Christmas - Botanical Gardens

Ever since we lived in Japan, one of my family’s Christmas traditions has been to go see the lights at the Botanical Gardens.  Japan’s light show was spectacular.  They had a really large laser display that would put on a production twice a night.  Loved it! 

Of course, I could have a slightly higher opinion of it because of the company I was with.  My dad was a commander on that military base, and therefore he made some pretty top-notch friends.  Because of this, we had some sweet experiences.  This just happened to be one.  Botanical Garden light show with the Mayor of Kadena and his family, the Mayor of Okinawa, and my family.  To top it off, we were escorted to a private viewing session on top of one of the large buildings that overlooked the laser display, and then were service yummy appetizers and champagne.  Yeah, it was awesome.

After that experience, we knew we wanted to make the Botanical Garden lights a yearly tradition (granted, they have never been quite so elaborate….but always super fun!)  It continued when I lived in Washington, with the lights in Bellevue.  They had fabulous displays that were incredibly intricate and clustered uniquely.

When I moved to Albuquerque, I was afraid that tradition would come to an end.  But I was mistaken!   God blessed me with an Albuquerque Botanical Garden that also does a fun light show!  Yay!!

The Botanical Gardens here are really nice.  It’s a large facility, with a vast selection of plants to view.  They even have a Japanese garden section and a wine grape field.  I was very pleasantly surprised, and impressed.

Our community group from church decided to go see the light show together.  What fun to enjoy the sites with so many wonderful friends!

Great friends!

Awesome lights.

It’s always tricky capturing people and the lights in one photo, with the light vs. dark making one or the other blurry.  Sigh

After walking through the rose garden, we came upon a cute old-timey band!  If you know me, you know I LOVE Christmas music.  I’ve been known to start listening to it in October.  It’s bad, folks.  But lucky for me, we got LIVE Christmas music!  So fun!

I loved the way they lit up the overhang above them!  It makes it postcard-esque.

Once again, blurry vs. clear.  sigh

Hummingbirds always make me think of my Mom.

Giraffes always make me think of my nephew , Luc.

This was really cool.  They had a light section set up so that it looked like the elephants were moving and spraying water!  I wish my nephews and niece would have been with me to watch.  They would have loved it!

  I thought it was really cool that they had some on the water!

I tried really hard to capture us with some lights.  I think this is the coolest one.  It’s really hard to see us, but I think it’s awesome how we are lit up solely by the lights themselves.

Isn’t this creative?!?

Snowmen lightposts

And I’ll end with my crazy picture.  :)  As we were walking through one of the tunnels, there were a crazy amount of lights all around us.  So I decided to try a delayed shutter as we were walking.  This is the cool effect.  

I really like how it turned out.

Thanks, Community Group, for a wonderful night…and for helping me fulfill one of my holiday traditions!