Two weeks ago we took our big vacation for the little family down to Utah. It only took 3.5 hours to get there so it was as my husband called it, "halfsies staycation". We needed/wanted to a vacation on a budget and easily traveled with our two toddlers. So we put 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates' in their dvd screens and away we went. It was four jam-packed days of fun, tears, tamtrums and new adventures.
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I don't have a lot of photos becuase the rest are on my actual camera and I can't find the cord to hook it up, plus my phone takes better pictures 99.9999999% of the time)
Day one was spent driving down and snacking the whole way. We arrived at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake and spent a few hours walking the grounds and screaming for a multitude of animals. Lilly's favorite was a giant seal that was blind. He was as big or even a little bigger than a sedan and just swam in circles in a large viewing tank. She loved him! We spent a good 30 minutes just on him!
Then we saw the Polar Bear and Isaiah could not get enough of him. This giant entertainer would push off of the bottom of his tank and jump up right in front of the viewing pane and rise from the water and stroke backwards and then dive down to do it again. Another 30 minutes went by....
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| We celebrated Isaiah's 3rd at Chuck E Cheese's and Lilly could not get off of this merry go round horse thing. Literally we put in 20+ coins. They had a blast to say the least running around like orange soda spiked, fruit snacked filled crazy children with an almost unlimited amount of tokens. When we finally left, it had been two and a half hours and Steve and I were exhausted, beyond what we could ever imagine. |
That evening after dinner, Steve allowed me to go to Ikea by myself.... enough said. I actually reined in my spending and after I got home wondered why I didn't buy a few items I had wanted. Then I realized it would have been another $100 and blown our budget. Plus Steve was happy on my total.
Day 2 was spent in the beautiful Temple Square. I had been to the Salt Lake Temple when I was really young with my family to pick up my sister from her mission from the airport there. She served in Italy and the best way to pick her up was there. I don't remember a thing except when I ate a peice of candy during a tour and spite it out. It tasted so bad and the part I remember the most is my other sister yelling at me infront of everyone and made me pick it up out of the flower patch it landed.
We went through the visitor's center and walked around the Temple. Crashed a few wedding photos trying to get away. We headed over to the Church History Muesum and it was amazing! Although we didn't really get to spend any time outside of the children's exhibit with hands on activities. After an hour we realized it was 2 hours past lunch time...
We headed to the newer mall in Salt Lake, City Creek Mall and had lunch and some of the
best shopping in ages! Steve bought me a beautiful Coach wallet as a surprise, that I picked out because he didn't actually know which one I had wanted, just the price I had told him ages ago.
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| Salt Lake Temple |
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| We rode the Utah Trax Train from our hotel in Sandy to SLC for fun and Isaiah loved it! |
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| Lilly could care less.... |
Friday we went to an aquarium and literally ran in circles for awhile. A long while.
Followed by more shopping at some outdoors stores and the Dinosaur Museum in Lehi. Isaiah was so scared we had to rush through, it being the most expensive site we went too... but in the end he loved it because they could dig for all the dinosaur bones they wanted.
From there we went to Provo and spent the next day with my best friend and her husband. Steve and Mat went shooting and Jen and I had breakfast and hit up Target and Cocoa Bean cupcake cafe. Our usual. We like to repeat what works for us. And I don't know what I would do without this girl, seriously. Plus we went through her clothes she didn't want and I came home with a huge bag of stuff from Jen-ymart!
We headed home and somehow wondered why the kids only slept for a half hour each in the car. We got home on Saturday around 7. Origionally we were going to stay until Sunday but the kids were not sleeping well and we were so tired and out of patience that we almost pulled over to take a nap. We opted out of church the next day to catch up on sleep and get the littles back on their schedule.
It was a great trip overall, and Isaiah and Lilly really loved it. Momma needs a bit of a vacation now though....
