A Trip to Winter Wonderland

After Christmas, we had a whole week to just do stuff. Rinar and I decided to go up to Salt Lake City for a few days. On the way, we stopped at Cove Fort. It was really cold and snowy. The babies had a lot of fun walking around after sitting in the car for a couple of hours. We tried to put a coat on Eli. This put him in an extremely foul mood. He did not want to have anything to do with that coat. You would have thought we were trying to put a strait-jacket on him. Forget the fact that it was 25 degrees outside, with a bit of a wind chill. He just had his dad carry him and be his coat for him.

 

NOOOO!!! Not a coat!  NOOOOO!!!!

Hmmm...guess I will cry too.

Make that three.  A trio is always better than a duet.

It was time to go! 

 Then we headed up to Melanie's house. They have a cute little house and the kids had a ball playing in their backyard, even though it was cold outside. The boys also put on a little concert and the kids danced around. It was a cute moment.

That night I met up with Catye, Jamie, and his soon to be new family. I left Rinar back at the hotel with the babies. They were uber-tired.  It was really cold but the lights were beautiful.

The Buckmaster crew, plus me and my kids.

The next day we went to the children's museum. As we were waiting in line to get, Zach started maling Julia with a barrage of kisses.  I told him to stop and he ignored me so I kicked  him. No, it wasn't hard at all. It was too get his attention. But the funny thing is that there were lots of good Mormon moms standing behind me and I could see that one of them was completely appalled at my disciplining techniques. In actuality, I was appalled that she didn't kick her kids, to be honest. I kept seeing her throughout the museum and the eyeroll that accompanied our encounters. I guess I am lucky I am not in jail, right?

Rinar took the babies to the hotel for a nap and the rest of us hit Trax and went to the Church museum and then me and the boys continued on to the U to see the Natural History Museum.

They enjoyed it but they especially liked the blizzard we had to trudge through to get back to the train and then to the hotel. I really needed a hat! But the boys had a blast.

On our way home we stopped at the mall in Provo. They played on the playground and rode the train.

Our last little foray was the narrows in St. George. Rinar and I couldn't fit through them, but Raef, Zach, and Eli went all the way to the top.



While we were in St. George we also spent an entire day (10 hours) playing games with our friends Kristen and Brian L. They used to be our neighbors in Salt Lake and Rinar went to high school with Brian. It was really fun.

Albuquerque, NM...We Are Here

The temperature is a lot cooler here, than in Las Vegas. When we got off the plane on Saturday night, it was raining fairly steady. Hence, the temperature dropped quite a bit. I don't think we were prepared for colder weather.

Today was our first day to do any real activities. There was nothing going on today at the Balloon Festival, so I decided to take the kids to the Museum of Natural History. They had quite a few dinosaur bones. It was fun to look at and the kids seemed to enjoy everything. There was an entire section on rocks and minerals. It was cool because they had the chemical formula for each rock and we were able to talk about what atoms made the molecules, which goes nicely with what we are learning in our chemistry class.

A nice museum volunteer showed my kids lots of different dinosaur things.

After the museum, we headed over to the National Petroglyph Monument. It is on the outskirts of town. Since I didn't have any kind of backpack to carry Eli in for the trails, I made an impromptu sling from Raef's blanket. It worked pretty well and we were able to walk a couple of short trails. There were tons of petroglyphs everywhere. Those were the first petroglyphs I have ever seen. All these years I have lived in the west and I had never seen one. I finally got that off my back.

For dinner we went to a total dive called the Monte Carlo Steak House. I had seen it on an episode of "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives" and I finally got to go. I ordered a steak and it was delicious. We enjoyed it. Eli especially enjoyed all of the soda crackers. He must have eaten 5-6, then some fries, and finally some Texas Toast.