International Rose Garden in the Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park
Today we decided to take a trip to the International Rose Garden! I've been wanting to go for awhile but couldn't get the kids interested..."Tons of roses....BORING!" But this weekend was the Annual Rose Festival so I talked them into it with promises of fun kiddie activities. Muwhahaha!
I could go on for awhile more but I'll just get to the photos already....they tell the day much better. :-)
There was a shuttle bus that goes straight to the park, we just had to find it. Luckily my best friend here is married to a bus driver. (This has come in handy soooo many times!)SHe was able to tell us where to go, which was the Europa bus terminal. I'm glad I now know how to get there as that's where the buses from Dublin come in. It was only a 25 minute walk there so not too bad. The weather had said no rain and it was nice out so we enjoyed our stroll. We found our bus easy enough and hopped on.
Uh oh. All 3 kids (and Jason) gave me the evil eye as we got off the bus at the park.....the skies had opened up and it was pouring! We hid under some trees until it stopped - only rained for about 10 minutes so no harm done....
Roses!
There were so many rose gardens!
We would walk through one garden and there would be another one and another and another....
Rose from all over the world!
Millions of them!
We wandered around for about an hour and only saw about, maybe, 1/4 of the gardens.
They were beautiful!
By this point Jason and the kids were bored with the roses and trying to turn everything into a game. Here they are standing next to a patch while Jason is daring them to jump over it!
Rebecca: "I could totally jump it."
Jarod: "Yeah, do it Rebecca do it!"
Alex: "I wanna do it too!"
I had to set some Rose Rules.
Such as no running or jumping or trampling or daring in the rose sanctuary!
This was my favorite flower of all the ones I saw.
Most of the gardens had gazebos and there were musicians playing in them. This one was a harpist, very sweet. The scent of the roses mixed with the music and made for a very peaceful setting.
The kids fianlly dragged me away from the gardens and we headed over to the playground where all the activities were!
Alex found the ice cream truck right off the bat! "Pooh bear ice cream mommie!" (I'm sure this truck is infringing on copyright laws on many levels. lol)
More music
Football
Balloon Art
Face Painting! (Would like to point out that this is the first time Jarod has ever completed a face painting! Normally he can't stand to be touched but he did great this time! Yay for progress!)
Alex asked to be the Hulk. He has been trying to turn himself green for weeks after seeing the movie. He's been almost popping blood vessels straining so hard. lol So she painted him all green and showed him in the mirror and this is what he did for 5 minutes....just stared off in space, speechless he was so excited. Then he put his hands on his face to feel it and didn't realize that the paint would get on his hands....so when he pulled his hands away he saw that they were green and his eyes got really big and he screamed "I'm turning into the hulk!!!" And he pulled his pant legs up to check if his legs were green too! LOL
He ran around all day growling and leaping and scaring everyone within 2 miles.
On our way out we saw a show so of course had to watch!
Takes a very secure man to wear tights like those.
Yes...yes he is putting fire down his pants....
Before he did this bit he pulled off his shirt and came over and put his arm around me!
"Hi, how you doing?" he asked.
LOL
His partner kept telling him to come lay down on the bed of nails but he would say no, that he liked it better right where he was and I was blushing and laughing like a fool. Jarod was NOT happy about the whole ordeal and told me later "Mom, why didn't you tell him that you are MY mom! Not his." lol
Goodbye roses! We had fun!
