Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point

In January we visited out west for a much needed trip to see family, particularly my brother who was coming home from a mission. During our stay in Utah we joined up with Michael's brother Arnie and his family. They took us to Thanksgiving Point where the famed Dinosaur museum was. It was AWESOME. There was so much to see and do. The kids loved it, the adults loved it. We highly recommend it.

There were plenty of fossils.

Dinosaur statues.


There was a station filled with soft dinosaur parts with velcro on the back for the kids to create their own dinosaur.

Ours was six legged.

Kathy and Nathan

It really is remarkable seeing just how HUGE those things were. Its hard to wrap your mind around it even when you here descriptions like "the brontosaurus was as long as 3 school buses" but seeing the skeletons...yeah, they're big.

Our favorite place by far was this circular stream filled with sand the kids could dig up and move around and try to dam up the water with. You could make your own environment complete with tiny dino figurines and tree.

It was nice that the kids had those little smocks- even though they got pretty wet anyway.

Trev didn't bother with the sand too much- he just liked the little dinos.

Shark attack!

Local neaderthals hunting mammoths.

They even had a little sand pit to try out your mad paleantology skills.

As well as give you one last chance to get sand in your shoes and hair. Such a fun time!

Consider the lilly...I mean crocus

You know what makes me really really happy. I'm talking skipping down the grocery isle while 5 months pregnant happy? Seeing the crocuses coming up. They are the first flower to bloom, often making it at the end of February and at my latest trip to the Botanical Gardens on an absolutely HEAVENLY day I spotted them. It really is such an unfortunate name for such a tiny delicate, but obviously hardy flower (pretty gutsy to come up in Februrary don't you think?) You know what's even more exciting? The flowers I planted last fall are starting to come up. No buds yet, but the shoots are there. I swear I look out the window and check them at least 10 times a day. Love my crocuses.

And so does Trevor.

So pretty!

My gift to society

Lets take a moment, shall we, to look at these kids. Adorable, aren't they? I mean, really, have you ever seen such enchanting children?

Such lovely eyes and engaging smiles.

Filled with infectious laughter and a love for life.

And their charm goes so much farther than just physical appearances. They are quite brilliant, too and brimming with talent- so much talent. Their singing voices are magical, their dancing abilities are awe-inspiring. And talk about athletic prowess- they are bound to set records. And they're polite too, witty, and thoughtful. Yes, I think its safe to say these just might be the most perfect children the world has ever known. I'm just as surprised as you are, but it seems that my husband and I have have some magical combination that produces incredible offspring. The only real tragedy is that there are only two of them. Heartbreaking, really. It just doesn't seem fair that in all the world there are only two perfect children, so after some soul-searching my husband and I decided to grace the world with one more perfect child. It seems the right thing to do. Its entirely selfless of us, I know, but the world has been good to us, so it seems the least we could do.

The expected arrival of the next perfect child is June 29th. I am 18 weeks along and so far, everything seems to be healthy and normal. This particular child, seems to be even more thoughtful than the other two- with a less sickness-laden first trimester, and for that I am grateful. Lynette is thrilled beyond measure and asks me at least 10 times a day if the baby is still growing, if it is sleeping, or if it is awake. She is quite determined that this baby will be the little sister she's been longing for. Trevor is happy that Lynette is happy. I just started noticing the baby kicking this week, so that has been fun, and we eagerly await our ultrasound in two weeks.

I know you will rejoice with us in this news and I promise to keep you updated on the progression of this latest perfect child. You're welcome.

Nauvoo Take 2

Its the middle of January and terribly cold. To distract myself from the chill, I decided to post about the hottest days we had during the year- which were spent outdoors in Nauvoo. It makes sense to me, and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am 6 months behind and don't want to go out of order. And since this blog is more of an archive for me anyway, here we go.

When visiting the Nauvoo pageant, always be sure to get there at least an hour early for the pre-show entertainment. There's stick-pulling...

I'm not sure who won this one...

The kids, enjoyed getting into it, well, Lynette did. Trev was just confused.

Lynette's grand victory!

You can also pull a handcart.

Do some sack races.

Go, Lynette, go!

At the kiddie center they can color and learn how to use a pioneer yo-y0.

It really is a super fun time, even in 100 degree weather.

There's also pioneer pastimes center where you can learn to make rope by taking three strands of string and using this thingy, twist it together...

And once you have three separate strands of stronger string, you reattach it to another thingy and spin it together...

Keep spinning...

Until you get a nice, scratchy piece of rope.

You can play with pioneer dolls.

And try on hats...he's such a good sport.

And give some attitude while trying on hats.

There's a play sheep you can ride on, adorned with real wool.

And outside the visitor's center is the Women's Garden, or Relief Society Garden or something like that. This was our first stop as you can tell by the fact that we are less sweat drenched than in later pictures.

Trev did us the honor of waking up for this part.

Lynette really liked all the statues.

I love how dated they all look, so 70's, but the workmanship really is beautiful.

And the Christus Statue in the Visitor's Center. What a great trip!

Grrrrr

So I recently changed my background page, not only because Halloween is over but also to stop my son from begging me to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at least ten times while I check my blog. Don't get me wrong, I love singing it for him since it makes him so happy, but it makes my time on the computer a lot longer and more distracted. Anyway, after changing it and changing my template I found that all of the my sidebar items had been moved down to the very bottom of the page. I find this really annoying and I've looked all over- especially on "layout" to try to fix it but to no avail. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Its really starting to bother me. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!