These are the gardens at the palace. There is an entrance to them right near the apartment we were staying at. Poor Elora keeps asking to go to the park. We take her to the gardens, but it is not quite the same without swings and slides. The best part is that there are signs everywhere saying to stay off the grass. What?! Why is there all that grass if you can’t sit on it? So she gets a little mischievous look just before she ignores all of our warnings to stay off the grass. Nice.
This was right after she had been confined to the stroller for the tour of the palace. She liked the palace, but as soon as she was out of the stroller she wanted to run and run and run…
Oliver took a little nap during the tour of the palace, and was pretty happy when he woke up. I think he might have been smiling so I would pick him up though.
Elora loves Oliver, and was having a great time making him giggle.
Elora and Chris are in front of the palm house, which is a big green house with huge palm trees inside. We haven’t visited it yet, maybe we will soon… She was telling the squirrels to go home in this picture. I am not really sure why… We were about to go home, so she was throwing her arms forward and yelling, “Go! Go!”
There are a lot of really neat pathways that have huge hedges and arching trees. Very beautiful. The squirrels here have black fur or bright red fur. They are pretty neat looking, but not friendly, so I haven’t been able to get a picture yet. You can always see tons of them running around the gardens though.
This is a fountain in the middle of the gardens. Elora really likes the lily pads and there are always lots of ducks, so she always asks to get closer to the fountain so she can watch them swimming.
Look at these huge hedges! They are awesome. When they trim them they have to bring in these huge machines (obviously, since they are like twenty feet high). It was pretty fun to watch them trim the hedges.
I’m not really sure what Elora was doing… she was getting really hyper and yelling a lot. She doesn’t really have a normal voice these days; she is usually either whispering or yelling.
She looks pretty excited first of all because she is standing on the grass, and second of all because she found two sticks, and third of all because she is “playing music” by drumming with the sticks. She drummed them on the ground and on the bushes and on the flowers and on the stroller… All the while saying, “I’m playing music!” I guess we will need to get her a drum set.
Check out our picture gallery for more pictures of our European adventures as well as hiking trips in Utah and family photos.
