Mini Vacation Part 3

Aug 20 - We had one last day of fun planned with our special passes. We spent our Saturday at Thanksgiving Point. We had only been there to the museum before, but our passes included a bunch of stuff so we decided to start at the gardens since we had never been there! They were gorgeous and HUGE! We had a great time touring them and seeing all the flowers and even a big waterfall! It was SO pretty!
Rylee wanted her picture taken with ALL the different flowers. I was happy to oblige! I would like my backyard to look like THIS!

An attempt to get all 3 looking at the camera....
More pictures of Rylee with flowers. This time they were PINK flowers.
We tried to get one of me with the kids by the pond.... Not so successful!
Avery watching the fish at the koi pond. They loved that! I think the highlight for the kids was renting the golf cart. We weren't planning on that at first, but once we saw how BIG the gardens were, we decided it would be the best idea since Darren had a knee brace on for his torn ACL and we had 3 small children who whine about walking... It was a good investment!!!
I loved all the different settings they had there!
I want one of these for my backyard, too. Ok.... It would probably have to be a little smaller, but it was so pretty. And perfect for our Little Princess to take a picture with.
I loved the roof of it!
Her hair is always in her face....
My kids always teach me to stop and smell the flowers. Logan really wanted to smell every single different one!
These stairs were amazing! Water is always so exciting!
Another fountain - I think they look so cute sitting there and chatting. They really are the best of friends...most of the time! Don't leave me behind!!!
Cruising in our golf cart!
Logan by some of the little waterfalls that led to the big one. He was hard to get pictures of because he was always running to the next thing!
Just trying out some tricks with the camera...
This was the waterfall. Pretty neat, huh? The kids were totally amazed by it! Especially after Logan read that it was one of the biggest man made waterfalls in the world! Someone was nice enough to take a family picture for us. And they did a pretty good job, too!!!
My boys
Just before we left the gardens! What a fun thing to see! Next, we met Grandma and Grandpa Webber for a yummy lunch at one of the restaurants at Thanksgiving Point. It was delicious! Poor Avery fell asleep and missed almost the whole thing. We had to wake her up right at the end so she could have some food. Then we headed for more fun...
Our next stop was the dinosaur museum. We didn't have a ton of time and we had been there about a year before so we went through it kind of fast. The first room we saw was full of fun hands on science experiments. Logan looks a little nervous about this spinning wheel....
But he thought it was pretty neat when he looked inside! The girls trying out another experiment
Avery watching a real paleontologist work
Logan wants to be a paleontologist someday...or a basketball player...or a doctor... so he wanted his picture taken here and liked learning more about what paleontologists do.
Rylee by the GIANT Superasaurus bone! Logan as a raptorThe kids kind of remembered things from our last trip to the museum, so they made their way to the water table pretty fast. They loved playing here! They worked hard on building their little sections and collecting dinosaurs and Avery just loved touching the sand and the water. Logan's dam - Too bad there were so many other kids and some that were little stinkers! They kind of ruined some of the fun by crashing what the kids worked so hard to build! I hate that! The hardest part of these kind of places for me is dealing with other people's kids that are not nice. I hate when other kids are mean to mine. It brings out the mother bear in me!
Avery loved this cute little dinosaur - It was just her size! All 3 kids taking a ride. I think this is a Protoceratops?
Logan and the BIG battling T-rexes
Logan and a Triceratops - He liked these dinos a lot better. Only bones and they didn't move or make any sound!
Logan and the giant sea turtle
All the kids and Daddy looking at the Mammoth - We did make BIG progress here! Last time we came, Logan saw the giant shark in the next room that was a Megalodon and wouldn't go in there! Unfortunatley, it was the only way out of the museum so we had to drag him kicking and screaming. He went through this time on his own. With his eyes closed. I had to promise him we would hurry right through. No pictures.
And every good trip to a dinosaur park or musuem always ends with digging for bones. Avery was DONE by this point, so her and Daddy went and hung out in the lobby while Logan and Rylee found some discoveries digging.
One last picture before we left the musuem

Our pass included a couple more things, but we were almost out of time for the day. Since we had already gone to This is the Place and rode ponies, we decided to skip that part of Thanksgiving Point and try the Children's garden. I wish I would have been a little more prepared for what was there.
I love these pictures of Avery! She was pretty bothered that other kids were splashing and getting her wet. It didn't take her too long to decide getting wet was fun but she wanted no part of it at first! Logan getting wet.... I had no idea what kind of splash pad was here and I wish I would have! The kids ended up completely soaked and we still had a long drive home ahead of us. I told the kids to just run in the water, but that of course, did not work. They ended up laying in it, rolling in it and sliding down the ark and getting SO wet and dirty (and the girls had on WHITE shorts!) and splashing each other.... Ugh! I wish I would have brought them a change of clothes and then this wouldn't have stressed me out so bad.
This one was the most wild! But, she was having a lot of fun. Rylee and some more flower picturesWe finally pulled the kids away from the water fountains and had them walk around some of the trails. There were some fun caves to explore and a big pond. Unfortunately, we didn't make it all the way around the garden. The kids kept running away and we had told them to stay with us, so we finally decided we needed to leave so they had a consequence for not listening so many times.... Kind of a bad way to end our fun weekend but I think we were all a little burned out! Avery wasn't too happy that the other kids were out of the stroller and she wasn't, so she ended up back in the fountain, too. She has some of the funniest facial expressions.
They did run through these fountains a couple more times before we left. And got even more soaked for the drive home...

A few last splashes....
The plan for the end of the day was to go up to Snowbird and ride the tram since that was also on the pass, but after everyone getting soaked and everyone being a little bit grouchy, we decided to just head home instead. We had a great weekend celebrating the end of summer! Even if it didn't end as planned. I think we packed in a little too much fun to our 3 day vacation!