Fun With Visitors

In January, we had a few visitors come and had a lot of fun playing around with them. (I am really slow on posting these pictures, but what else is new!) My little brother Kyle came home from Utah with us and spent the week and the kids LOVED having him here! At the end of the week, my sister Heather and her husband Jay came to pick Kyle up and we had fun doing some stuff around town with them.
One day, I took the kids to Bass Pro Shops. Kyle loved it and so did Logan. They liked all the stuffed animals and especially loved the fish tanks – I think they could have watched the tropical fish forever! They were both so mesmerized by it! And so was Rylee – She LOVES fish! She loved watching them all swimming around and had a great time. She also loved to point at them!

Darren also took Kyle to Walking with Dinosaurs at the Thomas and Mack. They said it was very awesome! It was like lifesize models of dinos that walked around the arena. They both really enjoyed it and Kyle was talking about it for the rest of his visit.

We did some shopping at the outlets with my sister and her husband and watched a few movies with them. Kyle also conviced Darren it was warm enough to swim and ended up FREEZING!!!
We also went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. We had never been there before and always wanted to go and it was pretty neat. Logan really enjoyed it. He is still talking about all the sharks he saw and everything. They also had a crocodile and some fish and piranhas and sting rays and jelly fish and sea turtles and other sea animals. It was really cool – I think Logan was pretty nervous around some of the bigger ones, but he really liked it overall. He got to see the sting rays up close – I don’t think he dared to touch them – Darren did and Logan thought it was great, but he didn’t want to touch them himself. Kyle was really into it too, although at the end he said he was a little disappointed they didn’t have a great white or tiger shark Rylee really loved watching all the fish too! She even did the sign for fish! She was watching them so intensely so I showed her the sign for fish and she did it right back and then kept doing it throughout our visit. We all had a really fun time and got to listen to info on these little phone things about all the different fish – I think Darren and Kyle both really liked that. A lot of the shark parts were built so that you were kind of in the middle of the tank and the sharks were swimming by you and over you. It was pretty neat. The biggest one was a huge tank that looked like a sunken ship and there were sharks and stuff everywhere – They even also had some HUGE sea turtles. It was really awesome and the kids loved being able to see them at all angles!
We had a great time with everyone being around - The kids loved all the attention! Logan was pretty sad to see the whole crowd leave. He had so much fun being entertained by everyone (and entertaining them!) and he was pretty bored for awhile after they left. Rylee even started to do pretty well with everyone and I think she missed having a crowd to pay attention to her too. We love our family and any chance to hang out with them!