Spring Break

This week has been Spring Break, and as with years past, we went nowhere for the week off.  I would get on Facebook and see people off doing fun things, like being at the beach mostly, and I wanted to be there too.  But because we didn't go anywhere, and because we had the whole week off of school and small people needing entertainment, we did stuff around here, something each day.  Here is the recap.

On Monday we joined all the DeMartinis and went bowling.  Mikayla brought Brick who slept through most of it, but Christopher and Tysen came with their five as well as Shaylee with Lucy and Penny, and Sharae came with her kids.  Eugene would have been there, but their car broke down in front of our house and he stayed to deal with that.

We had a good time.  The boys bowled together, the girls bowled together, and Mikayla, about four frames into the game said that if anyone beat her, she would buy them a snowcone.  She was comfortably ahead of everyone at that point, but she choked the last three frames and I did well, and in the end I beat her by three pins.  Ha!  I need to collect on that snowcone.

The boys

The girls, with Lucy.

It's me, preparing to bowl.

And then me after bowling.

Now that I've seen this picture, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to bring myself to bowl again.

I look absolutely silly. 

Collin

After bowling, Sharae didn't have a car, so I suggested that we go back to our house to play and wait for Eugene to return, so we did.  The children ran wildly through the house and yard while the adults sat and talked.  We might have played Rummikub too.

Tuesday we had nothing really interesting on the agenda, I was thinking of going on a picnic, but then Sharae called and had three extra tickets to a new museum at Thanksgiving Point.  The museum opens in May, but they are offering preview days for Zion's Bank employees and so Sharae was able to get tickets.  She was going to go with her sister and nieces and nephews, but they ended up sick, so she invited us.  Blythe was initially very reluctant to go because I had said we might go see Grandma Dawn, but I told her we would do that tomorrow and that we would go to the museum.  I assured her she would like it, but she assured me she wouldn't.

I'm happy to gloat and say I was right and she was wrong.  The Museum of Natural Curiosity is fantastic.  I bought a year pass to Thanksgiving Point because I know we're going to want to go lots and lots and lots.  There are place to run and jump and climb, a "city" of different shops and theaters with activities and costumes, and all sorts of engaging things to do.  Both children loved it.  After we had been there some time, Blythe came up to me and said, "Mom! This is great! I want to do everything!  I don't want to miss anything."  We we did everything and she missed nothing.  Here are lots of pictures to prove it.

Blythe is hanging from this rope like a sloth.

This is part of the Rainforest section of the museum. 

That's Luke and Brandt way way way way high up.

Brandt climbed on this scale to measure how much he weighed in comparison to three different animals.

At 56 pounds he is .008 hippos,

.350 jaguars,

and 84,840 grasshoppers.

That's a heck of a lot of grasshoppers.

He's flapping his arms like a hummingbird.

He's not very fast.

There are all sorts of rope bridges the children climbed around.

This is a plane suspended high above the floor.

Brandt thought it was super cool.

This is looking down from the platform next to the plane. 

It is really far up.

For $8, you can do a ropes course, with emphasis on the ropes.

Blake did it.

He scaled various ropes and platforms way way way way way far up, even way farther up than where Brandt and Luke were.

You can't see him very well, but there is the plane above me, and way up, by the cross beam, is Blake.

  There was a theater and stage in Kidopolis.  

Brandt and Luke put on a marvelous play about explorers.

There was also a puppet theater.

Blythe, Makenna, and Collin put on a marvelous puppet show.

Blythe got locked in the vault in the bank.

Brandt dispersed money at the drive up window.

This is me standing in the hurricane booth.

The wind is blowing 85 miles and hour.

That is actually my face under all that hair, not the back of my head.

Behold!

Blythe is taking care of that stuffed rabbit in the vet's clinic.

Brandt is making a short movie (or several short movies) with himself as the star.

Walking with dinosaurs,

and

 

skiing, then causing an avalanche.

After being at the museum, and because we'd just bought a pass, we went over to Farm Country for a pony and hay ride.  While the adults waited in the very long line (we stood around for an hour), the children ran around somewhat unsupervised.  Don't judge!  When they did come stand in line, they were impatient and whiny.  Better to be running around looking at stuff.

We were able to get onto the hay ride immediately

which was a tremendous relief. 

On Wednesday we went ahead and had that picnic I had planned for Tuesday.  We had everyone join us again at the Rock Canyon Park.  The children all ran around and ate nothing while the adults chatted on the lawn.  I took no pictures but am pilfering several from Mikayla's blog.

 

On Thursday we went swimming at the Rec Center.  We were not the only ones there, but we went early in the day before lunch and so there were fewer people.  There were many coming in as we were going out.  I didn't take a picture.  And on Friday, we went to see Rio 2.  Otherwise, there was too much TV watching and not nearly enough playing with neighbors, but for a spring break at home, it wasn't too bad.