulsen, is on a book tour promoting his new release (and he said it's one of his favorites) Woods Runner. I jumped at the chance to go hear him speak. I missed him once before and didn't want to miss again.
Since it was over an hour drive to see him, we decided to make a day of it and spend a few hours at the Morton Arboretum as well. The Morton Arboretum has a fabulous children's garden, and Maddy had the best time running and climbing and playing around.

The music garden.

The amazingly fragrant magnolia. I want one for our yard.

Stepping stones across a very shallow pond that makes every parent cringe. It's ankle deep, so it's not dangerous, it's more of a pollywog/frog watching pond, but it's water, and the car with the emergency change of clothes is a hike back to the parking lot.  (Did you know there are multiple spellings for pollywog?)

Our yearly tradition of a picture by the blooming forsythia. Forsythia blooms for such a short time, and it's so gorgeous, a perfect picture backdrop.

Me too.

Maddy was a bit scared on this steep rope bridge, so I was the rescue mom with a piggy back ride to safety. All in a day's work.

Finally, off to see Gary Paulsen. Maddy did great listening to him speak for an hour, but I figured waiting in line for another 30-40 minutes for pictures and autographs was too much, so I sent them off to find ice-cream while I chatted with the other teachers/librarians in line. Big surprise.

He is such a grizzly old guy, I wanted to hug him. In some ways he reminded me of my dad, and I just realized while typing this that my dad would have been 5 years older than Gary Paulsen. They are similar in attitude, temperament and, er, shall we say colorful language. My dad would have liked his books and he would have loved Hatchet.

Look at that big smile, did I have fun or what?