Fillmore Family Vacation

I truly have the sweetest husband in the world (most of the time).  Unfortunately, he has to travel bunches and unfortunately I have to stay home bunches as a consequence.  And when I say stay home I very literally mean I don't leave the house for days at a time.  One night Zac asked me what I was looking forward to.  I couldn't come up with much other than our kid's birthdays or the weekend.  He wanted me to have something to look forward to, so he told me to plan a mini-vacation for our family and put it on the calendar.  I did and it made a world of difference to my cabin fever frowny face.

We had talked about taking the kids to a Utah Jazz game for some time and I found one that was in Salt Lake City the night before Bronson's birthday.  We decided to stay overnight and did some of the fun touristy things around Salt Lake, such as...

Visit City Creek Mall, which has an actual creek flowing through the mall!  How cool is that?

Well it was cool, until Charlotte picked up a fish and it bit her.  She didn't think that was so cool.  But I kinda couldn't stop laughing.  And then moments later Bronson full on ran into a large glass window thinking he was just walking through a doorway to the outside portion of the mall.  Okay, so I might have laughed pretty hard then too.  I am an awesome mom. 

After checking into the hotel and doing some swimming, the kids put on the Jazz shirts that we got them at the mall and then it was time for some basketball. 

This is the view a $15 ticket will buy you.  Pretty impressive right?

This is where we sat.  Literally 4 benches from the very top of the arena.  But I'm not complaining.  I had a stupendous time and when the high school boys in front of us found out that it was Bronson's third birthday, they were all about trying to catch the Jazz gear that was being thrown into the crowd and giving it to our kids to impress their dates.  Bronson got a Jazz lunch box and he asked me if that meant he got to go to school now.  I wish buddy.

The next day brought a visit to our favorite doughnut store in Salt Lake.  They make fresh doughnuts every morning and they are fabulous.  Despite the look on Tanner's face. 

After doughnuts, we took a stroll down to Temple Square to take in some sights. 

And since it was Bronson's birthday and his greatest desire was to ride on Trax, we obliged.  Apparently, Tanner really enjoyed riding on Trax. 

Next up, Scheels, one of the best stores ever.  Ever!

Bronson was stoked that he was big enough to ride the Ferris Wheel this year. 

He wasn't one bit nervous.  He loved it.

The view from the top!

Tanner on the other hand was VERY nervous and refused to ride the Ferris Wheel, which worked great for me, because he babysat Whitlee so the rest of us could ride.

These two had a great time and Charlotte and I also had a fun ride.

Scheels has lots of great photobooth stations and tons of fun things to do.  We could spend all day and all of our money in that store.

As if all that wasn't enough, we decided to check out the new Museum of Natural Curiosity near Thanksgiving Point.

Wow!

They claim on their website that there is over 400 things to do in there and I believe it with all my heart.  It is a blast.  Unfortunately, everyone in the world had the same idea as us and that place was PACKED.  Like I couldn't believe.  We still aren't sure if we came home with all of our right children.  Some of them have been acting strange lately and it's possible the real kids got left at the museum and we came home with someone else's kids.  Oh well, so long as they still add up to six and no more.

Bronson liked hiking up the rope bridges to this plane. 

Ian lost his head. 

And they even had stuff for the babies.  Bronson and Whitlee had a ball at this water table.

We were so tired after doing 400 things that we decided to stay one more night in Utah and we booked it on down to Provo.  We stayed right across the street from Lavell Edwards Stadium and got to have a wonderful day the next day showing off the BYU campus to the kids.  It has been so long since we have been back.  It was amazing to see all that has changed and reliving the memories in the places that are the same.  It really was a great family vacation.