Issue 22

Our Family "Staycation"

Whitney had a long weekend off from High School and we had been trying to come up with a family vacation to take advantage of the time. It wasn't enough time to go very far and none of the ideas we came up with really appealed to us. We added up what 3 nights hotel and gas would cost us and decided to follow the national trend and take a "staycation." We invited everyone to pick one activity that they would like to do during the weekend, to make it fun, and took a vacation from the comfort of our own home.

Dad picked touring downtown Salt Lake City. What a great State we live in! We picked Dad up from the airport Friday morning (he was returning from a business trip to California) and we toured the Joseph Smith Memorial building. We enjoyed the view of the Temple from the 10th floor.

Then we toured the Church History and Art museum. This is one of Noreen's favorite paintings there.

From the roof top of the Conference Center. After touring we stopped at the Lion House Pantry for a great lunch.

Whitney picked going to a corn maze. We had never been to one before, and had fun finding all 10 markers (although not in order) in the maze.

Dad spent Saturday afternoon building our family a "Kubb" (rhymes with cube) lawn game. He had played it at the scout Jamboral and it's so fun to have our own set. I think of Kubb as a cross between lawn bowling, horse shoes and chess. We took our new game with us to Steve's parents' home where we spent the night and played lots of rounds. It was so nice to spend time with Grandparents and go to their ward the next day.

Daniel chose Discovery Gateway the Children's museum. Dad had never been, so it was fun to explore it with him on Monday.

Discovery Gateway was Ellie's choice too. Monday was her birthday and it was such a joy to spend the whole day together doing fun things.

Steve L. picked having a read-a-thon, so we stopped at the store for some mostly healthy snacks and the library for piles of books. Janey picked swimming, which we are going to do for Family Night on Monday, because we just ran out of time to do so many fun things.

Mom picked going to The Spaghetti Factory for dinner. It was a fun way to celebrate Ellie's birthday - with meatballs almost as big as her! We had a delightful and relaxing 4 days together and the "staycation" was declared a success!

Ellie Turns 4!

Ellie is so proud to tell everyone she meets that now she's 4! She somehow got magically even cuter and more precocious on her birthday, which I didn't even know was possible.

Ellie is all about princesses. Mom and Dad got her the Fisher Price Castle and Carriage.

Her siblings went in on a Littlest Pet Shop Vet center and Janey made her a pretty fleece scarf in Liberty Girls.

Happy Birthday Ellie!

Body Worlds by Whitney

This week, as a school field trip, I went to see Body Worlds. Body Worlds is an educational exhibit on the human body and it has real bodies! What they do is that when people are alive they fill out a form and go through a lot of lawyers and stuff that says they want to donate their body to science. Then years later when they die their body is plastified. Plastification is when all the fluids in the body are drained and replaced leaving behind a perfect replica of the human body. And since the dehydration goes down to the cellular level, it really is just about 100% plastic. It's not really gross at all. They didn't allow photography, so I don't have any photos. Sorry.

Body Worlds has has four exhibits that travel the world. The exhibits are really big! It took us three hours to go through ours. One is in Texas, another in Canada and on in London and of course one in Utah. They all have a different theme. The one I went to was about the heart, so it had a lot of stuff on veins and blood clots and vein structure. It conveys the utmost importance of staying healthy and keeping in shape.

I recommend it to others! I wouldn't put an age limit on it as much as a maturity limit. The body's don't have clothes on, so the mind set needs to be geared to learning, but I would recommend it to older kids. I thought it was fascinating and I appreciate the learning experience I was able to get.