Getting Wet at the Gardens 5/23/10

We loved our family pictures so much that we hired the same photographer to do another photo shoot with the 4 of us with my Mom, my Grandma, and my Brother. We figured out that is has been 13 1/2 years since our last family picture, and that was at our wedding! So we decided since she was so inexpensive and good that it wouod be worth another $50 to do another shoot.
My brother Jeff was visiting from out of town for the weekend. So we headed out to the Meijer Gardens on Sunday afternoon for the shoot. That was one of the days that the weather was about 87* and REALLY sunny. It made for a long, hot afternoon, but hopefully it also made for some nice pictures (we haven't seen them yet).
Since the Gardens are so huge we asked Grandma to sit in a wheelchair to go from location to location. Samantha saw everyone else taking tirns pushing her and thought she needed a turn. ;-)After a little over an hours of picture taking and walking in the really hot sun, we were done getting pictures taken. Grandma had never been into the Children's Garden so we headed in there to give her a quick walk-through tour. We walked quickly through each part of the Gardens, except the water area. We stayed there for about 1/2 hour. We probably would have stayed longer, but it was closing time. Following is a LOT of pictures from that 1/2 hour. They were all so cute I couldn't chose just a couple)
There is a button that sprays a mist of water. When Daddy took the picture he captured a rainbow over Marc's shoulder.
There is also a "wall of water" that kids (and kids at heart) can put there arms, hands, head, etc in to "break" the wall.
Daddy was just helping Marc, but when I looked at this picture on the computer, it looks like Daddy's is trying to push him into the water. ;-)
We didn't know how Samantha would react to the water.....she LOVED it!
Her favorite toy to play with were the nets. She liked "catching" the water.
Marc's favorite thing to do is drive a boat all the way around all of the Great Lakes.
Both of my little boys have fun playing in the water area. ;-)
Both kids had fun showing Grandma what they were doing.
And Uncle Jeff.
My cute, wet little man. :-)
And my cute, wet little princess. :-)
Daddy found that they had squirters to play with. He was squirting Samantha and Marc. He decided it would be fun to teach Samantha how to use the squirter and squirt Uncle Jeff.
Since Great Grandma was in the wheel chair she was not able to go up and get wet so Samantha decided to go over with the water she "caught" in her net and sprinkled both Grandma and Great Grandma's feet to cool them off. ;-)
And then Marc tried to see if the squirter would reach all the way over to the Grandmas....it didn't quite make it.
The clothes that Samantha and I wore for picture were the same. Since we were twiners I asked Daddy to take our picture.
Daddy thought that this pose looked like we had really strong kids and they were lifting the rock.
On the way out of the children's area the kiddos went through the kids door. Marc actually made a comment to me that he was so tall that he had duck down or he would have hit his head. :-)
It was a very hot 1 1/2 hour getting pictures taken, but I think we will have a few really cute pictures. To end the afternoon it was a very fun, wet final 1/2 hour at the Gardens. :-) (I will post pics as soon as I get them. She said it will probably be next week sometime)