Thursday morning we drove to Salt Lake and stayed there until Sunday. We went to This Is the Place Historic Park. The kids carded wool, panned for gold, made indian necklaces, rode the train and ponies, watched a bank robbery, learned to write their names in the Deseret Alphabet, and ate ice cream and snow cones. So fun! After we checked in to our hotel the kids had to go swimming, except that Kaylee forgot her swimsuit. After dinner we went to Clark Planetaruim and saw a star show in the dome theater. They tell you about the things you can see in the night sky that day. It was quite interesting. Kaylee and Kara were fascinated, Andrew was bored, and Anna wouldn't sit still. Then, of course we had to go buy Kaylee swimsuit.
Friday morning, first thing, we went to Hogle Zoo. I love going first thing in the morning. It's cooler, and there are fewer people. We saw the elephant program where the baby, Zuri, stood on her head. So cute! We also saw the "baby" tigers- they were as big as the mom. After a long morning at the Zoo we went back to the hotel for lunch (we brought cereal and milk for breakfast and sandwich stuff for lunch-much cheaper and healthier) , nap, and swimming. Anna slept until almost 4 and the kids and Wes swam the whole time! After Anna woke up we went down to the pool too. We finally had to get out of the pool so we could eat dinner. That't when we noticed Kaylee's toes were bleeding. She had spent so much time in the pool that they were rubbed raw! Thank goodness for bandaids. We went to Lion House Pantry for dinner - it was kind of fun eating dinner in Brigham Young's house. After dinner we wandered around temple square for a bit then headed up to Red Butte Gardens. It was very pretty and the kids had fun running around all the trails. Until Kara slipped and fell. On a cactus. She stood up and tried to wipe the "stuff" off her leg. She had hundreds of tiny spines in her leg and now in her hand. OUCH! So I kept track of the other kids while Wes sat with Kara and tried to pick all the cactus out of her leg. After about 30 minutes of picking at individual spines or whatever you call them he decided it wasn't working. He took off his shirt and started rubbing it down her leg hoping that the spines would get caught in the shirt and come off her leg. It worked! 10 minutes later we were ready to go (partly because the garden was closing) but we had to walk through the garden and the parking lot to get back to the car and Wes had a shirt full of cactus. He put it on anyway- shudder. Luckily our hotel was only 2 minutes from Red Butte. Then Wes spent another 20 minutes or so making sure all of the cactus was out of Kara's leg and hand.
Saturday we were planning on going to the Great Salt Lake to swim but with open wounds in salt water doesn't sound fun. It actually worked out great, though. We went to the Hill Aerospace Museum and looked at all teh cool old planes, then one of the volunteers mentioned that they have a special hands-on area for kids so we had to check it out. They taught the kids to make rockets out of paper and tape then took them outside to launch them. The teenage boys that were volunteering were having a contest to see who could make the rocket that stayed in the air the longest. Andrew's rocket beat them all! Then we went inside where another volunteer taught the kids how to fly a plane on a simulator. They had flight suits and helmets for the kids to wear and cockpits of planes for them to sit in along with flight simulator games on the computer. I had a hard time pulling Wes away- he only left when they said they were closing for lunch. We ate lunch on the way back to SLC (the dirtiest Arby's I've ever seen) then went to Discovery Gateway, a children's museum. They had a great time. There was a whole child size world- a house, construction site, grocery store, and farm along with a rock wall, water area, life flight helicopter, and much more. The girls loved the "news room". We also played with giant dominoes and a parachute. So much fun- for the kids. After dinner we went to the City Cemetery where we got a map of prophet's grave sites. We found several of them plus Porter Rockwell and a few others. These are the only pictures we took the whole trip!
Sunday morning was spent getting ready for church. I had looked up a ward to go to- most of the ones in the area were single adult wards. We went to the wrong building and as we were walking in I was like, "um, we don't really fit in here, we are the only one's with kids". So we got back in the car and found the right building. It was a super old building and was pretty cool. There were pictures of previous bishops on the wall and Legrand Richards was there. Unfortunately we were late and teh only place to sit was on the front row. It was one of those "newlyweds and nearly deads" wards. There were only a few kids and probably only one over 2 years old. After church we ate lunch and went home. It was a fun vacation but by the end I really needed a vacation!
