Spring Break (from a self-proclaimed expert)

I like a lot of things about Utah, but one of the things I don't like is that there are so many other travel-esk blogs all talking about things to do in Utah.  Back in Lower Alabama I had the market cornered since I was basically the ONLY blogger writing about that area.  But here in Utah it's a different story. There are lots of really great blogs that highlight different things to do.  It's felt a little intimidating to jump into the fray.  

I have had a lot of success with my Southern Utah Road Trip post, and I've always planned on writing a follow up post about things to do in Northern Utah.  But I haven't quite known how to do it.  There are so many things to do in Northern Utah that compiling a list of them all is quite an undertaking.  

A month or two ago I realized that Spring Break was coming up.  I would have to work so Brandon needed ideas of inexpensive things to do with the kids in the area.  I decided that this was that angle I should take with my northern Utah post. I should focus on things that are inexpensive and open in the spring.  So I complied a list of over 50 places to visit in Northern Utah. And a lot of the stuff on the list is relevant all year long. Check it out here. 

So what did the family of the self proclaimed spring break expert do?  Let's take a look.

First up we have our trip to the Tree House Museum in Ogden.  This wasn't actually during spring break.  We went there on Friday March 25th. But these pictures were all taken with Brandon's camera which went AWOL for a little bit.  And since the Tree House museum made it onto my Spring Break list it seems fitting to look at the pictures in this post. 

We've wanted to visit the Tree House museum for a while, but it took a while to find time to do it.  The best deal for the museum is to go on Friday night when they have reduced admission.  But the kids always seemed to be ready for bed around 6:30-7:00 and that wouldn't work for going to the museum from 6:00 to 8:00.  After daylight savings time started again the kids bedtime naturally reset to about 7:30-8:00 and that meant we could plan a trip to the Tree House Museum. 

We love this place and have visited it every time we come back to Utah.  (It's helped that during previous visits we qualified for Free Admission thanks to Brandon's active duty status.) 

The kids have looked forward to coming back here for a long time.  Last time we were here the girls played with this castle and horses as the very last thing.  We had to leave before they were done playing and they were so sad about this.  So this time I told them that they should start at that area.  So that is what they did.

I had to work until about 5:30 so I just met Brandon and the kids at the museum.  At first Derrick only wanted to play with the trains. (Big surprise there)

Charlotte and Lydia played with the castle for  while, but soon they found other things.  They liked this tube that had a fan blowing air really fast.  They could put sponges in there and watch them fly up and out of the tube.

They also liked drawing at these light tables.

Veronica discovered the castle and had fun playing with it.

Then Derrick and Brandon came upstairs and joined us.  Derrick LOVED the tube and played with it for a long time. 

All the kids liked this science circus area.  It was new since the last time we came. 

Lydia put on a fancy cape and pretended to train a seal to walk on the balance beam and catch rings on it's nose. 

Later we explored other areas of the museum.  The girls had fun serving me lots of food in the diner.

They had a whole area with a Clifford Theme.  This was new too.  Charlotte wanted a picture with Clifford.

Derrick liked the fish like he always does.

Lydia had fun playing in Clifford's doggy bowl.

And Lydia wanted a picture with Clifford too.

Derrick wanted a picture with the train engine -Jupiter.  He's been asking to see a big train and I have plans to take him to see the full size version of the train at the Golden Spike Historic Site in May.  He's become very good at saying, "see big train, in May."  We have the date marked on the calendar with a picture of a train.  Even before I drew the picture on the calendar Derrick could point right to it and say, "See big train."



After we finished up at the Museum we went for a little walk through Ogden to get back to our car.  We passed the place where people can do indoor surfing.  They kids had a lot of fun watching the surfers wipeout over and over. Derrick laughed every time someone fell. 

Okay, now for a little bit more recent stuff.  We had an end of season Employee Appreciation night at work on April 30th.  It had a movie theme and the kids could put on funny costumes and get their pictures taken.  

The room was really noise because they had a big screen showing the movie "Better Off Dead" (There's some skiing in the movie) and they also had someone making announcements on another sound system.  Derrick did not like that.  But there was unlimited cookies and candy which he did like.  He made it through okay, but by the end I had to hold him on my lap and put my coat over his head.  Poor kid.  But it was worth it because we ended up winning a prize in the raffle.

