Fun with Charlie

The long awaited first part of the vacation is here. On a Friday, I picked Judy up from work at 4:30PM and we started driving west. Our plan was to make it past Des Moines and then spend the night. As we got between there and Omaha, we called the closest motel. No Answer. So we called the next one down the pike in Council Bluffs. They were full. We finally got one at the west end of Omaha, six hours after leaving home. It was a bit farther than we wanted to travel the first day but it actually worked out in our favor because we still had about 12-13 hours to go the next day. We arrived in Murray to see the star attraction, Charlie, at about 6:00PM. Well there were actually five star attractions, Kyle, Tiff, Ellie, Erik, and Charlie. He is so cute. See for yourself!I finally figured out how to get him to sleep. But he would not stay sleeping very long if not being held. We camped out in the kid’s room again. Anna was there and she had gotten the “swamp cooler” working. So the house was very comfortable. The days we were in Utah turned out to be some very hot days with triple digit temperatures. The hottest was 104ْ .
On the patio fence, we made chalk murals that included Little Red Ridinghood, The Big Bad Wolf, The Three Little Pigs and their houses, Shark Eating Man, Deep dark woods, The Temple, The Moon and Sun. You get the picture. An all-in-one mural.
We all went out for dinner to the "Golden Corral" and filled up on the buffet. The best part for Ellie was the ice cream.
And the best part for Eric was the chocolate chip cookie with ice cream.
This was make your hair like grampa day.

We spent Tuesday at the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. Kyle had started a temporary job checking out voting machines for the county and was not able to go. As we drove in, our jaws hit the floor. The line was four abreast and about 500 feet long, and it didn’t open for another 30 minutes. It was stinkin’ hot, too. But Anna had a plan. She has handicap plates on her car and went to the front of the line to ask if we all could get in right away (she had a knee replaced). Well low and behold, it worked, because they said to go to the member line and buy our tickets. Yippy! Ellie complained that it was too noisy there (they had guttural noises that was supposed to sound like dinosaurs). The museum was done very well and was very interesting to us adults. But 30 minutes was about all the kids could take. We dragged them along from exhibit to exhibit until we got to the kids area – sculpting sand and water. Thanks to me, I found it by taking an uphill path, nobody wanted to travel. We thought that was the end of it. WRONG! That was about half way. We still had the sea creatures and the woolly mammoths and more play areas, digging in the sand. It was lunch time so that was it. I ran in to TJ Halverson and his daughter in the lobby.

They explored a dark cave, which they did not want to enter at first, mainly because there was already a hundred kids in there. They could see them but us adults couldn't.
It only took 30 minutes before they had enough. And then they discovered the dinosaur play area.
And then I discovered the water and sand play area.

We took family pictures on the stake center lawn across the street. It would be nice to only have to go 200 feet to church. Just look at this handsome family.

They liked to climb on daddy's back. They liked it so much that they thought grampa was a horse and got horsey rides.
The clan.
Her we are with Ellie, Erik and Charlie.
What wonderful kids. Can't wait until we visit again.

Charlie was quite fussy and liked to be held a lot. A few days after we left we found out that he had acid reflux and vooah-la, after taking medicine, it was gone. Just like that he is now a happy baby.