Dinosaurs Everywhere!!

On Sunday, Mother's Day, Mark and I took Jack to the Dinosaur Trails!  I've always wanted to take Jack because he loves dinosaurs, and the fact that it was free admission day for Moms made it an even better day!

We started out walking over to the volcano in the water...every hour it starts steaming and lava (water) starts shooting out the top!  It was such a windy day, the water went sideways and ended up getting a lot of people wet!  Fortunately, we were on the other side!!  LOL!  The trail is about a mile and a half long, through the woods and around a few small ponds.

As you walk along the trail, there are signs giving information about the dinosaurs and there are about 25 life-sized dinosaurs!  The walk was beautiful, between Mountain Laurel trees and streams.  There are benches along the path too, although Jack was so excited to see the next dinosaur, there was definitely no time for stopping!! 

Something we found interesting was every once in a while, you would catch a glimpse of a pretty stone mixed in with the gravel pathways...they were polished amethyst, jade, quartz and other gemstones like you would find in the gift shop!  We ended up collecting a handful of beautiful stones to add to Jacks collection at home!
 

There were also some "can you guess what I am?" boxes along the way that Jack really enjoyed....he loved sticking his hands in to feel what was inside!!

They also had a maze near the end of the trail...you could take a set of stairs to the top to look down on the maze then go down a big tube slide, or within the maze there was a big dinosaur mouth wide-open.  There was a tube slide in the mouth too!!  We went down the tube slide a bunch of times!

Of course, Daddy had to hide within the maze to hop out and scare Jack as he rounded the corner....

I managed to catch this picture just as he jumped out!!  Thankfully, Jack just started laughing!!

We had an awesome time!! 

At the end of the trail, there is a nice playground that we played at for a while...all of the playscapes were geared towards dinosaurs too...one of the walkways from the ladder to the slide was a giant dinosaur bone!  They even had a big dinosaur skull that you could play in!!

It was a nice Mother's Day for me, spending time with Mark and Jack...just having fun!!

(And, Jack got me a special Mom Book that made me cry after just a couple of pages, and I am also having a weeping cherry tree delivered on Thursday for my special present.  Mark gave me one my first mother's day so I could have pictures of Jack taken next to it every year, but we moved last year!  Now I will have one at our new home!)

Mothers Day Craft!

As a special Mother's Day Craft, Jack and I decided to make 'home-made' paper with wildflower seeds in it!  The paper can be planted later and after some 'showers of love', beautiful wildflowers should start to grow!  We made one for Grandma, Auntie Scoot, Namie and Auntie Mel!!

After blending some scrap paper and water in a blender, we poured the 'soup' into a baking dish....

Jack then added the wildflower seeds to the dish and used his hands to mix it all up!  It was really squishy!!

We then used a section of screen from an old screen door to gather up the pulp to form a little sheet of paper!  After pressing a lot of the water out, we left the screens with the pulp on a towel to absorb as much of the water as possible!  It took about 24 hours to totally dry.

After letting them dry, we added a picture of a flower, "Happy Mother's Day" and Jack signed his name!

Here's a picture of Jack giving one to Grandma!

You can tell she really loved it! 

Happy Mother's Day!!