Memory maker: Harry Potter Exhibit

Confession: I have a spreadsheet that has a timeline on it for things we can look forward to over the next couple of decades, or so (for real). One of the things on this list is getting our kids into Harry Potter. I wasn't planning on it until Cara was 10 because that's about the age Larry and I were when we started the books, but imagine my excitement when Cara, who LOVES reading, decided to give the books we own a shot AND she loves them! She loves to say she's a Gryffindor and that she wants to be just like Harry Potter (not Hermoine, Harry!). We are also starting to watch the movies on her choice of Family Movie Night and all the kids seem to have fun watching those. Gwen and Lucy also really like the Harry Potter world, but they haven't read the books yet.

So when I heard that a Harry Potter Exhibit had come to Utah I knew I had to use one of my Memory Maker Days on this one. I got tickets for the girls and me and we checked it out today. I assumed this was a temporary pop-up sort of thing at South Town Mall (they always have these little pop up things), but I was surprised to see they had taken over the old Buy Buy Baby building (which totally tugged at my heartstrings, since I used to go there for all our baby needs each time we were pregnant).

This place was SO much more fun that I thought it would be. There are a ton of spots to get pictures and they make it so fun. You get to pick out your House, Petronus, Wand, and I think a couple other things to create a profile. The girls all chose Gryffindor, I chose Hufflepuff. I don't remember what else we chose, but there were lots of interactive areas you used this information for.

Lucy didn't want to do pics...it was too
Scary for her, haha

There was a walking Quidditch game area, which was fun. Since we went on a weekday, it wasn't too busy and I could let the girls play as long as they wanted, instead of feeling like I should rush them to let others play. I will say the exhibit is definitely more about the movies, than the books, but that did make it better for Gwen and Lucy. There were things that spoiled future things so I had to make sure the girls didn't see those parts haha. They even had real props from the movies, which is always pretty cool for me. 

When we finished up, I told the girls they could each have $20 to spend in the gift shop. Cara wanted a robe and, even though I told her there's no way that is in the budget, she still wanted to look. We found them, but they didn't have her size AND they were $95! So that didn't happen. She ended up picking a stuffed Phoenix, Gwen got a stuffed chocolate frog that smelled like chocolate (seriously), and Lucy got a pen and notebook.

It was nice to be able to spend our time checking things out and getting fun pictures. Even with taking our time, we still only spent about an hour there, which I felt like it had been much more time (in a good way), so that was kind of nice. It's such a fun event, but it's only here until sometime in September, so if you like the movies, I highly recommend checking it out!

Sundance Scenic Lift

My Mother-In-Law, Marie, always has such fun ideas to spend time together. She loves to find things that don't cost a lot of money, but she gets pretty creative with her ideas on what we can do. Well, a little while ago (because she also likes to plan things super ahead of time) she text me that her and her husband would be down for the weekend and she'd like to get together with us at some point. I text her a bunch of ideas of things we could do and one of the things I mentioned was a scenic lift up at Sundance. I didn't think she'd go for it because it can get pretty pricey, but I was surprised when she said she'd like to. She also mentioned we could also meet up at a splash pad and do a picnic lunch, which I thought would be fun for the kids.

We first met up at a splash pad down in Provo. It was really busy and not very big, but the kids really liked it. We ended up having to do a real picnic and eat on the grass since the tables were all taken up. The shade was taken up too, so we ended up on this hill, which wasn't the most comfortable, but we made it work. Marie always brings a trove of food with her when we plan these things so we were definitely well fed, haha. We found out that Pierce is back to loving string cheese again (he ate like 4 or 5) and that the kids REALLY love getting wet (especially Gwen...she just loves an excuse to get soaking wet).

