Sophie and sand

Yes, the way to get this girl happy is to put her in a sandbox...
or take her hiking up Little Wild Horse slot canyon.
She was a pretty good hiker.
Of course we only went about 3 miles total of the 8.5 mile loop,
and we took several hours,
and stopped a lot to play.
I figured, why press things?
Quit while you're ahead, then everybody has a good time.
Especially with kids.
She was tired the last half mile or so,
and I had to bribe her with candy.
But though there were some moans of 'I'm tired,'
there were no tantrums or tears,
so I got off lucky.
Even Ethan didn't complain too much
(though his feet were wet and sandy from the puddles.)
They all did very well.

Kids and Puddles

We went to central Utah to play with rocks and canyons.
Our main slot canyon experience also included puddles
(to my surprise- I wasn't expecting them!)
They weren't very deep but they were cold and muddy.
I had chacos so I just waded.
Benjamin practiced some basic canyoning skills and went above the water.
Ethan waded, reluctantly.
Sophie waded with great enthusiasm.

The photo above is a good example of the contrasting approaches
to trying to avoid the water.
The photo below is probably my very favorite of Sophie.

Sophie is hard to photograph because she puts on
a very obvious 'camera smile' and it is hard to capture her real smile.
This was pretty good.
Also it shows her passion for dirt, mud and water.

Taking Kids to the Price Dinosaur Museum

Today on our way home from camping (more on that later),
we stopped in Price to go to the dinosaur museum.
I had often wanted to go,
but today we happened to have time and were passing by,
and thought, why not?
It turned out to be a great day for a museum visit--
admission was free.
We spent a happy hour and a half in the exhibit halls.
I could have stayed longer, especially on the archaeological stuff,
but I figured we'd better quit before the kids got too tired.
There were a lot of impressive skeletons,
including this very cool mammoth (above).
Also there were a lot of interactive things,
like this reproduction Ute tipi:

Sophie especially liked the 'excavation sand boxes'
in the kids' corner.
She made all the little plastic dinosaurs circle around neatly.

They had a lot of fun in the sand boxes.
There were also large magnetic puzzles
(with dinosaur body parts)
and coloring pages and hand puppets--
it was very well designed for kids.

Zoo Visit

Superb starling...

monkeys...

mangrove salt marsh snake...

... and amur tiger.
It was a good day at the zoo.

Early Spring up the Canyon

Mom & I went for a drive up the canyon this evening.
We went up as far as North Fork.
The river was pretty high,
and it was gorgeous,
especially with the early leaves in the lower canyon.

Instead of Camping

I had hoped to go camping over the weekend,
but the forecast was not hopeful.
In fact I woke up Saturday morning to more Evil White Stuff.

So I had an aunt-nephew Movie Fest.
(Look how tall that kid is getting--
he has to stoop to put the DVD in its player!)

Our quadruple feature of the day included:
reruns of the royal wedding
(with couch comments from both of us on the sartorial displays)
"Harry Potter" 7A (recently out on video)
"Eclipse" (I snoozed through most of that one)
and finally "Tangled."
We also made chocolate chip cookies AND brownies.
Whee!

Most pop(u)lar spring tree

Not being from the south,
for years I thought these were magnolia blossoms.
I believe they are actually tulip poplars.
They aren't terribly common around here,
but I sure like them.