Spring Fever

Well not last weekend, but the one before that Molly had some girl conference at church that I had forgotten about and I was all psyched up to have a productive day so when she reminded me she would be gone, I decided that I needed to do something fun with the kids since I wouldn't be able to get the yard things done that I wanted to do while watching them. So I decided to take them to the zoo. That is always a crowd pleaser. Until we get there. Then Leisel and Lila just want to go to the playground and Zoe and Luke and I want to see some animals. And of course I try to say they can play when we are done looking at animals but the playgrounders just whine at me the whole time that they just want to play. I still had a good time though. It was pretty good weather for the zoo. Not hot at all, but sunny, light jacket weather. The little elephant is still everyone's favorite I think. Here is a picture of everyone trying to cram onto the fake elephants trunk. This wasn't my idea, by the way. I told them it would be too crowded. But obviously, I am not in charge anymore.
And here is Lila helping Leisel on the monkey chains at the playground that we eventually got to.

And here are Zoe, Luke, and Ethnie feeding the geese.

And here is Ethnie's first "Ethnie in the egg" picture. You can't really tell, but this is a giant egg that the kids like to sit in at the zoo park.

Well, the zoo was fun but on the drive home I decided to turn off at the Saltair exit and drive down past the marina on the Great Salt Lake to a big rock that just sits out there by the lake. I had never driven out there before and I just wanted to have a look at it up close. The kids loved it. They were all over that rock. I could not get them to come down once they realized the joys of rock climbing. It kinda freaked me out at first but then I relaxed and just let them climb.

Here is Leisel on the rock about halfway up.
And here are the rest of them near the bottom. I love Luke's new hands-on-hips pose.


And here they are on their merry way up to the top.


It was fun until they got to the top and where running around all over the place. Then I decided I had better leave the baby with Zoe (who left the others about halfway up to go back to safer ground) and go after them. Once I got up there with them and saw how close they were getting to the edge and how crazy they were being, running around all over the loose scree without a care in the world, I started having a bit of a panic attack and decided it was time to go see the lake. So I got them all down , which they learned is a lot harder than going up and we went out to the lake.

Here they all are sitting on the sand halfway between the water and the rock. You can see the rock in the background. I guess they all decided it would be fun to highlight the fact that they were sitting on sand, by holding a handful of sand out.

It was beautiful. Here are the older four walking out to the water.

And here is Ethnie hanging back to check out a cool rock.

And a couple more shots of them playing near the water.

And one more shot of the whole family (minus me) because they are cute.

Ok and one more of Ethnie playing Wii Fit because it is a fun picture and makes me smile.

So it was a fun little trip and we got to get some of our spring fever taken care of. Today it has snowed all day and there is about 4" of it outside. And it is still snowing and is supposed to snow tomorrow too. So much for spring. I guess that means I need to go snowboarding again. Maybe I will do that Friday night. Or maybe not. We'll see.