beautiful day -- beginning to end

for friday, 10/13 --

what a beautiful beginning to a perfectly wonderful day! we left the house around 7:15-ish to head to nevada, missouri, to take jerry's mother out to breakfast as we headed to kansas city. this was the view as we left out house -- just amazingly beautiful!

we went out to breakfast, had a nice visit, looked at quilt patterns, and then headed off to powell gardens in kansas city. evelyn has been making "rag rugs" but is tired of that and ready to make a quilt. she had material at one time for a quilt for jerry, but it was material that jerry didn't like so evelyn asked me to pick out some new material. she thought it would be easier to pick out material if i could see the pattern that she wanted to make for us.

here's a picture of jerry and me at powell garden, about 25 miles east of kansas city on highway 50. i had driven on a bus trip up there for the garden club and knew that i wanted to take jerry back there so he could see it. after my trip there, i suggested the gardens to an online group that i'm on for botanical art. now that we had time off and had wanted to go here anyway, i found out that an online friend, cynthia padilla -- botanical artist, was going to be there teaching classes. we decided to make the trip to coincide with her visit so i could meet up with her and say hi.

when i went in to look at her class, cynthia was talking and everyone was watching intently, so i left her a note that said i would be back later to say hi and jerry and i went on exploring the grounds together. it is an absolutely amazing place, even though i didn't think it looked that impressive when i first walked in last summer. it is much larger than a person thinks.

my favorite part is the water garden area, which just has so many things and parts to look at. i loved the water lilies and the huge lily pads. the peacefulness there, with the sound of the running/bubbling water combined with the sunshine and the breeze, felt just perfect. at first i was afraid the day was going to be cold, but it turned out just perfect. i was glad to be able to share that with jerry.

on the garden grounds, there is a beautiful chapel that overlooks the lake. visitors can walk over to the chapel and even go into the chapel and look out at the scenery. the view is breath-taking. as we were walking over to the chapel, i thought, "i wish we could've gotten married some place pretty like this . . . " and then i realized that we got married somewhere even prettier b/c the people we loved we there with us. once we were in the chapel and looking out, jerry said, "wouldn't it be neat to get married some place like this?" and then we just started laughing. while the chapel was beautiful, the full glass front letting the sunshine in or reflecting the flash at night would've made taking pictures a horrible nightmare.

after we had walked around the whole gardens and looked at the things we wanted, we headed back over to the main entrance, where cynthia was teaching her class so i could meet her. they were in the last 1/2 hour or so of class, so students were really immersed in their projects and she was free to chat a bit and take a picture together. if you want to see those pictures, you can find them at meeting at powell gardens.

after we left the gardens, we were planning to go into kansas city for some shopping and dinner but our plans changed. jerry looked at me and said, "you know what sounds good for dinner?" which at our house means that you are supposed to say "chicken mary's?" like you're just guessing. he just laughed and said "that's right!" so we just headed home instead of into the city and fighting the traffic at rush hour and all. a few minutes later, i said, "hey, why don't you call your mom and see if she and joleen want to meet up w/ us for dinner?" that's what we did and how we ended up having breakfast and dinner w/ jerry's mother.

joleen, jerry, and evelyn pose together outside of chicken mary's, wondering why i needed a picture of the event!

we couldn't have planned a more perfect day if we had tried, so we were very happy w/ our day off together. it was amazing to realize that we hadn't even used up 1/2 of our time off yet! so much to do, so little time. so many pictures to take and blog, so many things to do, so little time!