The Huntington Botanical Gardens..... AMAZING!!

So, today, the boys and I went to the "free day" at The Huntington Botanical Gardens. It is a truly awesome place, I mean, seriously amazing. Here's a link to their website:
http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=210&linkidentifier=id&itemid=210

It was 31 degrees out when we woke up (I know, I know, all you people living where it's like -20 are cursing my wimpy SoCal flip flop mentality...) and I was figuring we would just bundle up and make the best of it, since it would most likely be windy too. I was totally wrong, it turned out to be a beautiful day!!

These were on the path right before the Chinese Garden, which was incredibly beautiful. There was a huge pond with fish and two hand-laid flooring sections with really neat pebbles and wood designs.....

Everywhere you walked, there were different things to see.... so incredible!

So next, we decided to take a walk through the rainforest. I had curled my hair really nicely this morning. Then we went in the rainforest. Yeah, not so great for the hair. But so many amazing things were growing and blooming in that environment:

They also had these cool things that had you smell some of the plant products that are grown in rainforests, like cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, and coffee. The boys really liked those!

After the rainforest, we took in the lily pond and the desert garden....

It was a great day! I definitely want to start going here more often, so that we can see all of the different flowers and plants that are in bloom during the year. I am really, really thankful that both of my kids love the beauty of nature and are just as awed over it (if not more!) than I am. It made today's field trip a pleasure!

If you are interested in going on one of the free days, here's where you can find the info to get the tickets:
http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary_02.aspx?id=844&linkidentifier=id&itemid=844