Vacation-Church history museum

Tuesday we started for Idaho, but we decided that since it was on the way, and we had only hung out with Mark's family for one day, we would go together to the Church History Museum up in Salt Lake. It was a stop that was definitely worth it. The gift shop alone was pretty fun.

 The kids got to see how big Angel Moroni is.

 The day after this was taken, I think, the angel Moroni was put on top of the Tucson Temple. We are getting so excited to have a temple!

Rachel enjoying the other exhibits:

 Rachel is a little short to give a talk at General Conference yet...

 We finally made our way to the kids area. It is super fun for everyone. Definitely worth a visit or two. Especially since the museum is free.

 Bevy and Ryan must have been racing their camels or something.

 Annie did 3 designs with the tiles: a candle on the bottom left of her work area, a fish above the candle, and an eagle, I think, on the other side.

The coolest part of the museum for me was the Joseph Smith exhibit.
Here's Annie looking for gold plates, or something.

There is a 7 minute video they show in a room with a curved wall of Joseph Smith walking in the woods and praying and being visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It is so cool. It feels like you're really in the woods. And at the end I even started to get a little motion sick because of how real it seems. I definitely recommend that video to everyone who's passing close to Salt Lake City. It's pretty darn cool.

Vacation-4th of July

We woke up on July 4th to cousins who had magically appeared in the night. We headed down to the 4th of July parade, but left Jacob and Megan at home to nap and happily avoid the parade.

At the parade Cinderella was going around advertising her services for birthday parties. The girls snagged a photo with her.

 Ryan spent his time on one aunt's back or another.

 It was a bit hot, and I was ready to go home about half-way through the parade, but the kids couldn't be convinced, so we stuck it out.

Back at Grandma's house we did our daily (or more than daily) visit to the duck pond across the street. The ducks love popcorn.

 We had some coloring fun and enjoyed some time just hanging out with everyone for a while.

 Then Sophie and Ylena tried to escape. ;)

 They wanted to meet the neighbors and that darn fence was in the way.

Megan and Christian hit it off. Of course Megan loves babies.

 And Christian loves noses and eyes.

Too many children is exhausting.

 Megan decided this was a good place to play. The top stair right past the baby gate.

 For dinner we had a BBQ in the back yard and some of the relatives that live close by came by. The kids set up their own table in the tent created by the sheets on the clothes line.

 After the food was done we tried to take advantage of everyone being in one place to get a family photo done. First we tried the grandkids.

 Then everyone.

 The family just keeps growing. It sure is fun to get everyone together even if it is just for a little over one day that our travel plans over lap.

 Ashley made a piñata for Megan's birthday, so we let the kids loose at that.

 They (of course) loved the candy. Hitting something really hard with a stick was fun, too.

After the piñata the party moved to the front lawn for a while.

 Then everyone went inside, changed to PJs, and painted their nails.

 With nails done, I guess they were ready to light things on fire. Andrew gave the sparkler safety lesson.

 We only had two people burn themselves slightly, one being an adult. :)

 The sparklers were lots of fun. As you can tell from Rachel's (fake) face.

  The neighbors around the corner lit tons of fireworks, as did a few other people in the neighborhood, so we went and watched for a while and enjoyed a good fireworks show.
Megan slept through it all (thank goodness for white noise provided by fans), but the other kids all got to stay up late for the fun.

Vacation-Part 3

After all the excitement of the Rec Center and the aquarium we spent the rest of the weekend laying low back at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
The kids introduced Bevy (and maybe Jesse) to Phineas and Ferb.

Saturday we pulled out the kiddie pools and set up the slip 'n slide and had a good old fashioned water fight.

The kids enjoyed picking their own raspberries the whole time we were there.

Ryan helped make Sunday dinner.

Lisa entertaining the children with a fun game of Uno:

We went to bed Sunday night anticipating Mark's family arriving sometime soon.

Vacation-Part 2-The Aquarium

We went to the new aquarium up in Draper. It was really cool.

There were otters:

Killer whales to ride on:

Underwater submersibles:

The penguins were one of my favorites. They waddled around and swam all around and were so cute. They had their names on little bands on their wings.

Bevy and Ryan having a little fun at the penguin exhibit:

In the rainforest exhibit they had a rope bridge some of the group walked across.

Everyone (except me):

Everyone (with me, but not Megan's face):

Megan, Beverly, and Ryan watching the HUGE fish:

We went to a short 4-D movie Robinson Crusoe. There were spurts of air and water for the 4th dimension.

Fun was had.

We tried to pet some sting rays, but they weren't mostly didn't come close enough to the edge for us to reach them. I think Cari got one, and I pet one. They're smooth like I'd imagine a dolphin would feel.

The coolest part of it all was the shark tank. It's a huge tank with a tunnel that goes underneath it so you can see the sharks and sting rays swimming over top of you.

I love Cari's face here:

I'm pretty sure everyone's face looked like that at some point in the shark tank.