After the required trip to Starbucks and Safeway for caffeine and sugar (no, none for her) we packed up and headed north. It'll only take an hour to get there, right? Oh, yeah, right... first decent weekend day during the Tulip Festival. Sux to be us. Thank goodness for the DVD player in the truck.

When we finally got there (about five hours later (or so it felt)) we drove past the gardens. Admission fees? Ha! Not on your life! (Oh, wait, every place has a fee? )

So we went in and saw tulips and daffodils, but mostly tulips and people, and lots of people and lots of tulips. Can you imagine a place with more tulips? Really? Outside the garden? Ooh... sounds like fun.

So out we went. And yeah, there were perhaps a billion, billion tulips. All nicely arranged in neat rows surrounded by knee-deep mud puddles. Clara was wise and opted to stay out of the puddles. Henry and Lilly... not so much. It was going pretty well until the first time the water flowed over the tops of their boots. Once that had happened they had no reason to even pretend staying dry. Big splashes, running, falling, you name it, they did it.

We're no novices, though. We had complete changes of clothes in the car. I took Lilly and Henry back to the truck while Amy made a last visit to the shop.

The ride home was no quicker, but ice cream and food and movies made it fly by. Lilly was thrilled to have spent her day with us and the flowers. And the frappacino and the donuts.