On April 9th the kids and I finally made it to Baby Animal Days at the American West Heritage Center! I've been meaning to take the kids for five or six years now and it was so fun that I now know we were really missing out. There were so many adorable baby animals to pet!

ducklings

chicks

the bunnies were a huge hit

We couldn't hold the bear cubs, but they sure were adorable. You can see from the picture how excited Christian was to see them!

Here's a short video of them:

Even though Easter was over, they had the Easter Bunny there for pictures. I should have taken several so I could have one with Buddy's eyes open, but I felt a little bad that I wasn't buying the picture from them, so we didn't take up too much of their time.
Somehow the kids talked me into paying four bucks for them to each do the giant inflatable slide three times.
We also had fun checking out their American West stuff.

I let the kids each make a beaded neclace but told them to keep it to around a dollar each (the beads were different prices and they just add up the cost when the child is done). The first item Faith finds is an arrowhead attached to a slice of wood which is a dollar on it's own, but Christian seemed happy with the penny beads so I let her pick it. Both necklaces only cost me $1.73!

We got to see what life was like living in a dugout and having an outdoor kitchen,

meet a mountain man,

see a sheep sheared with olden-day scissor clippers,

and how to spin that wool into yarn.

It was difficult to pull the kids away from the kids :)

And it tugged at my heartstrings to see this little lamb having a "bub". I can't believe that my own little sucklings are already giant kids, sometimes I lose my mind a little and long for the days with a newborn.

We did the Utah history trail quiz, but got a little cold as you can see.

We needed to head back to town and drop off a sleeping Buddy with my mom and dad so that Faith and I could have a night at the theater! Grandma Braegger took us to see Les Misérable at Bonneville High (Lana, Tina, Jason, Tyler, Tammy, Tony and mom: only dorks go to Bonneville, right ???). I was super excited since I've been obsessed with the music for twenty years and know 95% of the words to the songs, but had never seen the production.

We loved it even though we roasted in that auditorium! I'm such a great mom approving my eight year old daughter to see Les Mis. It's themes of transformation, compassion and redemption completely extenuate all the depravity, whoredom, suicide, violence and death {cough, cough}.