Traveling

Michael has done a lot of traveling for work lately.  He has been running and running.  He was tired, I was tired, the kids were tired of me being tired.  He got a few days at home but then he had to support a conference in Twin Falls on Saturday.  His employer was putting him up in a hotel and renting a car for him because he had to be there at seven in the morning.  After a little debate, and finding out the room had two queen size beds, we decided to make it a family trip.

We loaded in the rented Suburban, packed it to the roof with Michael's equipment, and hit the road.  Oh, my...I fell in love.  I have never wanted a Suburban.  They guzzle gas, are the size of a tank, and are simply much, much more car than I need.  But it was so lovely.  Even though the back row of seats was roughly a mile behind me, the kids could still hear me from the front seat without me raising my voice, even on the freeway.  My van is significantly noisier.  It rode smoothly, everyone had plenty of room and the sound system was great.  It was magnificent.

Once we got to the hotel the kids headed straight for the pool.  They were so excited to stay at a hotel with a pool.  The last time we took the kids to a hotel Ethan was six.  This was a big deal for them. 

They even got to go in the hot tub because there is no lifeguard!  Life was incredible.   After swimming the kids decided to watch some prime cable cartoons.  Later Ethan stated he did not like cable and would much rather watch Netflix.  Oh, the life of a kid spoiled by no commercials. 

 Hanging out, watching some shows, putting dirty foot prints on the pristine bed.

The next morning Michael left for work at six thirty.  The kids woke shortly thereafter and we wandered downstairs for a free continental breakfast.  With waffles! And sausage (the kids happily partook)! And muffins!  And orange juice!  They couldn't have asked for more.  After breakfast we went swimming again.  Then we had second breakfast. Hooray for more muffins. Sam cried when we checked out of the hotel.  He wanted to stay forever.

We left the hotel and I drove the tank of a Suburban down to a park at the bottom of the Snake River Canyon.  It was a smooth ride but that thing is huge.  I was so glad that it came with a back up camera. We had lunch, played on a sad little playground, and watched the river.

 It was beautiful but the kids were pretty quickly bored.

We then headed to the Herrett Center at the College of Southern Idaho.  After driving around the campus for some time, we finally found it.  The museum was completely free and it was pretty awesome.

Attached to the museum is a Planetarium.  It is not free but I knew it would help keep us busy until Michael got done.  We watched a poorly acted, but riveting for the kids, cartoon about space.  The movie was of course projected on the domed ceiling and entailed a lot of camera movement.  Libby said it was better than any 3D movie she had ever seen (I didn't know that she had seen any 3D movies) because it was so realistic.  For my part, I kept my eyes closed for most of it.  The swooping and closeups were making me feel sick. We did learn what is needed to support life and that no other place in our Solar System has what we need. After the movie we still had an hour to kill.

We wandered back into the museum to see what we had missed.  This puzzle took a good portion of the time.  See those pieces?  None of them are interlocking.  They are all these free form cut outs.  It was the hardest 81 piece puzzle I have ever put together.  But it did take up a large chunk of time for which I was thankful.

We then picked up Michael, who was suffering and miserable from his hay fever, grabbed some milkshakes from Culver's, and headed home.

A couple days after we got home we looked up the MSRP of that Suburban we were driving: $67,000!!!!  GAH.  I'm glad I didn't know how much it cost before I drove it around town - I would have been too nervous to even put the key in the ignition.  I decided I really love my paid-off minivan.  She's a good minivan.

Good News!!

I found my camera.  After I tore the house and car apart multiple times Michael found it in the glove box of the car.  Where I had looked, fourteen times.

I'm glad he found it or I may have forgotten that the Museum of Ancient History had the Colosseum made entirely out of balloons.  That is a fact that should never be forgotten.

Also, there were a lot of dinosaurs.  I don't think we will forget that part.

Bubble, Bubble, Pop!

I took the little ones to the Discovery Center.  Their current exhibit is awesome!  We get to play with bubbles.  Big bubbles, little bubbles, heavy bubbles, and sometimes, if you find the right volunteer, triangular bubbles.  Also bubbles are quiet, which I really appreciate.  Sometimes the Discovery Center's exhibits can be jarringly loud and repetitively noisy.  I have enough loud noises in my life.  But bubbles are as quiet as...well...bubbles.

