Dinosaurs, Swimming in the Lake, and Upcoming Ultrasounds

So, this upcoming week will be an exciting one. Tomorrow is the big day: Kolby and Eli start preschool, and then in the afternoon we are going for the ultrasound. The boys’ first day of school isn’t really a normal day, it’s an orientation day for them to go and meet their teacher and see the classroom. So they will then officially start on Tuesday. Kolby will go 4 days a week (Monday through Thursday) and Eli will go on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Their class is at the perfect time of day: 9am to noon (so they will still be able to keep to their schedule of naptime after lunch). And on the days Eli goes he will be in the same class as Kolby. Their teacher is Mrs. Dora, and she has two aids in the classroom too. We were excited when we went to the parent meeting last week to find out that the aids both speak Spanish, and we asked them if they would try to use Spanish with our boys too, so that will be nice. We went the other day and the boys each picked out a new backpack and a folder to keep papers in, and they were excited about that. (One nice thing about this preschool starting a couple weeks later than most of the other schools around here is being able to get backpacks on sale for 30% off). And after naps I have my ultrasound tomorrow at 3pm, so that will be nice to find out if this baby is a boy or a girl so we can finalize a name and I can get a little more prepared (like getting a baby book started and picking up clothes, if needed). So tomorrow is a big day. We also have Camden’s birthday party next week, so that should be exciting too. And then next week we are going to head for San Diego to visit while Michael starts his busy ICU rotation here. Then we’ll get back here just in time to celebrate Isaac’s and Kolby’s birthdays, go to a pumpkin patch, and celebrate Halloween.

So, this week went pretty well, although it was kind of tiring since Michael hadn’t had a day off for almost 2 weeks until Thursday, so it was nice once he did get that break. On Monday it was my mom’s birthday, so we got to call her and the boys enjoyed singing “Happy Birthday” to her on the phone. On Tuesday and Wednesday we ran several errands and on Wednesday I took Eli and Camden in for a doctor’s visit.

We did get to go do something fun earlier this week. Grandma Faun had a dentist’s appointment up in Ogden (where she used to live), and so we drove her up there and then afterwards we went to the Dinosaur Park there in Ogden. It is a fun park where she took us when we were kids too. We got there, and they started us out in their small indoor museum before going out to the park. The only problem was when we got off the elevator for the museum we came out into a dark room with a scene behind a fence with a triceratops and her little babies and a tyrannosaurus. These were the only robotic dinosaurs in the whole park, but the tyrannosaurus moving it’s head and arms and roaring loudly was enough to thoroughly freak Eli out. He started crying and saying he didn’t want to go that way. I tried to explain to him that the dinosaurs weren’t real – that they were robots made by people and that the noises were just recordings, but he told me then that he didn’t want to go by the robots. We convinced him after a little while to continue through the museum, even though he didn’t want to pass the large dinosaur skeletons. Then we went outside, where there were lots of different dinosaur statues as you walked through trails in the park, and there were recordings of dinosaur noises playing from the bushes and trees. Eli went along, but wasn’t to excited about all of it. Kolby thought it was great, as he walked through very slowly and quietly, pretending to be hiding from the dinosaurs. At last I found one of the dinosaurs that was close enough to the edge of the trail that we could reach it, so I had Eli feel the dinosaur and then feel a rock next to it, and see that they felt like they were made out of the same material. I said, “See, I told you they weren’t real.” And he responded, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” (As if he hadn’t been there for the last 20 minutes while I told him repeatedly that the dinosaurs weren’t real and the noises were just recordings). After that he was pretty much ok, although I’m still not sure that he didn’t think that the dinosaur he touched was the only fake one and all the others (especially those robotic ones) were really real. But we walked through the whole park, and the boys enjoyed it. At the end there was a playground with a giant slide and some little dinosaurs they could climb on, so it was a fun afternoon. They all fell asleep in the car within a few minutes of leaving the park, except for Kolby who stayed awake the whole drive back to Salt Lake. Afterwards we stopped at Costco for a few things Grandma needed, and we ended up having dinner at the food court there, and all I can say about that nice little experience is that I look forward to the day somewhere down the road when I can sit down to eat a meal without having to hurry and eat it all before the kids finish their food and start in on why they are still starving and should be ale to share my meal. Who knows when that will be?

