Museum of Natural Curiosity

Nate's brother Jonathan and his family spent some more time with us this last week. They even stayed with us at our house for a couple days. It was fun to have them here, hang out with them, and play games together. They also took their kids and Austin to the Treehouse Museum Tuesday afternoon while Nate and I went rock climbing nearby. Then we all went to Zuppas for dinner.

Originally we had actually planned to go the the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point Tuesday afternoon. However, due to a few family members getting sick that were going to go with us, that was postponed until Thursday afternoon.

We had never been to this museum before, but as it turned out, it was a great place for kids to explore. The jungle area was particularly fun with its huge maze of ramps, slides, rope bridges, stairs, and other such things to climb around in. Austin loved to go through this area with his cousin Wilcken and with his parents.

It was particularly fun to pretend crash the plane suspended from the ceiling with his dad.

Some of the other activities there were fun for everyone to attempt, such as trying to jump like a frog, hang upside down like a sloth, or flap like a hummingbird:

Or, to just drawing a picture.

Austin also enjoyed building the huge blocks with his cousins.

Additionally, he enjoyed making a stop-motion video, listening to his heart beat, playing musical instruments, and doing a number of other interactive activities. We all had fun playing with the drum set:

Thanksgiving Week

As usual, our Thanksgiving break was very fun-filled.  We ate at Melissa's house along with most of my brothers.  Along with the traditional meal, the kids had fun making candy turkeys and going for a very brief walk to the park and back before freezing too much.

Walking to the park

Making Pinterest-inspired candy Turkeys

We spent Thursday evening with Rebecca's family in Murray for another round of pie, then stayed the night with her parents in Orem.  The next day we watched  her brother Nathan while her parents took her brother Ben to the airport.  Then we met up with my old roommates for a game of racquetball and some pizza with Tom's family.

On Saturday, we drove to Salt Lake again to see the lights at Temple Square.  We didn't stay long due to more bitterly freezing temperatures but it was fun.

After seeing the lights, we hung out at my sister Melissa's house again and had more pizza with a very comforting mug of hot chocolate!  Since we were all together for Thanksgiving, we decided to exchange Christmas gifts then instead of everyone mailing them.  We just did a white-elephant style gift exchange, but with nicer gifts.  I would have preferred just keeping our traditional rotation of giving, but I was out-voted on that one.  Maybe next year. 

As if we hadn't already driven enough, we went back again on Sunday morning for some family pictures and to go to church together so that we could all participate in Jonathan's daughter's baby blessing.

We don't get to see my out-of-state siblings very much, so it was good to spend a few days with them over Thanksgiving.