I recently took the kids to Thanksgiving Point Gardens for their annual Fairy Tale Festival. I met two other friends and their girls there. Neither of them had been to the gardens before.
Stella as always loved sticking up her arm through the hole in the rock wall to touch the waterfall on the other side. She is small enough she can get enough of her body across the thick opening and actually feel the water. My older two kids and I struggle to do it and only get the mist once in a while. Our arms are just not wide enough for it.
The gardens look so different this time than just a month ago when I was there right after the Tulip Festival. The tulips where all gone and were replaced by other summer plants. The Rose Garden was in full bloom and it smelled amazing.
The secret garden had two mermaids lounging in the pool. The kids were fascinated with their tails. The kids even spotted some baby birds blending into the rock wall on the upper part of the waterfalls.
They had several crafts and activities as part of the festival. The kids got to see what the root of a water lily look like and to draw a frog. I loved their creativity! Carson didn't know how to draw a frog so he drew a wiener dog. Close enough :)
The only drawback was the heat. Luckily the kids decided to spend some time building a castle in a shaded part of the gardens. They had some fire insulation bricks for the kids to use. Those things are awesome! They are light and don't break easily. Every time a child would leave their castle to go do something else the other kids would raid his or her castle for bricks and bring back as many as they could to build their own fortress. We had five kids in our group so we ended up with a large number of blocks to use.
Knocking the walls over after they were all done was just as fun for them as it was building.
The kids got to meet several fairy tale characters and got their autographs. I love how Emilia signed her name next to all the other princesses. After all, she is a princess too.
