Travel Dates: May 10-16, 2014
On the road again! The first part of this week was crazy with Cara’s 4th Year Birthday Party, packing, cleaning the house, celebrating Mother’s Day (Sam bought me flowers!) and finishing up miscellaneous projects.
Things have definitely slowed down and we’ve enjoyed our first two Utah State Parks campgrounds at Yuba Lake and Fremont Indian State Park. We also found the coolest city park in Richfield and spent an hour or so having lunch and playing around.
Suddenly I feel like I have more time. Its amazing. Even with the planning, the scouting, living in a small space and traveling frequently, I definitely feel like I have more time to fit it all in. Traveling and living in 188 square feet of movable space just gives me less to stress over. There’s no garden to weed (or plant), lawn to mow, homework to do, social obligations to meet (could be a con on this list I guess), and all the other activities that seem to fill up the cracks in my life. I’m not saying those types of things are bad, they just aren’t want I want to focus on right now.
In all fairness, the last four weeks have been abnormally crazy. Selling our stuff, spending time with friends and family, remodeling the Airstream and making quilts have kept our lives at almost a sprint. I was tired. Too tired to blog at night, too tired to edit photos, too tired to wake up early, and mostly I was just trying to keep my head above water. Between working to feed the family and working on the remodel, Sam was busy enough I felt like we never saw each other. I missed sitting across from him at the dinette in the evenings, and watching the sun come up together in the mornings. Before traveling, I don’t think I realized how much I disliked being “busy”.
One of my favorite quotes ever is by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He said, “Isn’t it true that we often get so busy? And, sad to say, we even wear our busyness as a badge of honor, as though being busy, by itself, was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life. Is it?”
So many times with my photography business I would get jealous of my peers who appeared to be “booked” or “busy” all the time. They blogged frequently, they posted to social media daily, and just seemed so popular. I wanted that. I wanted the recognition, the clients, the success. But at what cost? Without that aspect of my life pulling at my thoughts and taking time away from my family, I’m suddenly happier. Totally feels backward. I’m more happy spending that recovered time exploring with my children and editing photos of MY kids instead of someone else’s. My kids aren’t going to be little forever. While I don’t regret the time and energy I put into becoming the photographer that I am today, I also recognize that there is a time and a season for everything. Now it is time to simplify. Enjoy life. Spend time together without menial distractions while my kids are still young and I can have a greater influence on who they will become.
Sam and I sat outside and watched the sun set behind the mountains. They clouds turned from a dusty white, to a calm pink, to a blazing crimson and then faded back to dusty white again. I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to sit and watch that beautiful progression before. It was breathtaking and worth every effort it took to get here.
Dear Cara,
You are four years old! Four! I can’t believe it. You are such a delight to have in our family. You are smiles, and sunshine, stubbornness and character. You still love Buzz Lightyear more than ever, although every once in awhile you’ll tell me you also like Princess Ariel (most likely because it is the movie we saw right before we went to Disneyland).You’ve worn your #buzzwings all over the country from the National Mall to the deserts of Arizona. You laugh, you love to make up your own language and talk “baby talk” which drives us all crazy. You love playing in the dirt, with sticks, with cars, and you asked for a transformer last year for Christmas.
You have a strong character. You are stubborn and definitely want your way most of the time. Your dad and I have given up trying to get you fully potty trained (much to our dismay!) and are most likely just going to wait you out. No external motivation or bribes seem to work on you. When you want (or don’t want) to do something, it’s hard to stop your determination so we will just be patient.
With our ever changing environment you are so patient. You seem to thrive on new places, do well in uncertain circumstances and are a champ for going to a new Sunbeam class every week at church. Although you keep telling us your want to sell the Airstream and move the house to a campground, when we’re out and traveling you absolutely love it.
You want to be just like your older siblings. You can’t stand being left out of their Minecraft tablet games, or anything else they are playing. At the same time, you are happy to quietly play LEGO’s, cars, or with your “Toy Stories” all by yourself.
We love you so much and are grateful for the light and life you bring to our family!!
Love,
Mom & Dad
Cara’s birthday started out with decorations and German Pancakes for breakfast (her choice!). We always open presents from mom and dad in the morning, that way they get to play with them all day. I was very impressed with Rachel & Andrew this year. They were concerned the night before that they didn’t have a present for her, so they printed and put together a Rainbow Wand (from Jake and the Neverland Pirates). Cara loved it!
Although I was determined not to, she had a friend birthday party. About a week before her birthday I realized this was probably her last chance to have a friend party for a few years so I caved. Both my other kids had them by her age, I think I’ve just been lazy. We had 4 friends over for about an hour, but it was plenty! After waffling back and forth between an Ariel, or Buzz, or a Cars themed party, somehow she came up with Monkeys and it stuck. We had banana pudding (not a huge hit with the 4 year olds), chocolate cupcakes with monkey finger puppets, monkey ears, and they each went home with an awesome flying sock monkey and a banana.