The kids had been hoping to ride the Little Cat Ski Lift again, but the weather had been rainy all day.  I didn't want us to get wet.  So we just took pictures outside. Here the kids are with their favorite pooping moose statue.

And here I am.  I've loved working for Snowbasin. 

Spring Break started with Conference Weekend.  In a perfect world we would have picked somewhere fun to visit and taken off on Saturday and not come back for a week.  But alas, I had work the next week.  Besides we are going to LIVE in Yellowstone for 2 1/2 months this summer. We'll be pretty vacationed out this year.

So instead we hung around, listened to Conference, and continued fixing up the RV.  I worked on the cushion covered for the dinette during the first session.  Derrick entertained himself by sliding down the cushions.

Here's the before and after picture. Much cuter.

Between sessions I took the kids over to the little shops around the Eden Visitor's Center.  They were having a little spring event.  The kids were able to make a bath bomb with the help of the Simply Eden staff.  (And later we came and bought a real bath bomb as a present for someone so this giveaway helped earn then at least one customer.)

Then we were able to plant a seed with the help of another store.  Derrick kept talking about his Sunfower.

The kids all had a great time and the mile round trip walk really helped keep them from flying off the walls while we watched other sessions of conference.

Brandon's sister Shannon and her family came up in the afternoon and stayed the night.  They brought their dog Shelby.  Veronica was in heaven playing with the dog.  Later, Melanie brought her dog Luna over so there was lots of crazy dog action.

We wanted the kids to passively listen to conference and the best way we've found to do that is to get out toys that they haven't played with in a while.  So we found the Lincoln logs in the garage and let the kids have at it.  

We also found Charlotte and Lydia's birthday dolls.  They only got to play with these for like a week before we packed them up for the move.  So they were pretty happy to see them again.

Derrick wanted to take pictures with my camera so I let him play with it. (the benefits to having an almost 10 year old camera) He followed me around and took lots of pictures.  Here is one of the more flattering ones.

I'd put the first cushion cover together in about 70 minutes so I was hoping the other ones would go faster now that I knew exactly what I was doing.  (I'd figured out the pattern myself.)  So I cut the other three out during the first hour of the second session of conference. 

But when I went to sew them together my machine started sewing weird.  After doing all the trouble shooting I knew how to do I looked at the clock and realized that the problems had started right at 3:00.  When I was little my mom had told me that she always had trouble if she tried to sew after 3:00 pm. I thought I was immune to that issue, but apparently it's applicable now.  So I had to give up on the sewing project for the weekend since I didn't want to sew on Sunday.  On Monday I got the machine out again, cleaned out some places that I've never even opened before, and it sewed just fine and all the covers were completed in no time.

On Sunday we had a big breakfast with Shannon's family.  Derrick was having a rough time so he and I spent a lot of time hanging out in my room.  We called my parents all the way in Brazil and had a good conversation with them. 

During the Sunday morning session we heard the good news that a temple will be built in Pocatello.  I'd been kind of having doubts about our plan to move to Pocatello and I'd hoped to get a reminder that it was a good idea after all.  Well having a temple announced was a pretty good omen.

After the first session of conference my siblings and I all go on Google Hangouts and had a fun conversation together. I love that even though we live in 4 different states we still have a way to communicate.

I had no illusions of listening to conference with all the children paying attention too, but during the last session that's what happened. Shannon's family had gone home, and Steve and Jacque were up in their room.  We had the TV on in the living room and the kids came in there and sat with us while we listened. Charlotte, Veronica, and I ended up falling asleep. 

Brandon and Lydia worked on building a town with the Lincoln logs.

They had a lot of fun working on it together.

There was such a special spirit surrounding all of us as we listened to conference and spent time together. 

Derrick spent time taking more pictures of me.  Here's a decent one. (I deleted all the super close ones he took while I was sleeping.)

After conference was over we decided to watch Mountain of the Lord which is a church movie all about the Salt Lake Temple.  We've watched it before, but this time I sat with the kids and answered their questions about it.  They learned a lot.  And they were very excited to go see the temple for real the next day. 

Monday was the only day that I wouldn't have to work while the kids were out of school.  So we crammed a lot into that day.  First up was a tour at Mrs Cavanaugh's Chocolate Factory in North Salt Lake.

We got there about 10 minutes before our 11:00 tour so we passed the time by taking pictures.

