Vacation 2010!

I LOVE vacation time.  Summer is great, but tends to spiral into an uncontrollable chaos.  Vacations are wonderful for the forced family time that leaves you completely exhausted by the end of it!  I’m serious!  I really do enjoy it!   Why do I love it so much?  Because where else can you make memories like THIS:

and THIS:

 

THIS:

THIS:

and even THIS:

I love my family and our crazy vacations together!  This year we let the girls choose, and ended up having a “stay-cation” to….

ODGEN, UTAH!  It was SO much FUN!  We had lots of crazy adventures.  We even forgot some stuff we needed at home, but luckily it was only a 45 min drive!  We started our trip by heading to the Hill Aerospace Museum.  Jason love love LOVES this museum, and has a large plethora of knowledge about the different planes and helicopters.  The girls really enjoyed seeing them too!  They each picked favorites.  We got to go inside a couple of helicopters—even ones we weren’t really supposed to because we met the director of the museum!  There is a little kid area with flight suits and simulators that the girls loved playing with.  We even got to see Air Force One!  Too bad we didn’t get inside that one.

 

Then we headed to Union Station.  We went to 3 different museums inside and got to go see inside some real train cars in the yard area too.  The girls loved the trains!  They each got a train whistle to drive us crazy happily enjoy the rest of the trip!

We of course stayed in a hotel and had many many hours of swimming time!!

Jared loved his little boat!

 

We went and saw the Ogden temple.  The girls always love to see other temples!

We all cozied up and “slept” at night!

We spent an entire day at the Treehouse Children’s Museum which is THE BEST Children’s Museum around!!!  There are so many fun things to see and do and play!

We loved the milk cow that you could really milk!

The rodeo was sure a favorite.  It was hard to get Lily and Michaela off the horses!

Savannah loved playing school in the old fashioned schoolhouse.

Jared found some drums to bang on.

And the medieval area was our last and longest stop with the stage, dress-ups and figurine play area.

 

It was hard to get the girls to leave!  I wish we lived closer and could go every day! 

We also went to the Dinosaur Park.  Lily was very frightened when we first walked into the yard and she saw the dinosaurs, but after realizing they weren’t real, all three had a blast following all the trails and finding all the dinosaurs!

They all chose a souvenir here too.  Savannah got a gem necklace, Lily an egg with a baby dinosaur, Jared some dinosaur toys, and Michaela…..here is what she chose:

She loves it, and surprisingly, it’s not broken yet!

We went to the Nature Center, which is a nature preserve.  I wasn’t sure if we would like this, but everyone had a good time!  They have quite a variety of unique birdhouses.

Then we got to see some neat wildlife really up-close! 

We went to Fort Buenaventura and rode in a canoe.  Jason and I got really good and were quite fast zipping up and down the lake! 

We also saw some teepees and the fort.  (My girls also mastered the art of strange poses throughout this vacation.  I wonder if they were sick of posing…)

We went to Cherry Hill and spent the day in the sun!

We took the girls bowling!  They sure do love that!!

And we ended our trip back at Cherry Hill for some Mini golf.  We were hot and tired, and this quickly turned into get your ball in the hole as fast as you can so we can go home!!  Lily was good for about one swing, and then would pick up her ball and set it in the hole! 

We are so happy we were able to have such a great time making fun memories together!  We are already looking forward to next summer’s vacation!!