More staycation fun

On July 18th we did some more staycation activities. First off, we met up with Joy and the kids at the Hill Aerospace Museum in Roy. We checked out the planes outside,

and then inside for more planes and exhibits.

Uncle Tony had a fun time toting baby Brandt around!

The kids had a lot of fun with the hands-on activities and Tony played on the flight simulator.

After a quick detour to Chick-fil-A to pick up some lunch, we met up again at Kangaroo Zoo in Ogden.

The kids got sufficiently worn out and had a great time.

Since we were already in Ogden, I thought it would be fun to continue the journey north and visit the Cold Springs Trout Farm. Each of the kids and Tony caught fish.

The kids also loved throwing handfuls of fish food pellets into the ponds and watching the fish swarm over it.

Sierra and Christian were fascinated by the guy gutting and filleting our fish for us. Yuck!

The weather was beautiful and the grounds are so scenic and serene, we just had to get some photos.

It was a super fun day, but we sure missed our stinkery little cripple ❤

On the 19th skittles got her splint removed and just had a soft bandage put back on.

Just before we left town for the Uintahs, we stopped for gas at the Maverick station and couldn't pass up the Bahama Mama hot dogs being grilled out front. Buddy loved this Batman garbage can there!

We stopped at Upper Provo River Falls on the way to Butterfly Lake since the kids hadn't seen them before.

We actually had a good fishing day! Faith caught two and Tony caught two. I had a ton of nibbles and at least four that I lost while reeling in. They started stocking a new kind of fish called Tiger Trout up there, and boy are they a fighting fish! You would think they are huge by the pull on the line, but they are just modest sized little guys. Faith's both were Tiger Trout like this:

and one of Tony's was regular Rainbow Trout.

It was a really pretty day, a little overcast and not too breezy.

I finally remembered to bring a chair and a book this time, so when I gave up fishing, Skittles and I snuggled up with Insurgent (the second book in the Divergent trilogy. Excellent read!!)

Christian got really good at casting, but still never caught a fish. Luckily he still had an amazing time thanks to playing with fire.

And Faith made a beautiful nature centerpiece for the table :)

When we started for home, we passed by a deer grazing right on the side of the road. The kids loved seeing it, but we made sure to slow way down and keep our eye out for more. A little ways farther down, we saw another. Christian tried to get a picture with his ipod, but it didn't turn out and he was very upset. We said that since we'd seen two, we might just see another and we were all watching out for more. After that, we passed lone deer and groups of deer nearly every mile. We counted more than 30!! It was a little nerve racking for the adults that know how dangerous it is to have that many large animals by the road, but the kids had a blast spotting all the wildlife :)

On the 20th we went to the Ogden Eccles Dinosaur Park with Joy, Jordan and their kids. We read lots of informaion about the different dinos,

and the kids took note in the field journals the kids got there.

Tony got some fun baby time with Brandt,

and the other kids had fun being crazy, as always!

All the other kids

Because of the proximity to Pioneer Day and because we were in Ogden, I thought it would be fun to take the families to Prairie Schooner.

It had been many, many years since any of the adults had been there and it was the kids' first time. We joked around and had some fun,

and the ambience (the reason I picked it) was very fun, but the food was just okay and the prices fairly high. I think it was worth it, though, to sit in covered wagons and check out the campfire and animals in the middle of the room.

Next, we checked out the trains at Ogden Union Station. We didn't pay to go into the museums there, but we watched the model train go around,

got some squished pennies,

and checked out the old trains outside. Look how huge this one is!!

Christian's fear of heights held him back from exploring some of the higher up decks and such, but he was brave and let his dad lift him up for this shot :)

Next, it was on to Farr's for some play dough ice cream.

And then on to the Treehouse Museum. The kids love this giant map with the geography quiz.

Here are some very presidential looking young people.

We even got to go inside a giant inflatable globe. The thing was huge--it fit about 25 people!

My kids loved watching Brandt explore all the hands-on exhibits.

We even made coiled pots out of Crayola Model Magic.

Even though this pic didn't come out very well with the window back lighting, I love seeing Sierra and Christian playing "chess" while Tony and Jordan are playing a smaller set in the background :)

With a little help from dad, these bucking bulls and broncos sure were a lot of fun!

Another super full, super fun day.

July up to beginning of staycation

On July 2nd the craziest thing happened. The kids and I were sitting around the house in complete silence (and how often does that ever happen??), Faith up in the loft at the computer, me sitting on my bed, and Buddy eating breakfast at the kitchen table, when all of a sudden Skittles started screaming/yelping at the top of her lungs. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen where she was lying on her back at the foot of the stairs.