At the end of the tour these are the chocolates that the kids decided to buy.

Here's Derrick.  He loves doing what ever the girls are doing.

We also watched a lady carefully write names onto large chocolate Easter eggs.

Then our tour started.  We started out upstairs where we watched a movie about the history of chocolate and another about the history of the company.  Our tour guide let us each try a little piece of chocolate without any added sugar or milk.  It was bitter.  Then we got a piece with sugar and milk.  Much better.

We were able to look though windows at the factory where all the chocolates are made from scratch. We were also able to sample some more chocolates. 

Then we went to a little room which had a train.  I'm not sure how this tied into Chocolate, but Derrick was thrilled.

The tour ended with small ice cream samples.  We also bought each of us a chocolate. The tour had cost $1 per person and the chocolate was about $5.50 so we'd spent almost $12. 

Then we went to a park north of downtown Salt Lake.  It was called Warm Springs Park, but there was a pretty stiff breeze so it was anything but warm.  The kids played on the playground and then we had a picnic lunch.

After that we went into Salt Lake and parked at the City Creek Center parking lot.  To get out of there we had to go up 3 different escalators. The kids thought that was so fun. 

We walk across the street to the Beehive house.  This is the home where Brigham Young lived.

It's been several years since I've been here.  I vaguely remembered being dissatisfied with the tour the last time I took it, but I couldn't quite remember why.  I did remember being mad that the sister missionaries who gave the tour knew next to nothing about the history of the house.  They kept saying vague statements like, "Brigham Young's family was important to him.  Our church things family's are important too.  Do you know anyone who also thinks family's are important who would be interested in learning about our church?"

The tour used to be much better.  The guides knew the house inside and out and could tell you in-depth stories about the artifacts and architecture.  I LOVED this tour as a kid and went on it so many times I could basically give it.  In fact, this is where we went for my 11th birthday party.

I was kind of hoping that the tour would have improved in the past few years, but alas it has not.  We were told three separate times that Brigham Young was 5'10".  Still, the kids enjoyed looking into the rooms. 

I pointed out the Fairy Window to the kids and told them that we'd look through it in a minute.  But the sister missionaries told us that we wouldn't be able to go upstairs on this tour. Suddenly I remembered why I'd hated the tour the last time.  It skips 3/4th of the house. I asked why we couldn't go upstairs and was told that it was too busy today to go.  I asked when could we come to get an upstairs tour and was answered with "um the winter?"  I asked who we should contact to complain to about how the tour isn't as good as it used to be, and Brandon told me to be quite and gave me a look that said, "stop giving the sister missionaries a hard time."

After we got home I called the Temple Square contact number to complain about the tour, but that ended with a dead end.  If I get worked up about it again I might try to contact the Mission to see why the tour sucks these days (I'll use better phrasing that that.)  But for now, I don't recommend a trip to the Beehive House.

We walked behind the house and headed to the Church Office Building. We caught a view of the Temple.  The kids were so excited to see it. 

Lydia wanted to pose with this statue of Joseph and Emma Smith.

We went inside the church office building and asked for a tour of the observation deck.  This is something I've wanted to do for a while, but we haven't been able to since it's only available on week days.  There was about a 30 minute wait, and then it was our turn to go to the top.  A nice older lady took us up there.  (Side note: one reason the Sister Missionaries told us that they couldn't show us the up stairs was that they had to be with their companions and so they couldn't split up to give us tours throughout the house.  That doesn't seem to be a problem with the Church office building.)

We were on the 26th floor which made us higher than the State Capitol on the hill.

And much higher than the temple.

We also got a good view of the gardens on top of the conference center.  That was another place we planned to go.

My dad used to take me up here when I was little and I'd always say, "The people look like ANTS!"

Back on the ground again, we admired all the flowers.  I much prefer seeing the flowers on temple square than the lights at Christmas time.

We decided to take a detour and go up close to the temple.  Up until several years ago you couldn't get close to the temple.  But now you can walk right up to it.  So if you are visiting Temple Square you can touch the temple, but don't expect to see the upstairs of the Beehive House.

It was really fun to see the temple after watching a movie all about its construction.  The girls were excited about these door knobs which they'd seen in the movie.





And of course they wanted to pose in the little alcoves.  Here's Charlotte (She was wearing her "cape")

And Lydia. She was making some very brave fashion choices.

