No School! No School!

 Back in April I purchased a Groupon for 5 Connect Passes for Salt Lake City.  It allows you entrance into 13 different venues in the area over 2 days for a fraction of the cost of going to each location separately.  Since I knew we weren't going on a family vacation this summer I thought this would be a great substitute.  A "stay-cation" if you will.  But then the summer got busy and we never did find time to use them.  The expiration date (Sept 2) was looming so this week we did the unthinkable, we pulled our kids out of school on Friday and headed to SLC for our end of summer extravaganza. We covered a LOT of ground in 2 days.

1st stop: This is the Place Park

 

One of the advantages of going on a school day is you practically get the place to yourselves.

 

Doing some laundry

No wait for the pony rides!

Teaching Jameson how to milk a cow-- a very important skill these days.

2nd stop: Hogle Zoo 

The kids have gone to Hogle Zoo many times with my parents on their Grandparents pass, but I must admit is has been a LONG time since I've been there.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that everything was completely different than when I was young.  They have really upped the program over there!  By this time it was quite hot outside and Korinne was in the stroller more than Jameson was. Adam caught a picture of me pulling Korinne up a hill in the stroller while Jameson walked beside me.  It was pretty representative of the day.

 

It was so hot most of the animals were sleeping, but we did get to see a great seal show, a bird show and the polar bear was very entertaining as he swam laps.

 

3rd stop: Red Butte Garden

 

Ok, we kind of cheated on this one.  Yes, we had entrance to the garden, but mostly we just used the front as a picnic location and ate our lunch.  Our next stop was right next door.

 

4th stop: The Natural Museum of History

 

 

This was one of Adam and Britton's favorite stops.  We have never been there before and they had a lot of interactive things to do.  Britton was definitely in his happy place.

 

View from the top floor terrace

Once again the kids had the children's play area to themselves. 

 

5th stop: The Gateway Discovery Center

 

This stop is always a crowd pleaser with kids.  Britton and Jenna have pretty much outgrown the downstairs area, but couldn't get enough of the 2nd floor which is geared to older kids.

 

 

 

We thought of Uncle Shawn when the kids got to play on the life flight helicopter.

 

If someone isn't going to use the stroller, I will.

 

6th stop: Clark Planetarium

 

This is where we started to lose Jameson. His 45 min nap wasn't quite enough to make it through the day.  We all started watching "The Rocky Mountain Express" on IMAX, but Adam and Korinne were the only ones who got to see the entire thing.  I had to take Jameson out and then Jenna and Britton left during the middle because they didn't like the subject matter.  (It was a documentary type film that talked about how a lot of workers died during construction)  They aren't that into hearing about death, I guess.

 

7th stop: The Lion House

 

As part of the connect pass you get a meal at the Lion House. We were hungry and it tasted so good! The kids will tell you the rolls were the best part.  I liked the rolls, but I don't think the Lion house has anything on Adam's rolls. Just sayin'.

 

Bonus stop: The Beehive House

 

Although not part of the connect pass it was right next door and the tours went until 8:30 p.m. so I took Britton, Jenna and Korinne on a tour. Adam took Jameson around Temple Square in the stroller. He had had enough fun for the day and wouldn't have survived the tour.

 

Dad, this is great and all, but I'm tired.

 



Day 1 complete! We all went to my parents nearby condo and crashed, but not before Adam and Britton watched the RSL game on TV, of course.

 

Day 2

 

1st stop: Thanksgiving Point

 

 

The kids loved the museum. They had plenty of hands on stuff to entertain the kids along the way.

 

2nd stop:  The Utah Olympic Park

 

 

This was the biggest surprise of the trip.  I had no idea what the Olympic Park was or what there was to do there so I was pleasantly surprised to see all it had to offer.  We were able to watch members of the US National team practice their freestyle skiing stunts into a swimming pool.

 

Here is someone in mid air coming off the ramp

 

Our passes allowed us to pick one activity from the zipline, alpine slide or a guided tour.  The girls picked the zipline, Adam went on the alpine slide and Britton chose to keep his feet on the ground and opted for the guided tour.  I decided to go on the tour with him so he had some company. I quite enjoyed the tour.  They took us to the top of the Nordic Ski Jump and the top of the Bobsled track and let us stand at the starting line.

 

Britton looking out over the Bobsled track

My family and I attended a Bobsledding event during the Olympic Games in 2002 from this very location.  Britton was about 6 months old at the time.

 

The 2002 Olympic Nordic Ski Jumping event took place here and it was CRAZY high and VERY steep.

