Monday at the Museum

We sure were worn out by the time we finished cleaning up at the wedding and made the drive home. And then we stayed up until around midnight putting food into the freezer and cleaning crockpots and things!

My mom and Josie were very happy they'd taken Monday off work! 

Somehow Kelli apparently managed to make it up to Idaho to go to Bear World with her daughter Amy (which was likely a needed break for her as well...but which also sounds like quite a lot of work, so I don't know). We decided we also needed to see some animals, so we went to the Bean Museum.

But first we made a stop at my Uncle Bruce's office, where he gave us the grand tour of the inner workings of BYU's OIT and gave him some lettuce (because we are giving everyone lettuce these days; Kelli prepared way too much food for the number of people we had, but that's okay...I suppose it's better to over prepare than under prepare and there are plenty of people to share around the leftovers with).

Here I am with Uncle Bruce:

After visiting with him, we ran home to pick up Josie to go to the museum with us. We weren't particularly interested in seeing the animals, but we did want to get in a good visit with Rosie and Rosie had her two little girls with her, and we knew that they would enjoy seeing the animals (and getting to run around a bit and play in the kids' area and so forth). Doing something that the kids found entertaining made it easier for us all to visit together. 

Rosie's kids were—understandably—a little bit cranky from all the traveling and celebrating and behaving they've been expected to do the last little while and they were not afraid to show it! But their fussiness was overpowered by fascination at the museum and they made for much more pleasant little companions.

Here's Ireland pointing and growling at the tiger:

She was pointing and growling at a lot of things, but I think she liked the flamingo the most. She kept going back into the bird room to see it.

Ireland and Oaklyn also enjoyed this interactive screen:

They were really good at zooming in on things (not so good at anything else, but that's okay).

Here they are at the slide/eagle's nest:

Oaklyn especially loved the slide and went up and down several times.

The cave behind the slide was intriguing to Ireland, but also a little scary—and with good reason! There's a bear head hidden in the cave that can give children quite a fright. Armed with my phone flashlight (and with me inside the cave making sure the bear wouldn't get her), Ireland made it through the cave and felt rather brave for having done so!

Here's Oaklyn (Ireland calls her "Oak-la," which is pretty cute) toddling towards (great-) Auntie Josie...

...before deciding that was a mistake because she'd meant to be toddling towards her mother!

In the sustainable (green?) living exhibit there were these bus seats that were very interesting. Ireland led us over one by one and told us which seat to sit on to enjoy our ride. Here's Josie and Ireland on the "bus":

Ireland was interested in the paper crane exhibit that had strings of paper cranes made from bits of recycled papers. She really wanted a crane, so I found a discarded museum scavenger hunt paper and whipped up a crane for her. She was having so much fun shaking the compost bin that we had to lure her away with the promise of riding in a giant elevator.

This elevator is large enough to hold a (taxidermied) elephant (a regular elephant, but probably not an oliphaunt):

Here we are in front of the elephant:

Ireland, Rosie holding Oaklyn, me, and Josie

While we were riding in the elevator, Oaklyn ran to my mom and held out her arms so my mom picked her up. Oaklyn quickly realized her mistake, but not before we snapped a few pictures.

"Quick! Quick!" my mom said.

She was pretty happy that Oaklyn gave her a chance!

I got lots of chances with Oaklyn today while Rosie was dealing with Ireland before the museum. We met them at the Creamery, where they'd stopped for a quick bite to eat before the museum, and Ireland was having a bit of a meltdown. So Oaklyn and I went on a walk to touch all the trees and the chainlink fence and the lamppost and everything else that looked touchable. At first she kept telling me, "No," and "Mama," but soon she decided that it might actually be interesting to touch all the different kinds of leaves and things.

I will hopefully have a few more pictures to add about our museum trip when I get them off the various phones they're on because my Auntie Judy also came to the museum for a visit, along with Rosie's stepmom, Alicia. It was fun to see both of them as well!