Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Spring break 2012 - day tripping style - day 2

Day two of spring break adventures finds us at the Thanksgiving Point gardens.  Once again the older boys were off doing their own thing so it was the girls and Nicolas and Cody.  Today we added Dana Harrell, who is Markee and Tamsyn's friend and my friend Laurie's daughter.  
The weather held out for us until just before we left when the wind started whipping.  The rain began after we had returned home.  Perfect!
The gardens were beautiful and the girls had a great time together.  I am so blessed to have wonderful sisters-in-law and fabulous nieces.  How fantastic that the cousins are all such good friends!
 The younger boys had fun hiding from the girls and spying on them from afar for much of our walk around the gardens.   The tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, etc were in full bloom and we were able to enjoy the splendor without the hassle of the crowds who will descend on the gardens for the Tulip Festival later this week. 
One great addition to the gardens is the "Light of the World" garden which features full-size statuary of scenes from our Savior's life.  It is a work in progress so right now there are only a few life-sized statues, although there are many models of the work to come.  It is going to be incredible! 
We, of course, had to finish up our adventure with ice cream from the ice cream shop at Thanksgiving Point.  It isn't an adventure unless ice cream is involved!
 Here are pictures of our day:
Posing on the bridge

See a statue, be a statue

Feeding the fishies

Not sure exactly what was going on here . . .

But now they are all the fiercest models they can be.  Unfortunately Tamsyn was hidden behind Markee. 

Marin mid-leap

Spying on the girls . . .
"It is I, be not afraid". I was touched by this amazing statue. 

Best friends

Planking in the secret garden

Yoga in the secret garden

I love hyacinths!

Rolling down the hill, of course

Markee being Spidey up the hill - psst! is the sound of her webslinging.  There is a story that goes with this.  When we were at LegoLand last year a little boy was walking by Markee.  He looked at her and just held out his hand, Spiderman-style, and said, "psst" and kept walking.  It was hilarious!

 Can't go home without a stop for ice cream!
What?!  The ice cream is gone??

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Spring break - day-tripping style - Day 1

We decided that this spring break is going to be a stay at home one so I had to come up with activities that we could do working around my work schedule.  Fortunately cousins decided to do the same thing so we have company on our activities.  Any adventure is more fun with cousins!  Peter and Erik would rather do their older "teenage boy" things so we invited Nicolas' best friend Cody to come along and everyone had a buddy. 
Today we went to This is the Place to see the baby animals and then stopped off the the new City Creek Center in SLC. Much fun was had by all, from doing pioneer chores to petting baby lambs, bunnies, chicks etc, to riding the train, "planking", coonskin cap dueling and shopping. Here are some of the highlights . . .
Wish they would work on OUR garden so enthusiastically!

Why can't I get them to do laundry at home??

Sweet tiny pig and lamb friends.

Baby lambs!  They got to feed the lambs, too.




 Planking
Dueling with candy sticks on stick horses in coonskin caps.  Silly girls!



I was laughing at how it looked like the statue was gazing adoringly at Tamsyn so all the girls joined in.


May I have this dance?

Continuing the animal theme at Forever 21 at City Creek Center.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Hiatus

Yeah, I let the blog lapse for a while.  I'm ready to get back to it.  New post coming soon. . .