Oh, What do you do in the Wintertime?

It has been a little bit of a challenge to find activities this winter to do as a family. It seems like the kids need to run off energy - but we don't always have good ideas. However, here are a few things we have tried.

On the left, Carson and Audrey are hanging out in the dome theatre in Clarke Planetarium. This was a good trip because everyone enjoyed the free exhibits and it was a good change of pace. The show we saw was not free - but, we have never done a show in the dome, and Audrey was so impressed!! Kate was not, she was freaked out and it took a lot of persuasion to keep her in the room with us.

The weather has actually been fairly mild, and so here we are taking a walk on the trail that runs parallel to our street and house. We always call it the spooky woods because of all the trees there, but it is a lot less spooky now that they built a running trail there last summer. It was wonderful to see the kids run and run and enjoy being outside.

We took a trip to BYU to their Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. It had been a little while - so everyone was pretty excited to see the animals there. Chad and I had a good chuckle over the placement of the grizzly bear. They moved him into the Yellowstone National Park exhibit, and he faces the back wall, so even though you have to walk around him, you don't know what it is until you turn and face him in those close quarters. The kids had already commented that they wondered where he had gone to . . . and when we spotted him we pointed him out. They all looked up, and up, and up and up till they saw his face. Then Kate let out a shriek of terror and all of the kids ran out of the room. The rest of the visit Chad spent daring the kids to go back and visit him. I guess it didn't matter that he was dead, stuffed and behind glass - he was still pretty frightening to them.


Well, one of our most recent attempts at "getting out" together was a family kick-ball game at the church gym. We had fun playing together - parents versus kids, and as long as the kids were winning, there were no tears. We did have fun - and it might be worth a rematch before the end of the winter.

Our next adventure will be the birth of our little son this week! He isn't due until next week, but I will be induced on Saturday, February 27th if he doesn't find his way out before then. We will keep you posted - we are very excited!