On Thursday Michael fortunately got the day off, so he was able to go with me to the parent’s meeting for the preschool class, and we liked the teacher and are excited for the boys to start this week. Then we decided to take the boys swimming in the afternoon, so we checked the pool schedule on the rec. center’s website, got all the kids into their swim suits, and headed to the pool. We were disappointed when we got there to find that the pool was closed for maintenance for the week. We called several other local rec. centers, and found that they were also all closed too. And we were told that all the outdoor pools in the area closed on Labor Day. So, we walked back out to the car and were trying to think of something else fun to do on Michael’s day off (without having to take everyone back home and change again), and we decided to go to the Great Salt Lake. I had swum there a few times before when I was younger, but Michael never had. We found, after being in the car for quite a while, that the entrance to Antelope Island was a lot further north than we had realized, and we had to drive through bad traffic on the freeway to get there. When we arrived at 4pm, we had to pay $9 to get into the “park” (which I guess wasn’t so bad, since we would have paid about that much for our whole family to swim at the rec. center anyways). We drove across the road, and as soon as we got to the island we saw two big buffalo walking slowly towards us and across the road right behind our van. That was pretty fun for the boys. When we got there, there was nice soft beach sand around the parking lot, so I decided we should leave our sandals in the car rather than end up carrying all of the boys’ sandals for them. That ended up being an unwise decision, because after we got a ways down the beach (too far to run back to the car quickly to get the sandals), the sand became rocky and hurt our feet for the rest of the long walk down to the water (the water was pretty low, and it took us quite a while to walk that far with the boys). We got down to the water, and at least it was pretty warm. Michael was pretty excited that he could float with no effort at all because of the high salt content of the water, especially since he has trouble floating in a pool. He tried to get all the boys to do it with him, but none of them were excited about that idea. Camden did have fun, though, sitting on Michael’s stomach while he was floating on his back, so Michael was like a human inner tube. The boys were not as excited about swimming in the salty water as their daddy was, and we ended up returning to the shore and building castles before too long. We listened to a coyote howl for a while as we sat on the beach. Then we got back to the car and drove around the island for a little bit – the boys got to see several more buffalo and an antelope all pretty close up, so that was fun. Then we had a long drive home before we could eat anything, since we smelled pretty strongly of Salt Lake water, we couldn’t stop at a restaurant to eat and we didn’t want any drive-through food. We got home later than planned, but it was a fun outing. I think that swimming in the Great Salt Lake is something that is good to do once, but probably not a favorite new day trip for each weekend, since the water just smells so strong.

Thursday night was supposed to be my night out with Kolby, but since we took so long getting home from the lake that night we decided to do it Friday instead. I had the idea of taking him to a movie, since we haven’t taken the boys to a movie since Cars was in the dollar theater, which had to have been when Camden was a little baby. I looked online, and there was a kid’s movie playing at the dollar theater nearby that I hadn’t even heard of, but it was rated G and it looked like it would be good. So we went and I didn’t tell Kolby what we were going to do, just that it was a surprise. We got the tickets, went into the theater, and sat down while the previews were playing, and then I asked him if he knew what the surprise was yet, and he said no. (I guess it really has been a long time since we took them to a movie). I told him we were seeing a movie, and he got really excited. I told him that we don’t talk out load during a movie, so he kept asking me throughout the previews when the movie was starting so that he would know when he needed to start whispering. About 5 minutes into the movie Kolby moved to sit on my lap, and we enjoyed the whole thing together. And the movie ended up being pretty good for a kid’s movie that I hadn’t even heard of before – sure, it had it’s corny scenes, but for the most part it was cute and better than I had expected. It was called Kitt Kitteredge, about a little girl and her friends who lived during the depression. Kolby was really excited for our night out, and he is still carrying the stubs of the movie tickets around with him.

Well, yesterday I was sick all afternoon (the morning sickness just randomly comes back every once in a while). I was glad that I was feeling all right by the time Michael got off, because he had had a good day at work and wanted to go out, since he didn’t have to go back into work this morning. We went to the dollar theater and saw Indiana Jones, which I thought was pretty good – it reminded me a lot of the old Indiana Jones movies – until the kid started swinging through the trees with the monkeys and the monkey proceeded to help him attack the evil Russian soldiers – I thought that was pretty unbelievable. And then the whole ending about the aliens just really didn’t fit in with Indiana Jones as an archeologist – they could have come up with a better idea for that part of the movie. Other than that, I thought it was pretty good, having been warned by friends before seeing it that there were some cheesy parts and a few corny jokes.

So, today Michael had another day off, since he hadn’t had a break for a while so he got two days off not very far from each other. He wanted to go back and visit his old ward at the church he grew up going to in South Jordan, so we went down there this morning. We found out, though, that it was their stake conference, which meant we had a longer meeting to sit through with our boys and Michael didn’t get to see as many old friends as he had hoped, but he did get to talk to several families he knew, which he enjoyed. (If only our stake conference wasn’t coming up next Sunday, when Michael doesn’t have the day off – don’t get me wrong, I think stake conference is great, but it’s just too long for babies to sit through for 2 hours of talking without a break. That’s why it’s nice that they always have an adult meeting on the preceding Saturday night, so those of us who have young children can feel like we get something out of at least one of the meetings – but for some reason they don’t have an adult meeting in our ward this year. Who knows why?)

So, we were able to get a hold of Michael’s cousin, Andy, and his wife Michelle, and they are coming up here for dinner tonight. That should be nice to see them. Their daughter is not much younger than Kolby, and our kids have never met each other.

Well, we hope you all have a good week, and we’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on the findings of the ultrasound tomorrow.