Post Weekend (Except That I Only Wrote About One Thing We Did This Weekend)

The good news: Caden and Brooklyn have been intersted in animals lately, so we took them to Olbrich Gardens this weekend to ogle the fish and birds.

Caden was particularly interested in the fish.

Brooklyn was mildly interested, but when Tyson set her down so she could try to look through the wood beams at her level like Caden was doing, she threw a mad fit like "whhhyyyyy would you do that?!?".

Meanwhile, Caden continued to try to fit his head and as much of his body as possible through the side of the bridge.  No fear, this one.

Brooklyn was MUCH more interested in the birds.  The indoor area area of the Gardens included a bird feeding station, and we got lucky enough to see four canaries and two quails.

Brooklyn was fascinated.  She probably would have stayed there all day if I would have let her, except that she kept pulling the curved sticks out of the ground that were placed there precisely to keep inquisitive little toddlers out of the birds feeding area and on the path.

 

Distraction technique: mother-daughter selfies!

And spying on some cute boys across the way.

We headed outside where we came upon the Thai garden, which was beautiful (probably more so in a month or two, when things will look a little less...dead) and elephant statues! OMG YOU GUYS!  You have elephants in your room!  Let's take 89734 pictures of us with the elephants!

So we did.

"Look mom!  No hands!"

Caden was less impressed.

"Shouldn't this be, like, rocking or something?"

Though he had fun playing with sticks on the ground.

The coolest part was a Thai pavilion almost completely covered in gold leaf.  With signs everywhere saying "do not touch the pavilion OR ELSE".  (Okay, the "OR ELSE" was implied.) Which of course the oils from your hands and the sheer number of people constantly touching it would completely damage the gold leaf.  Okay sign, you got it.  But then I started thinking...isn't this pavilion...outside?  With like, weather?  And animals?  And we live in Wisconsin with things like snow and rain and hail and are you telling me that my hands will damage the gold leaf but the pavilion is totally cool with all that Mother Nature has to throw at it?

Clearly I am no expert since the pavilion is still standing and seemed to be minimally damaged.

And now for the bad news: 

My phone screen.  I dropped it on a concrete path at the Gardens face down and cracked it. Which, I've had the phone for over two years, and I've dropped it on hard surfaces before, but this one did it in.  It's not bad (in fact, I can't even get a decent picture of it to post here), and if you saw it you'd probably wonder what I'm even whining about (small crack down the left side doesn't even mess up the display), but...still.