Dinosaur Museum Revisited

Back in August, I took the kids to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point for one of the $2 Tuesday deals. Sure it was a great deal, but it was so crowded and crazy that I would hardly call it enjoyable. The girls did have fun but we weren't able to do a lot of the hands-on activities because of the crowds. A child could have easily been swallowed up by the mass of people and most moms were using their strollers at battering rams. I couldn't get out of their fast enough.


So, I decided that we needed to go back and hopefully hit it during a time when there weren't as many people filling the museum. I'm not going to tell you exactly when that was because it is my little secret. There were so few people there that the girls did all the activities a few times and even had the dinosaur dig area all to themselves at one point. It was perfect.

I invited my sister Tamara to come along and join us which made it even better. I hid myself behind the camera and Tam was able to enjoy all that the museum had to offer, all while being pulled by an over enthusiastic 5-year-old. We happened to go on a day when they were having Pirate Day which was totally unexpected. The girls got to make pirate headbands, get their face painted and they got to choose their pirate name. How cool is that? This was one of Ashley's first big outings after being potty trained and she did great. I (of course) kept a little stash of motivators (i.e. candy) in my purse just in case they were needed.


My mom was really sad that she was left out of our little excursion but we were going to surprise her later. She had gone down to the Cabin the night before for the semi-annual work weekend, but nothing much was going on so she really wanted us to come down and spend the day. After lunch at Wingers and a quick stop at my house, we headed down to Fairview. When we pulled into the driveway at the cabin, the happiest Grandma in the world came out to greet us. It was too funny. So, we played at the cabin for a couple of hours, had dinner, and then we were back on the road again to go home. It was a long drive for such a short visit, but it was so worth it.

Amelia is growing up

Wow! My little baby girl is growing up so fast. She started preschool this year and absolutely loves it. She is going 3 days a week and it is so different when she is not home. The first few days, Ashley would go around the house looking for Amelia and I had to continually tell her that Amelia was at preschool. Ashley is a little bit lost without her playmate. But on the flip side, I have been able to spend a lot more one-on-one time with Ashley and that has been really nice. Amelia comes home each day with a new song that she teaches to the rest of us. She is learning to write her letters and numbers and of course, she love Show and Tell time.


Amelia also celebrated her 5th birthday in September. We were lucky enough to go to the Cabin and celebrate which was a ton of fun. We were just about to turn onto Hwy 89 from Hwy 6 when I realized that I forgot to pick up her birthday cake from Albertson's before heading up the canyon. Oops. So, we turned around and got the cake which made us about an hour later getting there than we thought. We actually went out to dinner for my birthday too which was fun. On Saturday (two days before her actual birthday), we started the day by going to the farmer's market in Spring City. It was small but a fun little adventure for us. That night, we had Grandma and Grandpa Van Horn over for dinner at the Cabin. Yummy Sanpete BBQ turkey for dinner with fabulous fixin's. Amelia then got to open presents and it was so fun to see her face light up with each gift. Ashley wanted to be in on the action too and help Amelia open all her presents. Luckily, Amelia shared some things with Ashley, but only occasionally.

Elliot - 7, 8, 9 months old

Summer has come and gone and my little baby is now 9 months old. Time sure does fly by when you are having fun. Elliot has 4 teeth now with 2 more that just broke through within the last few days. He has started army crawling all over the house which is really annoying to the girls. They are constantly asking me to move Elliot away from where they are so he won't slobber all over their stuff. He mastered rolling over at about 7 months and just before he turned 9 months, he figured out how to sit up from laying down. It may sound like he is a little bit behind on these skills but he's got a lot of weight to throw around so it takes a little bit more effort.

We did a lot of traveling over the summer and Elliot got into the bad habit of waking up in the middle of the night. I was usually so tired that I would just nurse him back to sleep so that I could get back to bed too. There were even some nights that I just brought him into bed with us so that we could all be happy. Well, it is time to break him of that habit. When he has woken up in the middle of the night (these past 2 nights), I have checked on him, covered him back up with his blanket, and then just walked away. I crawl back into my warm bed and turn off the monitor, then fall asleep to his crying. The weird thing is that he is actually sleeping later into the morning now. I hope that soon he will re-learn how to get himself back to sleep without the 20 minutes of crying at 2 a.m.

7 months old

8 months old

9 months old