Losing 140 lbs has made my blood pressure a little low, so sometimes my vision blacks out when I stand up too fast. No biggie, it's a small price to pay, but in this instance I forgot that and ended up passing out when I reached the kitchen! I was only out for a second, but when I came to, the kids were bawling--so worried about Skittles and not knowing what had happened to me!

The only thing that we can figure had happened is that she fell down some stairs and landed crazy on the tile at the bottom. It is weird, though, that we were all so close to where it went down, but didn't see or hear anything until the injury. Maybe she just missed that last step.

We finally calmed the puppy down and noticed that she was now limping on her right front leg. She is a huge baby about any pain at all (if she runs into the wall and bumps her head a little she'll scream for a full two minutes after it happens), so I felt her leg and paw carefully and did not think it was broken. She didn't whine about it any more, but she wouldn't put any pressure on it, either. Poor thing, we waited until the next day to take her to the vet (to be fair, I called that day but they didn't have an appointment until then).

When they x-rayed the leg, they found that she had broken the tip off her elbow (which is up high in dogs, closer to the shoulder, and protrudes quite a bit) and would need surgery and pins to get it to heal correctly. They couldn't get her in until after the holiday, so they wrapped it up with a splint and sent us on our way with some pain meds for her.

Here is how she looked on the 4th of July. You can see that Faith, Christian, and Dusty (aided by Faith) had signed her "cast".

She was to be doing minimal walking, so we carried her with us to the Kaysville City celebration.

We're not big on parades, so we got our fill of it while walking to the booth area from where we parked a mile away. We perused the jewelry and wares, ate some snow cones,

 and did some inflatables!

Buddy picked up some magnetic marbles and Faith got this cute flower ring.

I had to work that afternoon, but Tony took the kids over to his parents' for their traditional barbecue. Tammy was going to take the kids mini golfing instead of fireworks (because it had been so dry and the fire danger was extremely high up where they live on the benches), but Boondocks had closed early for the holiday. She brought Zach over to our house, I finished up work, and we did the fireworks we'd picked up in Evanston on our way home from the Uintahs. Now that the aerial ones are legal here, we have a lot more fun on the 4th!! We did have a scare when a passing car knocked over one and it shot at us, but luckily we had a good, safe time.

On the 5th, Skittles went in bright and early for her surgery. We got her back that afternoon and she was a sleepy little girl.

I also got a shot of our baby birds. They're so big that they're busting out of that little nest! I'm so glad that all four made it this year.

The next day they started to test out their wings and finally got strong enough to fly away. Bye-bye birdies :)

The 16th was the beginning of Tony's July vacation from work, but I'm not sure what we did that day. Probably just vegged with the kids and watched some movies.

On the 17th we did another candy factory tour. This time it was at Taffy Town.

They make the absolute best saltwater taffy, ever. We always go out of our way to purchase taffy at the shop, and if we want to buy it on Saturdays (because they are closed), we go to Gardner Village to get it. The tour was very intimate (just our family), very informative, and lots of fun! We got to sample fresh taffy and then, of course, bought tons more. Love those hair nets!

After that we went to The Living Planet Aquarium. We probably spent over two hours, cumulatively, petting the stingrays.

The jellyfish were favorites, as always.

And we couldn't pass up the frog riding photo op.

Buddy wanted to make sure I got a pic of these awesome shark teeth,

and our penguin fun.

Amazingly, and I hope I don't jinx this from ever happening again by mentioning it, Christian did not throw a fit when he didn't get to pick something from the souvenir shop!!!!!!!!!!! We just had a quick look, tried on an otter mask, and went on.

We did allow a squished penny, and the kids loved making those.

We hadn't been to Chuck-A-Grandma's for over a year since (because of my surgery) I don't eat enough for it to be worth the cost. But we decided to splurge for our staycation, and the kids enjoyed loading their plates up and then only eating half the food, as per kids' buffet tradition.

That evening we went to the Clark Planetarium. We very much enjoyed their new displays.

We picked up our tickets for the show and then perused the Gateway for awhile.

At the Rocky Mountain Candy Company the kids were treated to bubblegum ice cream, which they had been begging for lately. Tony got chocolate dipped strawberries and I got a sugar-free mint truffle.

Back to the planetarium!

We went to the live narrated show called "Night Vision." It was very interesting, but the narrator was not quite as fun as the one we had last year. Here we are in the dome theater.

A super fun start to our staycation!