Museum of Natural History

The kids and I participated in the library's summer reading program.  The grand prize at the end of the summer was free admission to the Museum or Natural History. We went one afternoon after Tyler was done with school.

The kids got to make dinosaur headbands and then we explored.

Tyler LOVES anything to do with deer, elk, moose, etc. so he loved seeing this display.



"Hands on" in the water



There were costumes to try on

 Emily

 

Tyler

 

Megan



There was a section that had a glass floor looking down on some "fossils."  Here's Emily sitting on the floor.



The girls writing notes



A cool dinosaur fossil



Digging in the sand



 Running around a "dig site."



King and queens of the rock



Emily with a tree puzzle



Tyler with a stuffed deer



Megan with a puzzle



The girls soaking up the sun on the observation deck

 

 

 

 

Ballet

The  girls started ballet the Saturday after Labor Day.  Tyler also had a soccer game that day. 

Megan, Tyler, Emily





Emily with her teacher



Emily walking by herself while their teacher helps Megan



Megan walking by herself



At the barre



The girls love ballet!

1st Day of Preschool

Megan and Emily started preschool the day after Labor Day.  They were SO excited!

Megan and Emily







On the way to Miss Katie's Preschool



Finding their names

 

End of August

One day Darrell took the afternoon off and we had a little local family outing. 

First we went to the aviary. 

Tyler found this branch and put it on his head to pretend to be a deer.  Silly kid!



The kids loved feeding the ducks



Ooh...look...a rare picture of me.  ;)



Flamingos



Then we went to lunch at the Lion House Pantry before heading to see the rest of Temple Square.

Salt Lake Temple

Megan, Tyler, Emily



Emily, Megan, Tyler



Fountain  Emily, Megan, Darrell, Tyler



We went up to the observation deck of the Church Office Building.





The kids are all pretending to be Bambi by sticking their noses in the flowers.

 

 

 

Bye bye sippy cups!   Last day of sippy cups with chocolate milk, which up until this point had been a morning tradition...get up, get choccy milk and watch TV.  That didn't work anymore once we had to go to a school schedule.  (And really, what 3 and 5 year olds need sippy cups still.  Good riddance...who is their mother anyway?) 



We didn't go camping as a family this year which was so disappointing, but we did make it up to the nearby mountains.  Unfortunately it was rainy so we didn't get to explore much, but the kids loved it.



Megan, Emily, Tyler

August Fun

Silly kids hiding in the pantry



One of the exciting things about August is that Megan learned how to pedal her bike, so we had three independent bike riders--although the girls still would get stuck and need a push every now and then.





One day we discovered the front flower garden was FLOODED.  Upon further investigation we found out a pipe in the backyard had burst and was shooting water...which was flowing out into the front flower garden.  We called the same plumber that we used with our leaking indoor kitchen pipe and the same one who took out our random, leaky faucet.  Ugh!  Thank goodness for an emergency fund.



One day we met friends at a Splash Park.

Emily



Megan



Tyler



Taking a break  (Thanks Linde for letting us use your shade.)



Lunch time



The kids also had fun playing at the connecting park (Megan)



Another day we went to a local fun center with friends.

Emily with Haley



Tyler



Megan and Emily



Bowling



Haley and Tyler



Wet girls (from the boats) dancing



Lunch time





A visit to the race track (We'd never seen this "train" race.  It was fun to watch.)





Another day we were going to meet our friends to go to the Aviary, but upon arriving I discovered that I had left our passes at home.  So we had an impromptu park play date.  We hadn't planned on playing in the splash park, but the kids still had fun in their "street clothes."