And here is a look back at the church office building where we had been earlier.

Then we crossed the street and went to the Conference Center.

When it first opened the public was free to roam the building and it's roof.  But later they made it so you needed a guide. We went in and asked for a tour and once again a nice lady was able to take us around.  I've learned on previous tours that you can ask where you want to be taken so you don't have to do the whole 45 minute tour if you don't want to. So I asked for the Conference room, the Freeburg Gallery, and the roof.  And what ever thing we saw along the way.

First up was the green jello fountain. (That's not it's real name) The kids thought it was funny looking.

Then we went inside the large room where Conference has been held just the day before.  It hold's 21,000 people.  The girls thought it was great.  But Derrick started to freak out a little bit.  So I took him back out to the fountain. We sat on the edge of the fountain and he cuddled up in my lap.  A piano was playing somewhere and we listened to it.  Derrick was transfixed by the large skylight.  This was my favorite part of the whole day. 

Everyone else met up with us again and we made our way up an escalator to the Freeburg Gallery which showcases paintings of scenes in the Book of Mormon.  It was fun to look at them and talk about them with the kids.  We've been reading about the Title of Liberty so the girls really liked that picture.

Then we went onto the roof.  It's still pretty amazing that there are trees up here. This fountain is right above the podium inside. 

The kids all liked the waterfall shooting off the building.

The tour was over and we started to head back to the car.  The kids needed to use the bathroom so we ducked inside the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to use the bathroom there.  We were able to see the Family Search Center and I told the kids that one day we would come play there.  And they said they wanted to do it right then.  So we went down there. 

This was actually pretty great.  Brandon and I were exhausted so we just sat down and the kids played.

Veronica loved playing with the little kitchen stuff.

Charlotte and I put together a puzzle.

And I also colored a picture.  Brandon took a 15 minute nap while he was sitting in his chair.

After that we went back to the car.  I couldn't believe how tired I was.  I dozed as Brandon drove home. 

The next 4 days I had to go to work so Brandon was home with the kids.  Some days they stayed home and watched TV while he worked on the RV.  Other days they went to the park.  And on Friday they all went grocery shopping and then to the car wash as a treat for being good.

One night we wanted to test out sleeping in the RV.  It still needs some work in order to actually take a trip in it, but it was at a point where we could sleep over night in it as long as we were near the house.

I'm going to  do a whole before and after reveal on the travel blog.  But you can see some sneak peeks here.  I LOVE how the curtains turned out.  They are so cheerful.  Brandon installed cork board and white boards on the upper cupboards.  Charlotte and Lydia love coloring on those. And the cushion covers turned out so cute.

We thought we'd watch movies in the RV until bedtime, but Derrick and Lydia wanted to play outside.  Here's Lydia pretending to fish in the creek behind the house.

Derrick spent a lot of time throwing sticks and rocks into the water. 

Then he sat down and pretended to fish with Lydia.  I learned my first lesson of this little test run: Plan on playing outside until it gets dark.

Here's what the dinette looks like with the table up.  I love the cushion covers.

And here's Derrick using it as a bed. One reason we did this test run was so see how Derrick reacted to sleeping in the RV.  He wasn't fazed one bit and was the first one asleep.

Charlotte. Lydia, and Veronica loved getting their beds ready up in the attic area. They fell asleep okay, but Charlotte and Lydia spent most of the night coughing.  I was constantly checking on them and putting their slippery sleeping bags back on them.  (Later we found a water leak and mildew under the mattress so that might have contributed to the coughs a little bit.)

It was windy outside the RV, but it was very snug inside.  We ran back into the house for different things while we got situated and the heat was on in the house, but inside the RV it was warm enough with just our body heat.  Hopefully we'll stay warm when we are living above 7,000 feet.



Brandon and I slept on the little fold out couch.  It was okay, but we'll probably end up switching beds with Derrick.  We realized that we couldn't have breakfast until Derrick work up, and he was the last to wake up.  So it makes more sense to have him sleep on the couch. 

We weren't planning on having breakfast in the RV, but the night had gone really well so Brandon ran inside and grabbed cereal, milk, and bowls.  The kids had fun eating.

They played around inside for a little bit.  Charlotte built this park out of her blocks.

She was pretty proud of it.

And here are the pictures the girls drew on the white boards.  This is Clifford and his friends near a lighthouse. If I remember right Lydia drew this one.