 

This was about as close as Britton got to the edge.  It was a little much for him.

Here I am looking over the edge.

 

The view was absolutely amazing, but it didn't turn out very well in the picture.  I can only imagine what goes through the minds of athletes as they get ready to fly through the air from the top of this mountain.

 

 

We also enjoyed the 2 museums at the park.  One was a skiing museum and the other was a museum about the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.  We ended up staying a few hours longer than we originally thought we would and I think it was probably my favorite stop.  By the time we were ready to leave it was clear Jameson was d-o-n-e done.  We decided to get something to eat and head home.  We saw a lot during our 2 days and even though we could have kept going, we were content to be done. 

 

We give the Connect Pass 2 thumbs up.  It saved us oodles of money, especially with the added Groupon savings!  We got to see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise and had a great time. 

Milestones

We recently had a big family reunion but I still have a million pictures to sift through so I'm going to come back to that post another time.  We've had a lot of other stuff going on and I don't want to get too far behind.

During the last full week of summer Britton had a soccer tournament in Layton.  His team went to the championship game and although they didn't win the final game they still got medals so the entire team was on cloud nine.  It was the first time they have gone to a championship game in a tournament so they were pretty happy about it.  Britton scored 2 goals during the tournament. Not too shabby.

 

Later that night Britton invited 20 of his closest friends to a big birthday party. We had about 18 kids show up at 7:30 p.m. The party went until 10 p.m.  It was a night games party and was a hit.  I made sure all of our cul-de-sac neighbors were cool with our plans so the boys had freedom to go into any yard (front or back) in our cul-de-sac while playing capture the flag, kick the can, and night soccer.  Add ice cream and all you can eat skittles and you have the recipe for a wildly successful shin-dig.

 

Capture the flag Team 1



Capture the flag Team 2

 Why celebrate your 12th birthday only once when you can celebrate multiple times? Here is Britton at party #2 at Grandma and Grandpa's.

 

 

Birthday celebration #3, the family party, only had limited documentation.  The camera was out of battery. Oops. But we have a lot of videos so it wasn't a total loss.

 

 

He requested his favorite dinner,  Peppered Shrimp Alfredo.  Fancy, I know. What ever happened to ordering a pizza and calling it good?  We ended up having a "Linner" around 4 p.m.  Now that he is 12 he can go to Young Men's and they just happened to be going boating on his birthday so he and Adam left around 5:30 pm for birthday party #4.  We're fun and all, but we can't compete with boating.  We were glad Taylor, Jen, Will and June were still in town to join us for the festivities. 

This was Jenna yesterday around 1 p.m.

And here she was at about 2:30 p.m.

 

 

Notice anything different? Yup, she got braces.  She has officially entered a new phase of life.  Jenna has always been great with little kids and loves to play with them.  June sure loved playing with Jenna, especially when she started pouring water on her. She couldn't get enough and was in heaven.

Good times.  Jameson liked it for awhile, but then  had enough.  June could have been there all day long.

Today was the first day of school.  Britton is now in middle school and the bus comes to get him at (gasp) 6:40 a.m.  That is super early if you ask me.  Our mornings are going to be a lot different from here on out.  The girls don't have to leave until 8:20-- that's a big gap. 

Britton, 6th grade, off to catch the bus.

It was barely daylight when Britton left and it won't last long. He'll be going out when it's still dark pretty soon.

By the time the girls left a few hours later it was starting to rain a little bit.

Jenna, 5th grade.

Korinne, 2nd grade.

Jameson didn't know what all the excitement was about, but he decided to celebrate anyway. He missed them while they were at school, but we survived.

Sibling Reunion

The first weekend in August Adam played host for his family's sibling reunion.  Adam is 1 of 10 children and 7 of them were able to come to either part or all of the reunion

Dave, Bonnie, Stephen, Jaclyn, Kirsti, Marci, Kim, Adam

Micah and Stephen

 

 



 The kids and I slept at my parents house around the corner for the weekend so that they could use all of our bedrooms.  They sure packed in a lot of activities during their weekend reunion.  They went to the outlets nearby, went hiking up our local canyon, went to Bear Lake, attended a play at the Pickleville Playhouse in Garden City and also hit the Martin Harris Pageant where I understand the acting was especially memorable.  We were able to spend a few moments with everyone between activities which the kids enjoyed.

Adam really knows how to dress for a hike!

 They were sad Loren, Josh and Bethany weren't able to make it, but I think a good time was had by all.