I kept the activities pretty simple. We colored, cut out and glued out a monkey, played Musical Monkeys, and had a banana hunt.
Later that evening we had my family over for an epic waffle dinner, presents, cake and ice cream. My favorite part of the afternoon was when I started decorating her monkey cake, Cara walked up to me, looked at it and said, “But mom I’m all done with monkeys. I want an Ariel cake!” Sorry, kid. Maybe next year.
It was a great (if exhausting day) and I love how happy she looks in all her photos!
Last week we were invited to come check out Thanksgiving Point’s new Museum of Natural Curiosity before it opens to the public. I had heard good things from other friends that had been to various preview days (city employees, special groups, etc) so our family was really excited.
When we visited: May 2014
Ages of kids: 8, 6, almost 4
Tips: Entrance is included in the Thanksgiving Point Annual Membership. The price goes up for those as soon as the museum opens on May 15, 2014 so if you’ve ever wanted a pass, get one NOW! Thanksgiving Point is also an ASTC member, so your pass is valid for free admission at science centers all over the country!
Thanksgiving Point really designed and executed this museum well. There are a couple of things I really liked about this one compared to others we have been to.
1. The layout. Once past the check-in desk you enter The Hub. From here, there are 5 different sections that branch off to the various exhibits (4 permanent, 1 traveling). I didn’t see any other exits. Hallelujah. This means that if you have older, more independent kids, you can park yourself on one of the benches and let them run with their friends. To enter a different exhibit they naturally have to walk through the Hub (so you can visibly see and check on them) before entering another one. Pure Genius. Not that I advocate parking yourself on a bench. This museum is interesting and fun even for parents, so get out there and play with your kids!
2. The Music Room. I’ve never seen anything like it. They have a string less harp (have seen that one), and a bubble organ (very cool) but the drum room!! Oh my goodness! How FUN was this?! Computerized percussion instruments connected to 2 control panels where kids can turn on and off different drums and create various rhythms and songs. Andrew was pretty addicted. There’s a pretty heavy door to enter this room (like in a recording studio) which helps dampen the sound to the other parts of the museum. If you can’t find your kid, he might be in here. Other highlights of Kidopolis were the puppet theater, bank, stage, and Cara spent at least 30 minutes organizing food and feeding the rabbits.
3. The floor & boots in the water play area. We’ve seen quite a few water exhibits. Most museums usually have one as water play promotes all types of awesome brain functions. This was different as the entire floor is a drain! Water can go anywhere and its totally fine. The museum provides aprons and BOOTS! Kids (and parents) can slip them on over their shoes to protect footwear from splashing water. We chatted with one of the employees and he mentioned some 5th and 6th graders made water guns and had a great time getting each other wet. Despite the precautions, we did get pretty wet, but I just stuck my kids in the 85 mph wind tunnel and they dried right out!
4. Indoor Climbing Gym Located in the Rainforest, the climbing gym is a maze of roped bridges, tunnels, slides, and other fun structures. Climb up inside the 45 foot high monkey and slide down. High above the structure, is another ropes course (costs extra) where you can climb to the very top of the ceiling and look out the windows. I can definitely see Sam and I there on a date night. We also enjoyed pouncing on our prey like jaguars, hanging like sloths, flapping our arms like a hummingbird, and seeing how many grasshoppers we weighed!
5. It is a mix between a children’s museum & science center. Most are labeled one or the other. Either the focus is completely science (and some even extremely and boringly so), or focused on just play. I feel like the Museum of Natural Curiosity was a perfect blend of both. Kidopolis caters to the children’s museum side, while the animal imitators & the virtual landscape maker definitely explore more scientific concepts. This museums also caters to kids of all ages. There were two different baby areas (one in the Rainforest, one in Kidopolis), as well as exhibits to even entertain younger teenagers.
A few other facts about the museum:
We were there for 2 hours and I feel that we barely scratched the surface. We didn’t explore the Discovery Gardens as we ran out of time. Original to Thanksgiving Point, they have incorporated the Children’s Discovery Gardens as part of the Museum of Natural Curiosity. They still have the Noah’s Ark water feature (we always took our swimsuits), but the employees mentioned a new Archimedes Playground and even a zipline!
We have been to children and science museums all over the country and this one definitely hit the top of our list! Very hands on, this museum definitely encourages kids to be curious. We can’t wait until it officially opens and we can go back!!
Travel Dates: April 26 – May 2, 2014
I feel like we had a bit of a week off. After 2 weeks of intense preparation for our HUGE yard sale, I was able to relax a bunch this last week. We are still making progress on projects, but things feel a bit calmer around here.
We went swimming at the local indoor pool, had an exclusive preview of the new Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point, I went to Women’s Conference at BYU, the kids and I starting sewing their quilts, and Sam and his dad are making awesome progress on the Airstream beds!
