Museums, Ferris Wheels, and Temples

Okay, so life has been moving along, undocumented. Here are a few items to play catch-up…

MUSEUMS:
This winter may darn well be the death of me. It’s taken every ounce of energy to survive the endless cold. Kate and Cole are both in their prime. Kate is 5 (and 1/2, as she would remind me to say) and is helpful and sweet. Cole is 2 and is cute as can be. But put those two sweetie pies in a room together for 5 minutes unattended and we’ve got a vicious game of cats and dogs. They just fight! It’s a lot to listen to day in and day out. So when I can’t take anymore indoor, togetherness time, that is when we hit the road. People think I’m just a good mom going on so many field trips, but no. It’s prevention; prevention from being the mom who is teetering with the notion of crazy.

So here we are at the NHMU. We’d been to this museum at it’s old, crusty site, but this was our first trip the new place. It has 5 levels and we just started on the 5th floor and wound our way down. Each floor has a children’s laboratory where they can do sciencey activities like puzzles, magnets, building blocks, etc. Plus, lots of their exhibits had hands-on stuff for the kids. Pretty cute all in all.

 

   

   

There were some dancers there from the U that day that made the kids do an interpretive dance. Kate was all about dancing like triangles and horses, but Cole? Uh, uh. He had a meltdown in the middle of the dance floor. Wish I had the pic (which I don’t), but total, typical him. He oddly hates being asked to sing or dance in front of a crowd. Coincidentally, he also hates leaving places when he’s having a good time. The museum resulted in me carrying out his kicking, screaming, boneless self. I’ll take that as a compliment. Something like, “Thanks, Mom, you’re seriously so dang cool!”

FERRIS WHEELS:
The kids and I did Scheel’s several weeks back--I still have to shake my head when realizing that a visit to the local sporting goods store is what we do for fun around here, but now we’re getting off topic, aren’t we? Anyway, the ferris wheel line was about a 2 hour wait. I knew Junior would not last; hence, we bowled, shot guns, did the photo opps, played in the play place and actually had ourselves a lovely time without doing the ferris wheel. I promised Kate we’d come back to do it when we had Dad with us.

Kate asked for weeks, and then last Thursday we finally made it back. There was absolutely ZERO wait time for the ferris wheel so that was wonderful. Kate and the dad sat on the opposite side of the ferris wheel from Cole and me. And sweet Cole kept saying, “Hi, Dad. Hi, Kate,” in a quiet little voice that only I could hear sitting next to him. Pretty darn cute. When we disembarked the ride, Cole cheered, “Let’s do it again! I ride with Dad.” Anyway, the night was lovely. Kate, too, sampled her first piece of buffalo meat while there. And on the car ride home, kept saying, “Mmm…I just loved that meat!” That girl has some Grandpa Lyle in her for sure!

A shot of my babies with the shark they caught:

TEMPLES:
On Friday, our cute nephew, Jaxon, got married in the Manti temple. It was quite the trek going down there; one I haven’t made since graduating from Snow College over a decade ago! But it was fun to drive past my old apartment and town. I swear I don’t recognize anything down there anymore!

So the wedding was mid-day and all potential babysitters were either in school, working, or at the wedding with us. We ended up having to bring the kids, but it wasn’t a problem. The temple has a little “waiting” house next to it that is just for kids. Genius! So while we attended the temple, our kids played with blocks and watched Book of Mormon cartoons with Jaxon’s sisters. So great! I guess I also have to mention that the temple matron assisting us that day was the mother of one of my old, Slow Knowledge, ex-boyfriends. Whew! A good reminder of the bullet I dodged. But funny, nonetheless!

     

After the ceremony the entire family bombarded one of the few restaurants in Sanpete County, The Malt Shoppe, in Ephraim. Being in the sticks, they had probably never seen such a crowd! But the food was marvelous. So marvelous, in fact, that Kate requested it the next day for lunch. Aww…man, just too far of a drive for that;)