July 23

Lily and I woke up at 9:30 this morning to an empty house.

Chris had taken Caleb and Daisy to the Botanical Garden, and managed to get everything together without waking me at all. It was beautiful. Here are some of his cell phone pictures from that outing:

Caleb and Daisy only care to visit the Children's Garden at the Botanical Gardens, and at the Children's Garden, their top priorities are sand and splashing.

Daisy, however, will only splash at this one particular fountain, and she's not big enough yet to make the water go. She's also too afraid to go up there if too many other kids are around. Luckily, her stars aligned today: no other kids, plus her brother there to help. It was a splash win for Daisy!

However, Chris also took my big camera with him (though he didn't actually use it!), so I wasn't able to use any of that glorious quiet time to take pictures of my sweet girl.

Instead, all I got were these two, taken in the late-afternoon gloom. (I am quickly discovering that, while our house has large windows, the deep eaves and mature trees mean that good light is hard to find.)

Ha! Not her best look. I promise that Lily is much cuter than this.

But she has lots of fun playing with her hands!

And then at bedtime, Lily hung out in Daisy's chair while I got Daisy ready for bed. 

The lighting isn't off; the girl is really that pink. She has some good coloring to her!