Thanksgiving Point Gardens

I've been a Thanksgiving Point Member for several years now, but until August, I had only been to the Ashton Gardens once. For Tulip Festival. It never really seemed like a place my kids would like to go, so we never really went. Well, I'd been hearing good things about the new Light of the World garden (or whatever it's called) with beautiful bronze sculptures depicting the life of Christ, so for date night, we decided to go check it out. We already had the membership, why not? We loved walking together through the beautiful gardens, finding some inspiration for when we re-design our yard (assuming that we do that). 

The Light of the World garden was beautiful. It was nice to take a little time to reflect on the life of our Savior. We visited the statue of Lazarus being raised from the dead at the perfect time, with the sun shining right behind the Savior:

 And then it perfectly hit this statue of Joseph Smith's first vision. You could almost imagine being in the grove with him, seeing his face illuminated by the bright, glorious sight of the Father and the Son.

 We walked all over the gardens, stumbling upon this little lake with the most curious fish. They were crazy! They're over-fed, so whenever a person walks by, they think they're going to get food. They swim to the surface to try to fight for their little morsel. Because there were so many of them, some of them end up completely out of the water, riding on the backs of their fellow fish! Between the Light of the World Garden and these crazy fish, we knew we had to bring our kids and come back.

 So, the next Monday, we did. It was a perfect Family Home Evening activity.

 We had a lesson on the life of Christ as we walked through His garden, and then we visited other gardens.

  

The fish did not disappoint: 

 After strolling through the gardens, we headed to get ice cream. The cuteness of a toddler eating an ice cream cone makes the sticky mess that follows totally worth it.

Michael and I had a little too much fun taking selfies: 

We all decided that the Ashton Gardens are pretty cool. We're going to have to come back again.