Rebecca – Page 152 – Andelin Adventures

Museum of Ancient Life

After Farm Country and a lunch break Kyle and I took the kids to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. As we were walking up to the building there was a mural on the side of the building of a T-Rex crashing through the wall of the building, and Jeremy asked me why the dinosaur broke the wall. I had to explain to him that it’s just a picture painted on the wall, but he was so cute.

The long and insane line to get in, that we saw earlier this morning was now gone, and we just walked in paid and paid admission and we were off to see the exhibits. We didn’t stop and look at things for very long (since the majority of our kids can’t read, and even if they could they would have no idea WHAT they had read) Kyle and I just explained a bit on their level what things were. We spent most of the time just looking around at the different things to see, after all the kids mostly wanted to go see the ‘dinosaur bones’. There was one room before we got to the dinosaur part of the exhibits that was COMPLETELY dark, and you had to walk through it to get to the next room. Jeremy especially was afraid of going in there. Upon walking in there were stars all around, but I will admit that it gave me kind of a funny dizzy feeling being in the complete darkness completely surrounded by stars. I had to reach my hand out to make sure there was a railing to know for sure that I wasn’t going to fall off the path (since the railing was black and the whole room was dark you couldn’t SEE it at all). Then it was time to see dinosaur stuff. Here Kyle is pretending that the dinosaur is going to bite Dinah. Check out his crazy eyes, and Dinah is trying to pull her hand away from the dinosaur as Kyle is trying to pull it toward the dinosaur. 😛

The kids had loads of fun and kept running off to see everything, and Kyle and I had to keep hunting them down.

As we left we stopped in the gift shop and the kids each picked a rock candy ‘lolly pop’. And here they are on the ride home enjoying their rock candy:

PS: There are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Farm Country

Thanksgiving point has been advertising than on Tuesdays (in August) admission for either Farm Country, the gardens or the Museum of Ancient life is just $2/person. So I asked Kyle to take a Tuesday off of work and let’s just go to Thanksgiving Point and do what there is to do. So he did, and we went. When we got to Thanksgiving Point the line to get into the museum was just insane. So we decided to go check out the line to get into Farm Country, and it was a lot more acceptable so we parked and went there. There was so much to see there. There were a few baby chicks and a baby turkey to see, and there were some eggs in an incubator.I got a picture of Tyra and Dinah sitting on a large cow statue (Ethan wanted to sit on it by himself, but didn’t get the chance because other people beat him to it, and Jeremy freaked out when Kyle tried to put him on it.)

We looked around a bit inside and there was a cow statue with rubber utters that the kids could try ‘milking’ and there were bucket weights to show the kids about how much food each kind of farm animal eats in a day, and there was an area showing where milk comes from and the process it goes through from cow to bottle.

Then we went outside. There were goats of all kinds (well many kinds), and Llamas, big horses and little horses. Various kinds of turkeys and chickens and even a male and female peacock. There was also a pond with various water fowl. There were several different kinds of rabbits, and one of them even had a bunch of babies (not brand new babies, considering they were out of the nesting box and had fur already). And there were cows and sheep (Kyle says there were some pigs but I didn’t see them).

There were some dispensers that you could purchase corn from to feed to the animals, but Kyle and I didn’t have any quarters, so our kids picked up whatever corn they found on the ground that other people had dropped, and they had a lot of fun having the goats and other animals lick the food out of their hands.

We went for a wagon ride (pulled by a team of large white horses names Holly and Bell) while we were there. And I enjoyed checking out their small garden area for ideas for what to do with our garden. They had raised beds (we do too) and I really liked the way they had water going to each bed, so we took pictures for future reference. 😉

The kids played in a couple of play houses and there was a building with a whole bunch of vegetable and fruit cards that the kids could ‘plant’ in the ground (actually it was a large tire with plywood in it that had slots to place the cards) or hang the card on a bush or tree (to help the kids learn what type of plant each food grows on).

There were several baby cows to look at and I think the teeth on this one are awesome (Kyle thought so too, so he decided to take the picture). They look like they are too big for the calf’s mouth. Dinah also started crying that the cow bit her thumb, but she kept changing which thumb got bitten, and I didn’t see any marks so she was perfectly fine, but she was certainly afraid to touch any of the animals after that.

And to finish the day off, we purchased tickets for the kids to have a pony ride. Actually we said that we would do the pony ride next time but Jeremy was very upset about that, and since the pony line had died down since we had first got there, Kyle decided to go ahead and get tickets so the kids could ride the ponies. Well after waiting in the line, when it was finally their turn, I went in with the kids to help them up on the ponies (and I walked next to Dinah’s pony to make sure she didn’t jump off 😛 ).

As soon as the ponies began walking though, Jeremy (the boy that was very disappointed at being told we wouldn’t ride ponies today but next time) freaked out! I just looked at him and told him to hold on tight. 😉 (The above picture was taken BEFORE the pony started moving.)

We all had a lot of fun though, and there are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Dinah’s in a toddler bed

Well I’ve moved Dinah from the crib to a toddler bed. She kept climbing out of the crib and has fallen on her head a few times now, so no more crib for her. And now I get the joys of trying to keep her on a toddler bed at bedtime. Tonight she was ‘enjoying’ the freedom of not being confined in the crib, and of course I was going crazy trying to get her to go back to bed and stay there! 😉

Farmers Market

Our stake has a garden plot, and each ward has a portion of it to plant vegetables. So now that it’s time to be harvesting from our gardens, every Saturday morning there is a farmers market at our stake center. We were a bit late this morning but there was still plenty of squash to be had, and since Kyle and the kids hadn’t seen where our ward’s plot is I took them over and showed it to them. I had been there before, for an enrichment mini-class where we planted the garden. Things are looking ok at the garden. Some plants aren’t doing so well, others are doing just fine. Nobody went back and thinned the carrots so they are mostly small and some of them are looking funny, but the kids say they taste good. 🙂 The kids were excited to see our ward’s and they were excited to taste some of the fresh peas growing there. And they were excited to see how carrots grow too.

The carrots and peas are from our wards garden, the rest is from the farmers market this morning.

(There is another picture in the photo gallery that shows a rather large zucchini that we harvested from our ward’s garden too.)

Chloe’s Growing :)

Well I’m happy to report that Chloe is growing. After a couple of weight checks in the first few weeks we discovered that breastfeeding just wasn’t enough, 🙁 so now we are supplementing with formula and she’s growing. I’m just glad we discovered the problem before she was ‘starving to death’ (as in the case with Dinah). So Chloe had her 2 month check-up on Monday and she weighs 8 lbs 3 oz now (exactly what Ethan weighed when he was born!) It’s wierd to look at Chloe and think “you’re as big as Ethan was when he was born, and you’re two months old.” She has also graduated to size 1 diapers. 🙂 My mom and Kyle both felt like the upgrade in diaper size could have happened about a week or so ago, but I insisted on her using the rest of the newborn diapers in the open pack (like I need a bunch of random newborn diapers hanging around). SO she used the last newborn diaper and I got to open up a pack of size ones. 🙂 They grow up so fast.