our 'picnic lunch' with Todd. (Or, how lazy can I get and still call it a picnic?)

Last week, we headed to Todd's office for a picnic over his lunch break.  We do this every so often, since there's a really beautiful garden/grounds area with streams, small ponds, and even an authentic one-room school house.  (I'm not sure why.  But I'm also not complaining about it.)

We were going to grab McDonald's, because that's how I do picnic lunches, but then the drive-thru line was crazy-go-nuts, so we drove across the street to Natural Grocers.  I wanted to find food that wasn't too messy, didn't require plates or silverware or napkins, wouldn't stain the kids' clothes, and was super easy to clean up when we were all done.

Enter: turkey sticks, sliced cheese, crackers and hummus.  Also, a giant canteen of Kombucha and a big bottle of water.  We put it all in a cardboard box and headed over to Shelter.

Bingo bango.  Easy lunch accomplished.  I just passed out the jerky and cheese, and dumped the crackers into the cardboard box, along with the open hummus carton.  But I felt so internally conflicted - does a lunch served family-style from a cardboard box actually count as a 'picnic'?  Picnics are quaint, and planned, and cuter than this.  But then again, the attendees at the picnic in question were pretty darn cute on their own...

Okay, verdict is in: It was cute enough to be a picnic.

I poured the kombucha into a McDonald's cup I had sitting in the car (because I'm classy stuff).

After eating lunch, we explored the grounds a bit.  We met a lady who was really, really into her dog.  She detailed for me how she only feeds her dog out of her hand, three times a day, one piece of kibble at a time.  Every day.  All the time.  I'm not sure what the lady does for a living, but it must only be part-time.

Anywhoo.  We saw some other stuff, too.  Idyllic one-room schoolhouse, anyone?

Koi pond, perhaps?

Adorable kids?

Sure, I'll take them all!

And that was our visit to Shelter!