The Oregon Gardens

For our anniversary, my parents offered to take the kids overnight.  I KNOW!  The Girl has never been away from us overnight and the last time The Kid stayed there was when I was in the hospital having The Girl. 

So needless to say, we were pretty excited to have an entire day, plus the evening all to ourselves.  Although, I will say, it was strange.  I had to make a conscious effort not to yell out AIRPLANE every time one flew overhead.  And anytime we'd see something they'd like, we pointed it out to each other.  Yep, still The Mom and The Dad even without the kids around.

Soooooo, since we had all day Saturday to ourselves, I decided I wanted to finally go to the Oregon Gardens in Silverton.  We dropped the kids off in the morning and headed out.  It was only about an hour drive and the weather was perfect.  I took along my borrowed camera and took waaaaay too many pictures.

As you will see, the conifer garden was my favorite.  I could have sat there for hours. I dream of someday owning a big enough piece of property to fill in with trees.

Here's our day at the garden in photos:

The amazing conifer garden:

Look at the size of this piece of basalt!

One of many water features.

I love this boxwood edging.

An enormous arbor tunnel.
It had hops and grapes growing on it.
They called it the wall of beer and wine.

Another water feature.

There was even a children's garden.

This was the hobbit hole.

The Dad had to check out how it was built for future reference.  :o)

Mr. & Mrs. Pots and their offspring.

I thought the window over the sink was so cute.

The miniature train garden was amazing. 
Look at how cute those tiny trees are!!!

There were several fun topiaries in the children's garden as well.

This is my next project for the backyard.  HA.
It was soooo pretty.

The beams on this sucker were HUGE.

We had a lot of fun walking around with no schedule.
After the gardens, we stopped at a yard sale on the way out of town and hit the jackpot in the glass department.
I'll take some pictures of my new treasures when I get my hands on a camera.
(word on the street is, there's one in the mail)

We headed home for a quick pit stop and then went out to eat dinner.

Then it was home for a movie on the couch. 
And we even started it while it was still daylight out!
If you have small kids, you know that's a big deal.
We got to go to bed without doing the kid bedtime routine, which was heaven.
The next morning, it was take-out biscuits & gravy and hashbrowns.
YUM!
Then we pretty much sat around until 1:00, waiting for the phone call to go pick up the kids.
Not a bad way to spend an anniversary weekend.