Phone Cam: Fun Family Vacation Part 2

My big camera battery died after just one picture at the Mo-Tab rehearsal, so I took a few more with my phone.

One of the evenings we decided to go to the Great Salt Lake and swim in it.  We knew from people telling us and from reviews that it would be pretty smelly and would have bugs to go through right near the water, so we were mentally prepared for that.  What I wasn't prepared for was the LONG walk to the edge of the water.  I googled a "good" place to park and walk in.  It ended up being over 2 miles of a walk to the water, but the land is so flat there, that the water doesn't look that far away when you are looking at it.  By the time you have walked for 30 minutes and the water still looks just as far away as when you started, you are committed and just keep walking.  It was really late (we didn't start until 7:30 or so) but I was pleasantly surprised how well the kids did.  It ended up being one of the highlights of the trip and definitely something we talk about often.  I didn't dare bring my big camera with all the sand everywhere, so I just used the phone.

This picture is of the bugs you have to walk through.  There is really no way around it.  You just have to walk through about 30 feet of bug caked sand to get to the water.  We squealed a lot, but it wasn't too bad.

The little ones got really tired on the walk back, so we stopped to rest for a while and had fun making bum-prints in the sand :)

Fun Family Trip Part One

I am about three months behind on blogging.  Oh well.  

In July, I think, we went on a week long family vacation.  We had set out to plan a trip to Yellowstone, but were too late to get the housing we wanted, so we decided to rent a small condo in Salt Lake and do the fun things there that we hadn't ever done before.  We stopped in Provo on our way in and went to 7 Peaks.  That was one of the highlights of the vacation!  I was so surprised at the bravery of the kids.  Eleanor was so cute.  Jackson would take her down a quite steep and fast slide.  When she got to the bottom she would say, "Scary!"  I would ask her if she wanted to stay with me and watch Daddy go on it, and she would adamantly cling to Jackson and say, "No!  Again!  Scary, again!"  It was adorable.  The three older kids just ran from ride to ride.  It was very fun.

The next morning we went to the Bean Museum at BYU.  It had recently been redone and was very fun.

The next day we went to the zoo.  We love the zoo and enjoyed taking our time watching the different animals.

That evening we also went to temple square.  We toured the conference center and went through the visitors center.

Then we played in a really fun children's section...I can't remember which building it was in.

Finally, we stopped in to listen to a MoTab/Orchestra rehearsal.  It was late and had been a really long day, so we didn't stay long, but it was worth going for sure.

The next day we went to a Children's Museum.  I can't remember which one now.  It was really fun, but got extremely crowded with school groups, so we didn't stay as long as we had wanted.

The kids had just as much fun playing on the escalators just outside the museum as they did playing inside :)

The last day we decided to go back to the zoo.  With the number of people in our family it was cheaper to buy a season pass, so we did that and went the second day for free :)

We went to the bird show and Estella was chosen to hold her arm out and have a bird land on it.  She was brave :)