The Tangrens

Since Derek had a week off, we were trying to decide what we wanted to do. Derek suggested that we go up to the Zoo or Tracey Aviary. I thought that was a great idea and was telling my friend about it and she said that there is this thing called the Salt Lake City Connect pass. It basically lets you into 14 different "attractions" around the Salt Lake area for a certain price depending on how many days you want to use it. We decided to get three days and as it turned out they were having a deal that if you bought two days you got the third FREE! This could not get any better! We decided to spend one night in SLC to maximize our second day so we mapped out our path and woke up early on Wednesday morning and got going.

We started at...

You forget how big these animals are

We also saw how we measured up against orangutans.

Hyrum wanted Baby Noah to "stand" there too but he was sleeping.

Here's proof that Noah was here. I took this picture while Hyrum played on the animal park.

At one point Hyrum said that he wanted to see the lion. We were sure we'd seen everything but we looked at the map and didn't see a lion. We were confused. We told him there wasn't a lion and headed to a different animal. Then we went past the drinking fountain...

We ended our zoo trip with the Bird Show. Hyrum was excited.

There was a barn owl that looked like a perfectly toasted marshmallow, chickens, pigeons, Harry Potter type owls, falcons, and eagles (among others of course). Soo fun!

You can kinda see the bald eagle behind Noah's head to the right.

From there we headed to

Hyrum spotted this right off the bat

He was slightly nervous to be so close to it but loved it just the same.

Taking it all in

Checking out the brine shrimp. Guess we can save ourselves the 15 dollars we would have spent on sea monkeys.

To the dig pit

This little boy running through the dig pit had a shirt that had "Miscreant" written on the front and then the definition on the back ( which is depraved or villainous). Nice.

Hyrum tried his hand at putting together a dinosaur.

From there we were headed to the hotel to check in and relax a bit then headed to Red Butte Gardens. We walked up to go into the gardens and they said that they were closed early because of a Joan Baez concert. Dumb Joan Baez! :) We were bummed.

We'd told Hyrum that we were going to go swimming after the gardens and he was soo excited ( which we were a little surprised about) so he wasn't too upset about not getting into the gardens. But as we drove back past temple square it just felt too weird to be in SLC without going to temple square. So we decided to stop.

They recently put a 1:32 scale model of the Salt Lake temple with cut away walls revealing what is inside the temple. It took 16 model makers 5 months to make this amazingly detailed model and it was a really cool thing to see even having been in the temple. They have a touch computer screen where you can see a room and hear about it's purpose. Hyrum was fascinated with it. He especially liked the oxen and the Angel Moroni.

We would have stayed longer but there were actual non members there and we thought they deserved to be front in line.

We headed over to the Church history and Art Museum but stopped for a drink on the way

With all of Hyrum's thirty pounds jumping on this foot push valve he couldn't make it go

but he had a little help from dad.

We walked through the Church history portion of the museum. Hyrum was a lot more interested in it than I thought he would.

We headed to the Primary section which he really liked.

After that we decided to head back to the hotel for some swimming. We remembered everything this time. Hyrum was so excited.

I debated taking my camera down to the pool. Ultimately I decided not to but I wish I had. Hyrum started with his normal sitting on the side of the pool indecision. I got him into the pool to spin around. Then dad got in with him and started him "swimming" kicking his feet. He thought it was great! By the end he tried floating in the water by himself trying to keep himself upright in the water with his life jacket on. He didn't want to leave.

While Derek and Hyrum were "swimming" around the pool, Noah and I were walking around the pool too. He was a little tired ( it was probably 9:30 or later when we started swimming) and probably a little nervous as well and ended up sucking on my shoulder. Lovely.

It's a good thing that I don't wear sleeveless shirts or tank tops.

We went to bed late exhausted from our fun and full day. We woke up ready for the next fun and full day.