A Capitol Time

Wednesday was our Salt Lake City day. We actually split up for the first part of the day. I dropped my mom and Bean at the Family History Library by the temple for a couple hours of research and playing around with family trees. Bean has gotten really interested in this the last year and my mom used to spend a lot of time at the library down there, so she was happy to show her the ropes. Although a lot of the library has totally changed, so they spent awhile exploring some of the new fun things together.

In the meantime, the boys and I went up to the Capitol. I'd never been here, and, once again, was led by a geocache. (By the way, anyone who is in Utah, and who might be curious about geocaching, or already like it, there is a great GeoTour series--5 in each county, that lead you through clues to find the location of the final treasure. We really liked the two we did today. I highly recommend them.)

We did some exploring inside. Bug found his county, where he was born. He has a strong affinity for UT, knowing he started his life here.

It is very befitting that "his" state is also such a treasury of all things dinosaur and fossil.

The building was absolutely gorgeous inside.

We had a lot of fun exploring a new place. I'm excited that I get to take the kids on a field trip to the CA Capitol Building in a few weeks.

Then, the boys and I went back to the Family History Library and got a quick tour of some of the fun things (seeing how closely related we are to a bunch of famous people, like US presidents, Walt Disney, and to Savannah's joy, the Studio C people; seeing the % of our tree from each country and other maps--lots of fun ways of looking at where our families came from.) We had a very late lunch (or early dinner), and then left my mom to work in the library for a few hours while we went to the Natural History Museum.

And of course we found more dinosaur stuff.

This was really cool. They had a glass floor over a "dig" and then matching pictures of the dig on the wall that could be rearranged to form the site as you can see it.

It actually took a little work to id some of the sections and was great practice for Peanut looking at the details and orienting correctly.

This tree of the Ceratop dinosaur skulls was also fun. I never realized how many different ones there were.

There were also exhibits on Utah geology, plants, animals, and life. Peanut had fun making a protein

and a cell.

We had a beautiful sunset on the way down the hill.

And at least got to see the beautiful temple there as we drove by, even though the kids were a little disappointed that we didn't have time to actually walk around this trip.

I kind of can't believe how well these last two pictures turned out since I took them with my phone as I drove by, without actually looking at what I was doing (trying to be a good driver! It will be nice, someday, to have a newer van with side windows that roll down so I can hand the phone to someone else to take these pictures.)

Cousins

We've spent a lot of time this week playing with these cousins. Rara and Uncle D moved to their state last summer and it's so nice that we can see my whole family at once now.

We got to go visit a couple of reindeer on Wednesday--Comet and Sven.

The reindeer were fun, but I'd say the stop at Rubio's for fish tacos before hand may have been the highlight for all the over-12 crowd. We miss our fish tacos, but at least we don't have to wait for San Diego trips to get them.

We also went up to Salt Lake City that night to see the lights at temple square.

It was REALLY cold walking around that night, but we braved it for awhile.

The lights were so pretty.

And these kids are so cute. We were missing K because he fell asleep as soon as they got him in the stroller and pretty much napped through the whole thing.

While we were there, we actually ran into some of MY cousins and aunt and uncle. Uncle D noticed some crazy person holding a couple of cups of ice cream and then we realized it was our cousin, haha. You must live in a cold place when you can eat ice cream outside when it's below 30 degrees. There were a lot of people there and we can't usually go anywhere in Utah without running into someone we know, but it was pretty fun to see a big chunk of their clan.

Only 1 more day until Christmas!

One Last Time

We've been gone a lot the last 2 days. I'm starting to feel the pressure to get this house packed up, but we've had things we just HAD to do before we move away.

First, we took the kids to the Gateway Discovery Museum in SLC. I wish it was closer because they would have loved going there on a regular basis, but at least they had one fun morning of science and make-believe. They have an amazing set up of tubes and pulleys and vacuums and ramps and pegs to send balls through, a little pretend town with a farm, grocery store, house, mail delivery, little police cars. . .the kids loved that spot. I got a kick out of watching Bean grocery shop--she's a natural. Oh, and of course, the water area--that was a huge hit. Although Bugaboo wasn't quite so happy when the water ended up on him.

We had to drag the kids away, but Daddy-o and I wanted to squeeze in a trip to the SLC temple--neither of us had been and it was a fun experience to attend the temple that so many of the church leaders have attended over the last century.

Lucky for us, one of my best friends from growing up lives just a few minutes from the temple and offered to watch the kids while we were there. They also happen to live by my favorite pizza place in the state--The Pie--so we brought some pizzas back with us and we all got to visit for a little while. Even though we haven't seen as much of each other as we'd like, its been fun living a little closer to her again--she's my "oldest" friend. We've known each other since we were born (well, I'm a few months older, so I guess since she was born)

And then today, we made a trip up to Kamas, UT--up near Park City--to visit a couple we knew from San Diego--they've had us over for lunch twice while we've lived here and its been really fun catching up with them and eating more of Grace Ann's delicious food (she fed Daddy-o fairly often during his starving student days). We're hoping they'll make it out our way for a golf trip and we can all meet up in Myrtle Beach.
And now its back to work. Tomorrow's an actual packing day--I've gotten behind on my 5-boxes-a-day goal.

Lions, Tigers, and Bears

Wednesday was the last free day at the Hogle Zoo for this winter. We weren't the only people who got the memo, so it was pretty crowded--I don't know that I've ever seen so many strollers in one place.

It ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day to be outside and we met up with Danna and Juliana, so great outing all around.Bugagoo was a little wary at first--he didn't quite trust the glass to keep the monkey away from him. But he has just recently learned quite a few animal noises so animals are pretty fascinating at the moment. He especially got a kick out of the bear going "night-night" (he signs for that)--it gave him the giggles.

He also liked this white crocodile--and I guess because it wasn't moving, it didn't make him as nervous.