Texas Wildflowers

On Saturday of Easter weekend we decided to drive out to the country to see the annual bluebonnets and take pictures of our precious little girls in all the flowers.  For some reason that has become THE thing to do in Texas in the springtime.  Everybody with young children goes out to take their pictures and then proudly sends them out on Facebook to all their friends (I'm not making fun of them - I do it too).  But my question is, if we don't go are we bad parents since we would be the only ones in the entire state that wouldn't have done it?  So far I've only missed one year and I have a feeling our bluebonnet trips will soon be ending since the kids are getting older.  I think next year might be more of a trip to Blue Bell Ice Cream factory and then a few quick shots by the main road.  That's it.

Anyway, this year the bluebonnets were a bit sparce in some places but great in others so we got lots of pictures in the bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and whatever the yellow ones are called.

But before I display all the photos, let me just say the day didn't go quite as anticipated.  It really wasn't THAT bad except my dear old hubby was in a bear of a mood.  Ladies I think you all have been there.  He thinks the entire day was a fiasco, a disaster.  I actually thought most of it was okay with the exception of his own mood.  I guess men just don't have patience for things like leisurely flower picking and photos. Then again, what is leisurely about taking 4 kids ages 5 and under to do anything? Hopefully he won't be TOO upset with me for putting this in my blog.  That being said, the one really disappointing thing was that we drove an hour and a half only to discover we didn't have the camera (we had video camera only).  So I had to resort to the iPhone which doesn't make for good editing.  We also forgot the blankets, which in my opinion was no big deal.  It would have been nice for our picnic lunch but otherwise I don't even think we would have used them.

NaNaw and PaPa (Mike's parents) were in town so we took 2 cars.  Mike's poor mom gets carsick at the slightest motion and I guess she didn't realize how much driving we were going to be doing.  So she was not feeling so hot. The funniest part, actually, was she had used a plastic bag a few times and then kind of emptied it out somewhere.  Well, PaPa picked up her bag and then picked a bunch of flowers (including bluebonnets!  Apparently in 60-something years he has not gotten the memo that that is illegal, though now I'm hearing that it being illegal is just an old wive's tale anyway. Still, I'm not going to be the one to risk it.  Though I did pick one on the side of the road when I was 18.  We jumped back in the car and sped away, in case there might be some highway patrolman nearby.  We were SO wild!)...anyway, I've totally gone off-subject.  So he picked some flowers to take home but he threw them all into NaNaw's barf bag!  Gross!

Anyway, that is the short version of the day.  Pics turned out pretty good anyway so here they are....

Kaitlyn's only shot by herself.  She sat down and something started itching and was a bit uncooperative the rest of the time.  But I did ask her to take one nice picture so she flashed me a great smile!

Here's the happy group having a picnic.

I had to include this shot since this is how most of our photo-taking REALLY went.  Any picture that had all 4 faces up and looking were considered keepers!

Sulking in the grass to conclude our day...don't remember why, but I kind of thought it made a cute picture.

So who knows what next year holds?  But I'll worry about that a year from now.

Oh, and to anyone who might know, a lot of my pictures look great except on my blog they are a little fuzzy (a LOT fuzzy on this one because it was the iPhone) but all of my pictures are so clear and focused except when put on my blog.  Does anyone know how I might upload them that they come out just as clear?