And Charlotte drew this one.

Veronica didn't want to be outdone.

Back in the house I had to make my lunch for work.  Derrick decided that needed to be documented.

On Saturday we finished up the Spring Break fun with a trip to the Dinosaur Park for Derrick's Birthday. 

I love this picture of the girls crouching down so they could observe the dinosaur without it seeing them. 

Whew, so that's all the pictures. 

There are also some little details from the past few weeks that don't really have photographic history.  That's because they are more feeling based. 

One, is that I finally have friends in the ward.  For some reason we didn't have a Relief Society Activity until March.  When we finally did have an activity I was able to actually talk to people and make friends. Funny how that works.

Two, is that my job is almost over and its been super sad to see everything slow down.  Fewer and fewer people come to work each day. I've realized I hate to see things end and so it's been really sad to see this come to an end. I guess it's even harder for me since I wont be back for the Summer or Winter Seasons. 

Three, is that we are simultaneously getting excited for our summer in Yellowstone and also realizing just how insane we are.  But overall we are looking forward to it. It's definitely going to be memorable.

Four, is that I've been kind of shocked at how definite our plans are for the future.  I know the exact date in May that I start work in Yellowstone.  We know the exact date in August that Brandon starts school.  We know the exact classes he will be taking -and how long they will last.  In the Army our future was never that definite.  We never knew what Brandon's schedule looked like even two weeks out.  And we had no clue when we'd be moving or where we would be living next.  

Five: I am, however, having quite a bit of trouble figuring out the kids school situation for next fall.  It's like the craziest story problem ever.  I could potentially have Veronica in head start for four hours 4 days a week at one location.  Charlotte and Lydia in first grade at another location.  And Derrick in an extended resource Kindergarten at another location.  Oh and kindergarten is a full day every other day. How am I supposed to keep track of that - let alone find a job that will work around that schedule?

I'm making some headway with that through.  I think I'm going to put Veronica into the daycare/preschool that they have for Idaho State Students.  It's not free like Head Start would be, but it's very affordable for all day care.  And to make things simple I'm also going to have Derrick go there on the day's he doesn't have Kindergarten. That just leaves Charlotte and Lydia.  They'll get out of school 45 minutes before Brandon does so it's not like we need them to go somewhere for very long.  I'm hoping there is an afterschool club or maybe a neighbor that can watch them. 

And I'm hoping to find a rental house in the boundaries for one of the three school's where Derrick could have his extended resource kindergarten. No matter where we live the district will bus him to his school.  But for simplicity's sake I think it makes the most sense to have Charlotte and Lydia in the same location as Derrick.

Also I've applied jobs with the school district. That would help me have a work schedule similar to the kids' school schedule.  And if it all works out we can spent Spring Break together next year. 

So yeah, I'm in planning overdrive here and I'm pretty happy about it.  It's nice to have things to work towards again. 

As always, I'll keep you posted.  (And in the meantime go check out my travel blog, www.51centadventures.com.  I'm planning on adding lots of new posts during my month between jobs.  Who knows, you might find some ideas for your family's next adventure.)

Derrick's Fifth Birthday

Usually when we are coming up on Derrick's birthday I think, "what? He's turning three? I already thought he was three?" or "Oh I've been telling people that Derrick is four for weeks now, I'm glad we can make it official."  But this year I was like, "What? He's turning five already! How is that possible?"

I just can't believe that he's five. Five just seems so grown up. One minute he was this little baby, and now he'd getting ready for Kindergarten. Wow.

This year we decided that it would be fun to do a dinosaur themed birthday for Derrick.  I know that a train themed party would be the obvious choice, but honestly we live and breath trains every day in this family.  I wanted to do something a little different.  (And maybe help guide Derrick toward other interests.)  Besides, in the 5 months we've lived here we've already been to the Ogden Train Museum, ridden Frontrunner, ridden Trax, gone to a model train show, ridden the little train in the mall - twice, and have plans to go to the Golden Spike National Historic Site in May.  We've done pretty much every low-cost train related thing in the area. 

But we haven't done any of Utah's dinosaur related things yet.  And I really wanted to take the kids to the Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden. Going there for Derrick's birthday seemed perfect. 

