April 21, 2017

Life Sized Stories of the Savior


Since being back in the United States we are starting traditions. One of those has become the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival. We love seeing the evidence of Spring in multicolored magnificent glory.

Lucky Dragon was so excited there were so many colors of his "favorite tulip flowers." We walked through the beautiful gardens with mature trees and deep green grass that is bordered by thousands of flowers. Each species of flowers were unique in their own way. There were small flowers fluffy flowers, big flowers, short flowers, and tall flowers.


As we walked around we all compared which flowers we liked best. One of the aspects of the Thanksgiving Points gardens are the themes. There is a Monet Garden to mirror one of his paintings, a koi pond, a garden designed to look like an Ancient Greek temple, a garden that looks like a Roman Villa with a long set of waterfalls and completed with a faux statue of a marble woman.

My favorite part, however, was the garden to honor the life of Jesus Christ. It is the newest section of the garden and we were pleasantly surprised. As you enter the garden there is an enormous statue depicting the Savior walking on water. The statue looks alive and the water truly does look like it is raging around his feet. As you progress into the garden you see different depictions of the Saviors life--straight out of the Bible's New Testament. There was Martha and Mary, the Raising of Lazarus, Gethsemene, carrying the Cross and many more. Each one was life sized and held so much emotion.








As we were walking Lucky Dragon ran ahead and up to the statue representing the resurrected Savior. He ran up to it and wanted to immediately touch the hands of the Savior to feel the nail prints--something Jesus bid his followers to do year ago to believe who he was. After that he inspected every hand of the Christ statues. I too even started to look because they were so detailed you could even see the veins and imperfections.

It was touching to see that when Lucky Dragon saw the statue of the Savior in the garden of Gethsemane praying, he ran up and sat on Jesus' lap and curled up as if they were comforting each other.





So if you have a chance to make it to Thanksgiving Point, be sure to take a walk in the gardens because I felt the power of the stories seeing the people so life-like and life-sized. What a testimony builder of the Savior and how he is our example.

April 17, 2017

Easter Fun and Spring Sunburns!


Spring has arrived! This is Lady Hiva's favorite season and we both enjoy the warm weather and the flowers. Downtown Salt Lake City is breathtaking this time of year.

We have tried to get out and enjoy it as much as possible. In fact, for Easter weekend Lady Hiva found an Easter Egg event at Thanksgiving Point and we went to see how it was. Needless to say, it was worth it! The weather was beautiful! The sky was deep blue and the flowers were displayed in shocking color (I know, I know it sounds too perfect, but it really was).



The first egg hunt was at 1030h and then every half hour after that. The fields were divided up by age group and there were hundreds of eggs in each field. Lucky Dragon was SO fast at picking them up, it was as if he was a vacuum. We left with a large rubbish bag full of plastic eggs. In between the egg hunts we rode the tractor trains, ate at the food trucks and Lucky Dragon played on the bounce houses. It was really well done and we would go back again. It was organized, there was enough for everyone and the best part is we didn't have to do the work--no making the foo, no renting the bounce houses, no stuffing the eggs...we just showed up and enjoyed!












Sunday morning we woke up to our house looking like the Easter Bunny exploded eggs everywhere. Lucky Dragon was so excited. It was a chore to get him ready for Church.  As always, Church on Easter is amazing. The true focus on all that our Savior did for us so that we can become better people--what an amazing part of life to be thankful for and celebrate. To learn about the true meaning of Easter we talked about Christ and did traditional Spring activities--planting flowers, painting eggs and Lady came up with other projects to do with an activity toddler.