We’re on our way down to Orlando to visit my grandmother and Mickey because we’ve got a three-day weekend, which seems insane since we just had a full week off for Fall Break. Well, Emma Vance had a week off. Cricket’s school was still in session, and since Ryan had to work, we just stuck around town. E.V. reveled in her alone time with me while Cricket was in class, but the two big highlights of the week were definitely Emma Vance playing teacher and visiting the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Cricket’s teacher invited E.V. to prepare and teach a lesson since she “is a big girl,” and she LOVED it! I wouldn’t be surprised if she became a teacher one day. She decided to theme her lesson around rainbows, so she taught the three-year-olds how to draw a rainbow, instructed them how to say the colors in French (via a bizarro song they sing at her school called “Arc-en-Ciel/Rainbow” about a man with a wooden head who drinks mushroom juice), and experimented with Skittles to make a rainbow. She was in her element, and everyone loved Miss E.V.!

Friday we visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. It was so beautiful! Ryan’s friend gifted us a membership last Christmas, and I couldn’t be more obsessed! I mean, art + nature? Yes, please! The girls particularly liked “The Most Impressive Woman,” which they called Te Fiti. (Thanks, Moana!) And the big thrill of our visit was finding a tiger swallowtail caterpillar. He was strange and fascinating! (And, yes, I had to Google “caterpillar with large brown head and yellow tongue” to figure out what it was!) We can’t wait to go back.