 We even got to play with bubbles filled with dry ice vapor.

 They look like beautiful little balls,

but they are just frosty bubbles.

Everybody loves bubbles.

They Said, "Don't You Dare Put These Pictures on the Blog!"

I said, "Hmmm."  "Now stand over there so Dad can take your picture."

Ethan and Libby started public school this fall.  Ethan is in sixth grade and Libby is in fifth.  They are both pretty happy so far.  Ethan is playing the bells in band and Libby is playing the violin in orchestra.  They both seem intent on joining every single extra curricular activity there is.  I thought homeschooling was time consuming.  Yikes.

Grace started the first grade this year and by her outfit one would be quite right to presume she is still homeschooling.  Sam started kindergarten this year but he was still asleep when pictures were being taken.

It should prove to be an interesting year!

Vacation Post III

Day four saw us heading into Salt Lake City.  We decided to leave the car in Lehi and ride the train in.  For twenty dollars we could ride all public transit all day and we wouldn't need to try to find (and pay for) parking in downtown Salt Lake.  That was the adult reason for taking the train.  The kids reasoning was more like, "A train!  I've never ridden a train!  Can we ride on the upstairs part of the train?!  Can we please take the train into Salt Lake?"  I think the train was a high point of the trip.

The train was twenty minutes late but it finally showed up.  Here we are waiting for it to stop to we can board.

Don't let that face fool you.  Sam loved the train and we DID get to sit in the upstairs part.  How lucky are we?!

Once in Salt Lake we were going to head straight to the Temple Square area, but a lady on the train suggested we stop at the Planetarium first.  It is right on the way and is free to all, so we went.

 We made some tornadoes,

 played with some electricity,

and got trapped in the gift shop.  After an hour we had seen and done all the free stuff, so we continued on our way.

We stopped at Temple Square to eat a picnic lunch but didn't linger long.  The kids had been told about the Beehive House (President Young's home) and were dying to check it out.  We were given a tour by a couple of beautiful sister missionaries with very thick Italian and Mexican accents.  We saw many beautiful things and learned a little church history and the kids were really bored, even though they tried hard to stay polite.

After the disappointment of the Beehive House we headed to the Family Search Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  It was surprisingly not boring.  There were games and pictures.  There was an old fashioned kitchen to play in.  And there were dress up clothes.

Sam is an historically accurate gaucho.  I'm sure he would fit right into any historically accurate painting.

Libby wanted to be a Pilgrim, but alas the dress was too small and she got very stuck. 

 With a little wiggling we got her buttoned up.

 They even had a little Ellis Island photo op set up.

 My kids made good use of it.

Numerous times.  The centenarian sister missionary on a walker was very patient.

After Salt Lake we headed back to Lehi and got in the van.  Instead of heading straight back to camp, we hit MY vacation destination.  I finally visited IKEA!!  The kids ate Swedish Meatballs, I looked at furniture and drooled.  I plan on going back sometime soon with a wad of cash and no kids.  It will be the highlight of my decade.

On day five, the last full day of our vacation, we headed back to Thanksgiving Point.  We went to the farm experience attraction.  It was overrun with preschoolers, toddlers, infants and their mommas.  Michael looked around and felt instantly alone after realizing he was one of three adult males among the sea of diaper bags.  Ethan was too big (you have to weigh less than 100 pounds) to go on the pony ride and Libby was too stressed out.  Grace and Sam enjoyed it.

My big kids didn't enjoy it nearly as much.  The whole petting zoo thing is a little beneath their maturity level.

After about an hour we headed over to the Museum of Ancient History.  No photos.  They are on my camera which is...well if you see it let me know.  I'm sure it is not too, too lost.

Here the big kids (especially Ethan) found lots of interesting things.  Fossils, dinosaurs, history, giant dinosaurs, mammoths, big dioramas, a before-the-beginning-of-the-earth space tunnel thing that terrified Sam (he would NOT walk through it and had to be carried; several times), giant sea turtles, and more dinosaurs.  It was pretty incredible.  We lasted an hour and a half.  Then the little kids were done.

