California Way: Fun at Huntington Gardens

After we visited Sky's kindergarten open house yesterday, we went to the Huntington Gardens. It was about 1 hour away from us and we took Sky out of school to come with us. This trip was arranged through the MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) group that I attend but Ken decided to come along too so it became more of a family trip.
It usually costs $15 per person for admission but the first Thursday of the month is free with reserved tickets. Although it was great to take advantage of free day, we didn't pack enough food for the kids and ended up getting gouged at the cafe there.
In the picture above, the kids were playing in the rose garen with some friends from church.

The Chinese garden was my absolute favorite. It felt as if I was actually in China. It was truly beautiful.

Lila and I in the children's garden. There are many different gardens. We saw the rose garden, children's garden, Japanese garden, Chinese garden, desert garden, lily garden and a tiny bit of the Australian garden. We didn't even get to see the tropical garden or the palm garden among others.

We saw a few lizards. This one was sunning itself on a rock.

This was a big deal on the website and also when we got there. It is the corpse flower and it only blooms about every 8 years. It stinks terribly, up to 1/2 mile when it blooms. The experts were guessing that it would bloom next week. It all kind of reminded me of that scene in Dennis the Menace where Mr. Wilson is having that garden party to watch his flower bloom and then Dennis distracts everyone for the brief seconds that it's in bloom.