The kids were on Spring Break this whole week (I'll blog more about that later.)  I had work so Brandon took care of directing the kids in the art of making and frosting Derrick's cake. We'd bought dinosaur figures to put on the cake, but Brandon ended up decorating it so well it didn't even need the dinosaurs. (It's a volcano, a river, and dinosaur bones in case you can't tell.)

 On Friday night Charlotte and Lydia stayed up and helped me blow up balloons. I'd picked these out because they looked so happy.

 And I picked these out because they looked like dinosaur eggs.

 When Derrick woke up this morning the girls directed his to the balloons right away.  I heard him say something like, "Oh WOW, Happy Balloons!" He carried around three balloons most of the morning.

Since Derrick's birthday was on a Saturday I decided to invite our siblings and their kids along for the activity at the Dinosaur Park.  This was for two reasons.  The first, and most important reason, was because we love our family and we were excited to celebrate one of our kids' birthday's with them for the first time since Charlotte and Lydia were two.  The other reason was that we would get a group rate discount if we had a group of 10 or more people.

Brandon's sister Melanie would be out of town with her family for Spring Break, so unfortunately she couldn't make it.  But Shannon and her kids said they could make it.  My sister Hillary and her husband were also excited to come.  And of course Brandon's parents would come.  So I called and reserved us a spot several weeks ago.

The weather ended up being a little iffy (it was snowing while we ate breakfast) and Shannon was worried about making the drive.  So she had to cancel.  Hillary's husband had to take a final, so he couldn't make it either.  We missed them but we also understood.

For a few minutes I was tempted to just cancel the whole trip and try again on a day with better weather, but the kids still wanted to go so I decided to just go along with the original plan.

I'm glad I did because the weather improved on our way down to Ogden.  We could see blue sky as we came out of the canyon.  We drove to the Dinosaur Park and the kids could see some of the dinosaur statues on the other side of the fence.  They were so excited.  Derrick immediately started saying, "Help me out." and trying to get out of his seat belt.  We got the kids out of the car and they RAN to the museum entrance.

Derrick noticed some brochures for the Golden Spike Historic Spike right when we walked into the building.  I was like, "how did you even see those."  He wanted one so I gave it to him, he started jabbering on about Dinosaur-Train.

We'd brought umbrellas, but it wasn't raining at the moment so I decided that we should see all the outside statues first before going into the museum part.  So we went out there. The kids had so much fun running around and looking at the dinosaurs.

 Later we were joined by Brandon's parents, and my sister Hillary.  Veronica was so excited to see Hillary.  She kept saying, "Hillary wook - Dinosaurs."  Later we all talked about our favorite part of the day and Veronica said her's was, "Seeing Hillary."

 This wasn't Derrick's first time here.  We'd come here in the summer of 2014 when he was two.  Back then he could barely talk.  He couldn't even say "Choo Choo Choo" when he played with his train.  Instead he's say, "Boo Boo Boo."  But when we walked into the park he started growling at all the dinosaurs.  I didn't even know he knew about dinosaurs.

This time he ran around and yelled, "Dinosaur!"  They had some dinosaur noises playing and Derrick would keep saying, "Hear it Mommy? Hear the dinosaur?"

 I really like this place and how each of the dinosaurs is posed differently.  It's fun.

 I kept trying to get a picture of Derrick, but he didn't want to pose for me.  He just wanted to look at the dinosaurs.

 The first time I came to the park was with Brandon when the twins were babies.  Brandon posed with this dinosaur and Charlotte and Lydia have always loved the picture.  Charlotte wanted to reenact it with her.

 Derrick and Veronica wanted to do it too.

 And I like this one of Lydia protecting Charlotte.

 And of course Brandon and I had to jump up there too.  This perfectly illustrates how well we are handling life this year.

A little bit after this picture was taken Derrick did something that surprised me.  He walked by another family and said Hello to a little boy who was about his age.  The boy didn't say anything so Derrick said, "Say Hi" and then the boy said hi.  Derrick showed the boy his "Dinosaur-Train" brochure and said some other stuff.  Then he said bye.  I've never seen Derrick initiate a conversation with a stranger before.  It was amazing. 

 The kids got really into posing in front of the dinosaurs.

 We through this was pretty funny.

 After we had walked by all the statures outside we decided to go inside.  This is where the best part of the whole park was waiting for us.  They have an anamatronic display set up.  The T-Rex and the Tricerotops move and look like they are getting ready for a fight.

