Monday

When I got on the computer today, I realized it was Veterans Day. I want to say Thank you to the Veterans who have given up so much so I may sit here in my pajamas and blog. Without the sacrifice of their families and their lives my life would be so different.

After a very crazy week last week. It is hard to know where to start. So much happened. Illness, hospital visit and a vacation. All in one week. I will try and hit just the vacation part.

The boys who still live at home had a convention to go to down in Anaheim California, which is the home of Disneyland. It used to take a little over two hours to get down there. This time because of all of the road construction it took us three and a half hours. It was grueling.

It is beautiful though. I loved this walk and how all of the date palms grow like this and all of the banana trees. We were late getting down there so the boys left immediately after we checked in to wait in line to get their badges and loot. The convention they went to see had sold 35 thousand tickets so they had a while.
 Friday morning they left a little after six A.M. To wait in line just to get in before 11:00 when opening ceremonies took place.
Which meant that Ron and I had a nice breakfast and then we decided to go explore. The first place we drove too was called the House of Bonsai. It was in Lakewood California.

 We got out of the car and this was our first sight, there was five acres of nothing but Bonsai. It was so amazing to just walk and look just look to our hearts content.

There were five acres of all kinds of trees used in Bonsai and then I think there were about 10 hoop houses filled with baby trees. There were men working doing nothing but cutting and training little trees. These trees this size were 120 dollars each.

Here is some of the trees that they had that weren't for sale. Or if they were it would have been thousands of dollars.

After we spent a few hours here and the next place opened at noon, we decided to go visit The Huntington Gardens. It is located in San Marino California. What a mind blowing experience. It has about 120 acres of gardens and Ron and I tried to see them all. The Japanese Garden was our favorite and the Bonsai specimens were breath taking. I won't show you the oodles of photographs I took but I will show you some.

This is a cork oak and we both love cork oak so much and a couple of years ago we went to our park down down and gathered acorns now we have all of these little cork oak trees that will someday be lovely Bonsai specimens like this. Here is a picture of the bark.

I just love the way it looks and it is such an old tree.

They had a awesome Zen Garden.

It was too hot out there to enjoy it very much. Ron was in a hurry to see it all so I just snapped this photo.

This was the coolest bamboo walkway. There was water running and a Koi pond with such amazing huge fish. They came to the top when I stood on the bridge and looked down and made the kissing sounds thinking I would feed them. I of course stood there like a loon and talked to them. I was glad there was no one around to hear me.

This was the jungle garden, see the vines hanging down? Don't you just expect to see Tarzan swinging through? That was incredible there were Elephant ears that the leaves were almost as big as me. I have a gillion pictures so I won't bore you. The Australian garden was incredible but the desert garden was just as amazing. I thought it was full of Dr. Seuss Trees.  I still have more to show you but I will stop here.

 This is only part of the things I saw and did. When  I was at Weight Watchers all of the time, the number one reason women wanted to get in shape was to be able to keep up with kids and grand kids. I found out on this trip, I need to get in shape to keep up with my husband. He has more energy than anyone I have ever seen. That is for another day though.

Have a awesome day, I have mountains of laundry to do today.

~Kim~