Elora’s daddy, being the nice daddy that he is, thought it would be fun to bring a snail inside and let it play on the lovely lavendar plant in Elora’s room. As you can see, she is thrilled to have a new addition to the family. Actually, she cried when he had to go back outside because “he will miss me so much, he loves me!” I love her fascination with animals. Too cute.
Amy and Amanda went to see the crown jewels at the treasury. Here they are outside the Imperial Palace, with the lovely surroundings of Vienna in the background.
Pretty fancy stuff.
Amanda is intently studying the treasures. Perhaps contemplating where she would put it if she could only have such ornate artifacts in her own bedroom.
Check out Elora in the background. A bit tired from all the excitement of the last few weeks perhaps?
Amy especially liked the fancy swords. Perhaps she is contemplating how she can obtain such a fancy sword, and if she could, where could she ever find a teacher proficient enough to teach her to use such a magnificent piece of weaponry? Or not, but it is fun to project thoughts onto other people…
Outside the palace. Elora was super excited to have a new tiara from the gift shop. She has been asking us to buy her one for about a year now.
In the afternoon we went to the Lainzer Tiergarten near our house. It used to be the Imperial Hunting Grounds, and it is basically a large walled in area of forest that still houses some interesting animals. It is such a fun place to walk around. We saw some people collecting plants or something in the forest, and not knowing what they were getting, Chris told Elora he thought they were collecting mushrooms (people still do that here). She began her own hunt for mushrooms that continued the rest of the hike. (We later found out that mushrooms are collected in the summer, the people were actually collecting a plant that smells like garlic and is used in salads and cooking.)
Here we are at the Warning! Frog Crossing! Sign. We love these, they just make me laugh. I actually have driven somewhere though where there were tons of frogs in the road, and when that happens, you really can’t miss them all…
We stopped to look around at the Hermesvilla. Oliver and Elora love the fountain here.
There is the Hermesvilla in the background. It now has a special art exhibit in it, we haven’t gone yet. Hopefully we will go sometime this year!
The garden in Hermesvilla has wonderful trees for climbing. They are easy for Elora to get in and out of by herself, and she loves to sit in the trees.
Oliver found a nice big stick to use for hiking. He now doe this everytime we are out! “Need big stick!”
We found a random teeter-totter while we were walking, and Oliver loved riding it with Amy and Amanda. Elora was busy poking a stick into piles of dirt. She said she was looking for moles (?) Interesting. She never found any though.
We always tell Elora there are animals here, but we had never seen any before and she was quite disappointed about it and asking where all the animals were. Right after that we found this large enclosure with mountain sheep and are these antelope? We weren’t sure, but the kids were super excited. Oliver insisted they were all sheep and cows, so I guess it doesn’t really matter what kind of animals they were!