 The kids LOVED it.  Derrick and I actually came back to this display a little later and watched it for about 15 minutes.  (Thankfully they have chairs against the wall so we could just sit in those.)

 Last time we came here Charlotte and Lydia had been so worried about the baby dinosaurs that they had prayed to Heavenly Father to keep them safe.  Charlotte was still pretty concerned about them.

 There were also gems and other cool rocks on display upstairs.

The rest of the museum was displays of fossils.  

There was a little place for the kids to color.  Derrick gave me a second surprise and said he wanted to color.  He scribbled on a paper while saying, "Rarrr" and then he told me, "It's a dinosaur picture." I've hardly ever seen him scribble, let alone say that he was actually drawing anything.  

 We'd been at the museum for about two hours when everyone decided they were done.  Originally I'd been thinking that we'd find somewhere to roast hot dogs for lunch, but the iffy weather had canceled the plan.  Instead we planned to just go back home and have sandwiches and hot dogs. Derrick was super happy to have all of his favorite foods; hot dogs, chips, and root beer.

 Brandon had bought large french bread loaves and we'd put together a big sandwich before we went to the park.  When we came back to the house all we had to do was cut it.  Everyone could add the whatever extra toppings they wanted.

 After lunch we brought out Derrick's cake and put the toy dinosaurs around it.  Derrick was so excited to see everything.  He kept saying, "Dinosaurs."

 We lit candles and sang Happy Birthday, but Derrick got upset by the loud singing and was kind of flustered with the candles.  That was the only time he was grumpy the whole day.

 He was happier when it came time to eat the cake and ice cream.  Brandon's dad, Steve, put the dinosaur near Derrick's ice cream and Derrick thought it was funny.  All the girls wanted dinosaurs to pretend to eat their ice cream too.

 And then it was present time.  We got Derrick a few things that he would like. ( A train/alphabet puzzel, a plush Charlie Brown doll, and a car garage.)

 But let's be honest here, certain siblings were almost more excited about the toys.

 Derrick's favorite presents were the train hat and train shirt that Steve and Jacque got him.

 I assumed the bought the shirt, but really they hadn't been able to find one they liked.  So being Illguth's they just made one.  Steve drew this train.  Let me repeat that, he drew this train!  He did it on Adobe Illustrator and printed it out on iron-on transfer paper.  Then they ironed it onto the t-shirt.  Derrick wanted to wear it right away.  And he'll probably want to wear it every day for the next week.

That was the end of our plans for Derrick's birthday.  He spent time playing with his toys.  Hillary gave Charlotte and Lydia haircuts, and we later gave Hillary a tour of the RV.  After she left I took Derrick and Veronica to the library.  Derrick had been talking about getting Dumbo from the library for several days so I figured today would be a good day to do that.  We also looked for "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" because Derrick heard about it on a pre-view for another Charlie Brown movie.  Seriously he has been repeating, "I want to watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown on DVD" for at least two weeks. They didn't have that movie, but they did have Dumbo.

On the way back we drove through a crazy storm where it started out raining and then turned to sleet. I'm also pretty certain I saw lightning strike the ground.

Derrick wanted me to watch Dumbo with him so I cuddled up with him on the couch. Watching Dumbo always reminds me of back when Derrick didn't talk at all.  Both of them have big blue eyes and are so expressive even without words.  And I like to think that there are similarities between Dumbo's big ears and Derrick's autism.  Both things can be seen as a problem, but there is also a lot of potential for greatness

As much as I love Dumbo I couldn't stay awake during it.  I've seen that movie like 500 times (it was on Netflix when Veronica was a baby, and now we get it from the library at least once a month).  So I dozed while Derrick and Veronica watched the movie.  Brandon made waffles for dinner and we ate those as soon as the movie was over.

We'd also picked up Wreck it Ralph from the library so we watched that for movie night. It's been about 3 years since we watched that so everyone was really into it.

And then it was bedtime.  Derrick was actually willing to take off his train shirt and hat.  He climbed into bed and just seemed so content.

There are a thousand things I could say about Derrick.  How he's so enthusiastic about things, how he has the most contagious laugh, how he is generally the most cheerful little boy.  But right now I just want to say that I'm so glad he's mine. Derrick is one of a kind. I love all my kids, but there's something about the bond between a mother and her son. I'm glad that he became my buddy 5 years ago.