Once we finished lunch, we drove up to Sundance; I love driving through Provo Canyon! This resort, though...wow! It is SO beautiful! We saw part of a wedding going on and man do I wish I had found that place when planning my wedding. I joked with the kids that if they choose to get married I hope one of them will get married up there because it's such a pretty backdrop for pictures. Lucy said she'll marry me there, as long as we don't go on a hike she'll fall on, but she is okay with doing the zipline, haha!

Doing the scenic lift was so cool, way more exciting than I expected. It had really beautiful views. I really enjoyed that part of the day. Part of the Connect Pass has the Snowbird lift & lunch that we plan to do later this year (originally we planned for December, but October might be more fun to see the changing leaves...maybe?) so now I'm really excited to see that one and how it compares.

If you are thinking of doing this, I highly recommend it. The views are beautiful and there's a restaurant at the top to do lunch or dinner at. I wish I had known, I might have planned that, but it's all good (we ended up there as they were trying to close things down so we didn't really have a lot of time to stop anyways).

July Activities

Another month with big things, so there aren't a lot of smaller updates, but here's what we got:

-Decided to do a fun Tie-Dye craft with the kids. One that was easy and not quite as messy. Wipes, rubber bands, and markers was a hit:

-I also tried another tastier craft, marshmallows with food coloring and water. Too much food coloring wasn't great, but the rest were fun to eat:

-This month was full of fun crafts. We also did some building with cut up pool noodles and whipped cream (in case anyone tried licking their fingers). It was another fun one:

-We could NOT miss out on the usual 7/11 Free Slurpee Day. The line this year wasn't nearly as long and we got some yummy flavors (it helped that we just went after our day at the Lindon Pool so we knew which were good flavors we wanted to try again). I love that we always walk to the location up the street, on the corner and enjoyed a nice sunny slurpee day.

-I took the girls to an art day event at this studio down in Springville on the 12th. This one was a fun glow in the dark explosion painting that we even got to bring home black light flashlights to light it up at home. Cara and Gwen did really good at following directions, Lucy did halfway and then just did her own thing after that (but she said it was wonderful so I'll let her be as artistic as she wants to be). I really love finding things like this for them to help inspire creativity.

-I did take the kids to the Discovery Museum on the 23rd. I had it as part of my Connect Pass so I thought it would be fun. I honestly can say I don't think we'd need to go back to this place. This one, The Museum of Natural Curiosity, and Treehouse Museum (up in Ogden) are all basically the same thing. This one just felt dirtier and like it would be more fun for smaller kids. But the girls still had fun with it, so that's all that matters.

-We attempted another Bees baseball game on the 26th, to make up for missing the Drone show last month. But, unfortunately, it didn't fully work out. Attempt 3 coming up in August, so check that one out for the details about this one. 

-Swimming lessons update: so we initially planned to keep the kids in lessons for 6 months. However,, I've noticed the girls are super confident in the water now. Cara loves to dive in the deep end for diving rings. Gwen loves to jump into the pool and being underwater as much as possible. Lucy, though, seems to hate putting her face in and is too nervous. She keeps saying she'll put her face in the water when she's 7 or maybe 10. We decided to let them finish out this month. The plan is to put Lucy back in when Pierce is old enough to start and see if that helps. We're very happy with the skills they've learned and feel this has been VERY helpful to teach them more than they'd learned before. We're just going to switch to our own pool on Sundays instead. I know I'm going to miss the chlorine smell of swim lessons though haha.

-And, as always, some of my favorite pics of the kids from this month:

All the Swimming!

With all the swimming lessons we've had the kids in, I've been excited to test out what they are learning. We've made many trips to our neighborhood pool, which has been fun. I also took some half days off work to take the kids to some rec center pools as well.

On the 9th, Stace came to town so we met up for lunch (at some yummy bbq place) and then headed to the Lindon Pool. I'd heard a lot of good things about this place, we tried to go as a family a couple years ago, but it was so packed, we decided to go somewhere else. I was glad Stace and I were able to make it work this time. Unfortunately, I realized when we got there that I forgot the sunscreen, luckily Stace had some she was willing to share (she even had the deodorant/roller type that I had wanted to try. We used that on our faces). 

