We walked Brian to his evening rehearsal the other night and the camera was in the stroller. Downtown Victoria is very cute.





I liked the Cheshire Cat on the side of the old Carnegie Library. Who knew there were Carnegie Libraries in Canada?


We had hoped to go in the English Sweet Shop but it was already closed. Sad.

The Korean store saved the day, banana milk almost just like Japan! (In Japan we got it in cans.)


We also got some Nanaimo bars this week, since we could drive to Nanaimo. Strangely Colin would not eat his. He has been terrible recently not trying new foods, even when they are chocolaty and creamy. It is kind of driving us crazy when he refused to eat things that we know he likes. I don't like it when dinner becomes a power struggle. He was funny after he would not have his Nanaimo bar because after I had said no to making him chocolate milk, he came back with "but I did not have my other chocolate treat so I choose chocolate milk instead".

Jane, still with a lot of lunch on her face, had no trouble trying a new treat, first smashing it to see what happens.


Brian here.
The Sunken Garden. It was the penultimate evening of the lighted garden, and a beautiful starry night, so I thought there might be a pretty good crowd there. But we saw maybe 5-6 other people there. We really had the place to ourselves, and once the kids fell asleep in the stroller we got some nice snogging in.


















When we went back to see the illuminated garden, the kids went in their jammies, and Colin was excited to get tucked into the stroller. He kept telling Jane to be quiet. I don't think he appreciated the focus light on the camera before this picture was taken. His hands pretty much stayed like this the whole time though.



Dahlias






In the Japanese Garden


The Italian Garden


Colin was laying down in the fully reclined bottom part of the stroller, and Jane was in the doubles seat fixed on the top (one of the configurations of the wonderful phil&teds stroller intended for a newborn and toddler). They weren't just stacked on top of each other as it appears from the position of their feet.


An evening at Butchart Gardens is well worth it, even with kids.

(Still at Butchart Gardens) Much to our children's delight, there is a new carousel that opened just last year.
Jane, who rode the Matterhorn at Disneyland as a 1 year old, was a little nervous when the ride started to move. To try and make her feel better, I opened my mouth really wide.

She recovered quickly from any unsure feelings.

We ate ice cream.

Climbed look outs.
And came down again from said look out point.

The kids played with gravel for a long time.



And we spent a lot of time on this horse. We have no ideas what Jane is doing here, just being a 2 year old.



More silly faces.


And more nose picking. It looks like I am about to join in, maybe showing Jane how to best execute a straight finger pick.


We walked back to the Japanese Gardens.


While running over this stone path, we were lucky only Colin's foot went in. We could have had a very wet boy.

Just one more Butchart Gardens post to come. I'll have to have Brian post it since he is the night photographer.

It has been a full week since we spent the day at Butchart Garden, don't know why I have been so slow to post. I am somewhat between projects and am wasting soooo much time on line on the dumbest things. Anyway, it was such a gorgeous day! The Sunken Garden is an old limestone quarry, not bad. We hoped that in Utah maybe Kennecott could someday be the only garden you could see from space.

The photo does not show too well how big the fountain is.





Jane was so cute with the lights such as these. She would peek under them and say "hello lights!"












In the Japanese garden. It was very lovely, but we are kind of Japanese garden snobs these days.

The Italian gardens




Even the garbage cans grow flowers.