Salt Lake in 12 hours

Randy had a work meeting in Salt Lake on a weekday.  He had to borrow Matt and Tori's car because our old reliable red rusty Civic finally bit the dust. Tori was planning on spending the weekend with her family in Salt Lake for the weekend. She called me at work so we could try to car pool down to salt lake the next morning so I could pick up Randy and Tori could have her car back. 

I had to work a graveyard shift so Tori was my chauffeur. There was no way I could have driven myself, I was so tired. 

Since Randy was in meetings we took the kids to the new Natural History Museum. Tori took her 4th grade class on a field trip there and thought Brad would love it. She was right. It was AMAZING!!

I was so impressed. The new building was so beautiful and creative. 

I was shocked at how many dinosaur bones Utah owns. I was also surprised at how big they actually were. I guess I pictured them much smaller in my head. 

They had really cool displays under glass floors. It felt weird to walk across them. Harrison took one step on the glass and it totally freaked him out. He wanted to be carried across. There was no way to convince him it was safe. 

The kids were engrossed with all the hands on exhibits. They loved touching everything. They even had smell buttons to see what things might have smelled like. Sensory overload. 

Even though Harrison didn't understand a word from the information phones he still acted like he was very interested in the fun facts. 

The top of the building had a weather exhibit. You could see across the whole valley from the balcony. It was stunning.  It made me miss Salt Lake for a very brief moment. Then I got over it really fast. I love Cache Valley WAY too much. 

One of my favorite parts was the natural disaster exhibit. they had some really cool stuff from recent natural disasters. I guess it hit me because it was stuff from my generation. It hit home. I will never forget some those feelings of panic. 

After we fueled our brains we had to feed out bellies. We were hungry. Tori took us to her old stomping grounds during High School. We ate at Shivers. She said she used to hang out there all the time and order their yummy fries and shakes.  

The kids loved eating in the train. Brad is almost to the age where things like this are no longer "cool". I was happy to see that he still wanted to sit in the train to eat. 

After ice-cream we stopped at Dr. Shakula's office. Harrison had a fever all day so I wanted to make sure he didn't have an ear infection. Thank goodness he didn't. I really didn't want to deal with ear problems again. Knock on wood but so far this summer we have not had one ear infection. 

Then we stopped at a couple of DI's looking for Harry Potter books for Tori's classroom. 

By the end of the day I was pooped and ready to go home. But,  totally worth the quick trip.