Descanso Gardens and Red, White and Blue festivities...

A friend took Jonathan and I to Descanso gardens for the morning a while ago and I have been meaning to share pictures for ages- this is a link to the Descanso Gardens site: http://www.descansogardens.org/ 

This is a picture of our friendly 'tour guide'- Caroline (she is in our Bible study and it was such fun spending time with her.) 

We didn't go everywhere since the gardens are about 160 acres big- but I have added a 'few' snapshots from what we did get to see.

Here are two pics of the entrance area:

Here is a picture of a walkway area and also a shot of some barbel/catfish for my dad!

Here are a few of the Japanese garden area:

This is a lilac field but we missed the major blooming time... but you can see some blossoms in the second pic

Here are some pretty scenic ones from on our way to the rose gardens:

Some of the rose garden area:

Note Jonathan's exhilaration reflecting on the roses in this pic:

Then... we saw some Egyptian geese, a crane and even a tortoise while he napped!

Here are some last ones of us relaxing under some beautiful trees at the end of our walk:

Well... I planned to share so much more in this post, but it has gotten to be a book once again... so I will work on getting the rest of our news up asap-

Blue just had his first 'red, white and blue celebration' 'Fourth of July' and here are two pics from our day!

Yummy red, white a blue cupcakes and we all dressed in red, white and blue too! It is so fun to just join in with the festivities!

I am so thankful for this life and the beauty of places like the Descanso gardens... plus fun days like 'Independence Day', where we got to have fun times with friends- but it is all so obviously a foretaste of what is to come. I long for heaven- where we will be in His perfect presence and everything will just make sense. 

I love this quote by CS Lewis which really summarizes what I am trying to say- "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."