SUPER, MEGA, ULTRA, HUMONGOUS BLOG POST...

...OR The Taylor Family "Mini-Vacay"

So, someone (ahem, DAD) pointed out that I haven't blogged for a few months & it was time for some new material.

HERE IT IS FOLKS...

The Taylor family week in review:

Cory was on vacation this week, so we decided to take a short vacation up North. Tuesday afternoon we headed up to Sandy. On the way, we stopped at the...

DINOSAUR MUSEUM

at THANKSGIVING POINT

T-Rex

Ahh...don't eat me!

SHARK! RUN!!

Archaeologists in the making.

According to the advertisements, it is "the largest dinosaur museum in the world!" The kids really enjoyed seeing all the dinosaurs, playing in the sand, and of course the gift shop!

It was late by the time we were through, so we headed off to the hotel in Sandy and crashed for the night.

Cory had a meeting for work on Wednesday, so we woke up early in order to get some fun in before he had to go.

First, we drove out to South Jordan to go to the...

OQUIRRH MOUNTAIN TEMPLE OPEN HOUSE

Lovely little temple with a stunning view.

The fam on the temple grounds


The Oquirrh Mountain Temple is the 130th temple of the church. And, South Jordan is the first city to have 2 temples inside the city boundaries. It was so nice for the kids to have a chance to go in the temple. They all thought it was very cool and can't wait until they are old enough to go inside again.

After our lovely visit to the temple, we decided to take a quick drive up to the...

LIVING PLANET AQUARIUM in SANDY

We saw...gorgeous tropical fish,

funky starfish and other creatures,

even more tropical fish,

and, awesome sting rays

The coolest part (I thought at least) was the large sting ray pond where you could reach in and touch the sting rays. Sometimes they would even come right up and say "HI!"

The aquarium was really cool. We saw a lot of beautiful fish (even Nemo and Dory were there!), stunning jellyfish, a big cool octopus, awesome sharks, and we even watched a little show with live parrots, snakes & tarantulas.

After the aquarium, we had to drop Cory off at his meeting. The kids and I decided to go swimming in the hotel pool. Zach couldn't do a whole lot with his broken arm (Oh, yeah. That will have to be another post) but we still managed to have a great time. The pool was incredibly WARM, and we were the only ones there the whole time. I didn't get any pictures because I was too busy having cannonball contests with the kids!!

When we had our fill of swimming, we got dressed and decided to take a drive up to my old homestead on Sego Lily. The house looks COMPLETELY different!! It was a little sad, actually.




Then, we drove up the street to...

BUTTERCUP PARK

Ah, memories!

Andrew as "mini-man"

Havin' fun!

I won't frighten you with the picture Madison took of me sliding down the bars, but be assured, it was pretty scary!! It was SO fun for me to show the kids where I used to live and play when I was their age. We had a nice little afternoon together. We finished up with an ice cream at Baskin Robbins and then headed back to pick up dad.



We did a little more swimming with dad before heading off to bed for the night.



Thursday morning we slept in! When we finally got up, we got all dressed in our hiking clothes and headed up to...

TIMPANOGOS CAVE

beautiful scenery...

exhausting hike!

Despite the difficult hike up, we had a great time in the caves! Unfortunately, as Cory was handing our camera to the tour guide to take our picture before starting the tour, it fell on the ground and broke! This wouldn't be as sad if we hadn't JUST bought the camera two days before!! So, we didn't get any pictures inside the cave, but the other people that were on the tour with us said that they would happily email us some of their pictures. So nice!!

All in all, we had a FABULOUS time. The kids were really quite pleasant in the car & on all of our adventures. Even though it wasn't a far-away trip, it was still a lot of fun!!

HOORAY FOR FAMILY VACATIONS!!

**is that good enough, Dad??