A Perfect Day

Forgot to post this sooner:

On Monday, John and the school kids had the day off. We decided it was the perfect opportunity for family together time. That usually means leaving the house. I scoured the internet in the morning before doing chores to find fun family things to do in Utah. I found this Gateway Discovery Children's Museum in the Gateway mall in down town SLC.  The website said nothing about price, so I thought it was some free mall thing. That seemed like a good plan, but I thought it might be too young for the older kids. We decided to head to the zoo around lunch time and then go to the gateway mall. On the way to the zoo, it really started to rain. I turned around and headed to the Gateway mall.

The Children's Gateway Discovery Museum is not some small thing. It is a pretty big, fun , expensive kids museum. Usually at these places I buy a family pass because they quickly pay for themselves. But this place charges $20 extra dollars per kid past one child. So we paid for the day, and the lady at the desk got us in for $20 less. It was really fun. We were there for several hours. They had this neat toy store, and farm, and house and construction site. The kids loved playing there. (It was hard to keep track of six kids and one baby, but John and I managed to be patient and calm, and laughed at the all the disappearing kids instead of despairing.) That was the main floor. Upstairs they had all these neat puzzle and building things. The older kids loved building these parachute things and seeing them fly through these glass boxes that had air blowing up through them. Rachel really enjoyed the craft room and Anya spent at least an hour with some puzzles. There were also some fun giant legos, a helicopter, a news station, and magnets. John and I enjoyed playing with the kids all day.

When the kids were in the helicopter I heard Johnny say, "They took out all of the guns!" It is a life-flight helicopter.

When we finished we let Ruth and Kate go to Claire's. Then we went to Applebees for dinner. My kids were the best they have EVER been in a restaraunt. No one ran around. Nothing got spilled. No one cried about the food they got. No one complained about waiting for the food. No one had a fight or even a slight disagreement. Everyone shared nicely. We had fun chatting and joking. We got two desserts to share and no one took more than they should. It wasn't real life-- but it was.

We got home in time for the olympics.  I even got all of the chores done before we left so we came home to a nicely clean house. Monday was a perfect day!!!