We took pity on everyone and took them back to the Museum of Natural Curiosity (again the pictures are on my runaway camera).  We stayed there for hours.  We finally had to leave so the museum could close.   The kids pretended to rob banks, put on plays, banged on musical instruments, played tricks on their eyes, climbed rope bridges, explored man made caves, and fed koi (I swear to you they were possessed) fish.  You would hold one little pellet of food over the water and two hundred fish would swarm.  The ones on the bottom would push so wildly the fish above them would be pushed entirely out of the water.  All the while they are making gulping noises and slithery sounds by rubbing against each other.  I hope I never get eaten alive by fish.  I don't want gulping slithering sounds to be the last noise I ever hear.  It was terrifying.  So of course we had to buy more fish food and keep feeding them.

We went home tired but happy (and NO flat tires!).  We also have a great appreciation for our Discovery Center of Idaho membership.  Because they and Thanksgiving Point are part of ASTC, we were able to get into all the museums for FREE.  Our first day's adventure easily cost more than the yearly fee we pay for our membership.  Yay for the DCI!

Vacation Part II (Brace yourself, there is definitely a part III and maybe a part IV)

Our second day of vacation was spent going to church and hanging out at camp.

The third day we went on a hike.  Or a death march, depending on who you ask.  Timpanogos Cave is up a mile and a half trail that has over a thousand foot elevation gain.  The trail was paved, but steep and narrow with a suicidal drop off.  Everyone was going to have to make it up by themselves.   It would have been foolhardy to try to piggyback the littler ones.  We got about a hundred yards up the trail and Grace announced that she was tired and couldn't make it.  I reflected I had paid almost $40 for the privilege of hiking this mountain.  She lost the argument.  We proceeded on.  We did take several rest stops and it took us over an hour but the entire family made it under their own power.

 Ready to head up.  Just waiting for our safety lecture.

 Ethan walking backwards which we had just been told not to do.

 The path went right through the mountain.  It momentarily took Grace's mind off her aching legs.

 Then she remembered.

About half way up.  We started from the valley floor.  The forest fire smoke followed us to Utah, unfortunately.

 Eventually our goal was in sight.

 The outhouse on the top of the mountain.  It was much rejoiced over!

We finally made it but the altitude may have gotten to us.

After a brief rest to drink water and eat some Chex mix, we were ready for the main event.

The Cave:

Okay, there are actually three interconnected caves but I digress.

  

There were coral fossils in the walls, meaning this cave at the top of a mountain used to be on the ocean floor. Crazy.

Rock flows down the walls.

AND an honest to goodness fault line. This very boring looking picture is actually truly awesome.  It is a fault line and it was above our heads.  It's amazing the force these two rocks can create by rubbing against each other.

In the second cave our guide turned off the lights.  Sam had a great big meltdown experiencing complete darkness.  He needed carried for awhile.

There were helictites, lots of helictites.  Most caves only have a hundred or so.  The caves in at Timponogos have thousands and thousands.  They are like stalactites, but they grow all twisty instead of straight down.  No one knows why.

 We saw lakes undisturbed for millions of years.

And we saw the heart of the mountain.  This massive guy is hanging from the ceiling and weighs four thousand pounds. 

Some rocks were pink, some were white, some where caramel colored, and some an eerie green.

This stalactite and stalagmite want to meet up and make a column. If there were 3/4 inches space between these two, it will take over 200 years for them to meet.

After the cave we still had to hike back down.  See the path?  That's the top of it.  We had to make it all the way back down to the valley floor.  And we needed to use the outhouse again.  After drinking all the water at the top and spending half an hour in a 40 degree cave, we needed a pit stop.  Unfortunately, the cave cut through the mountain so we would have had to hike back up to use the outhouse previously pictured.  We decided to head quickly back down.  Libby and I were highly motivated and made it back down in 27 minutes (she timed us).  Ethan joined us for our power walk down the mountain.  Michael and the little ones made it shortly thereafter. 

We sat around drinking water for a few moments and then headed into town to find a pool.  The kids were excited to swim.  Michael and I were excited to take a real shower.