We stayed there for 3 1/2 hours and had SO much fun. The workers were a bit picky about the slide height for no reason, but I do feel like I did great with taking all 4 kids by myself. The girls did the lazy river on their own a lot, haha. Stace's boys LOVED trying to get Pierce to go down the little slides, he was nervous because there was water shooting at you as you got on them, they were only successful a couple times. It was actually really fun to see him interact with the boys! Lucy tried to swim without floaties for a bit, but got a bit of a scare in the lazy river. 

Unfortunately, Lucy ended up getting burnt on her face, luckily only in the spots the deodorant type wasn't rolled onto, so we know that does work, you just have to really cover up with it. Cara got burnt on her arms a bit and I got it ALL over my back (I forgot to put sunscreen there). Pierce and  Gwen just got extra tan, haha. We really got lucky though, Cara's burn faded by the next day, but mine was pretty painful for a bit. On the way home we decided to stop at a Chevron/7-Eleven for gas and to get slurpees (since I also forgot water and we were super thirsty), doing this with 4 kids didn't go as smoothly, Pierce kept spilling and it was just a bit chaotic, so I didn't realize Larry had text me to tell me he was at the pool and was looking for me. I was almost to the freeway when I saw his call and had to tell him we had already left. I felt SO bad, he had already paid to get in and he didn't want to swim on his own so he just left and lost out on that money (luckily, it's only $5). So he didn't have as much fun as us.

Now, today, I decided to take the kids to the Lehi Rec Center. This pool we are very familiar with and we know how much fun it is. We ended up spending 4 hours there! Luckily, with it being an inside pool we didn't need to bring any sunscreen (the lazy river goes outside for a bit, but it's not too bad). Larry was even able to join us for the last couple hours. We made sure to ride the slides this time, as well. Gwen did NOT like it (she flipped around and lost her goggles and freaked out in the pool at the bottom for a bit), but Cara loved it and she went on it over and over. I did it a few times with her, it was so much fun!

I have really, really loved taking days off and spending them with the kids this summer. We've done so many fun things. My hair, however, is NOT loving all the chlorine exposure. It falls out so bad when we go swimming. I've been trying to keep it clean and use my hair mask more to help it. But it's all still worth it for all these memories.

All the Thanksgiving Point Activities

Our membership at Thanksgiving Point has been VERY useful so far! I've always loved going there and when we didn't renew our membership a couple years ago I really missed having it. Just this month we've done the following:

The Curiosity Farms had a Dairy Days event on the 22nd. It was a fun one, but they had a lot of little tables with activities out without any workers there to help the kids figure it out. And most of them you needed someone, so that was a bit disappointing. Luckily the train ride, pony rides, and playground were still open for the kids so that helped make it up. The goats were also being pretty silly on the bridge, so that was funny to watch. The farms has really upgraded and it's one of our new favorite parts to go to.

We hit up Imaginaria at Ashton Gardens, again, on the 23rd (yes two in one week). This time we just went to the areas we missed last time and we got to do the BIG slide, which was closed last time. We rode that one about 5 times, the kids loved it so much haha. We also spent some of our punches on ice cream. Even with all that we still have some punches to use up, so we'll have to plan to come back AGAIN. This one is such a fun activity, I hope they bring it (or something similar to it) back in future years!

The Museum of Ancient Life did a Dinos after Dark event tonight that we hit up. This was a really fun one, I forget how cool this museum is. Lucy does get nervous with all the big displays, but the extra activities they had set up and the sand pits at the end are always a hit! 

Back when we were looking at moving out of state, one of the biggest things that made me so hesitant to leave is Thanksgiving Point. There's nothing like it anywhere else and it has things for all ages. It's such a fun place and I'm excited we have this membership on auto-renewal. We're definitely getting our money's worth this year!