Of Slip-and-slides and Snails

One afternoon this summer we came home to find friends from Ohio on our doorstep! They couldn't stay long then, but since they were going to be in the area for a while, we set up some play times. First, their grandma graciously allowed us to join them at her place for some afternoon slip-and-sliding. The Muffins were also pleased to find a dog to play with.

But wet fun with long-lost friends was definitely the highlight for the older Muffins.

Another day, our friends came back to our place. Lydia and Kai made an important discovery: snails.

And that's pretty much what everyone was interested in for the rest of the play time.

Discovery Gateway

This summer we finally made it to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum. Here are the Muffins checking out the cool lobby stuff as we waited for friends to join us there.

First, the Muffins got to play with balls. LOTS of balls. You can see some of them stacked inside a tube near the middle of the picture below. 

There were all sorts of tubes and tunnels to send the balls through, and the Muffins loved it.

Next, we found a toddler area, with a cute little house that Lydia liked to climb in.

We also found a water play area:

Amanda spent some time "working" at a little store:

On the upper level, Jared did some story boarding:

Lydia gave it a try, too:

Curtis and Lydia helped build a little "house":

There were also pipes and balls to play with:

And last but not least, the kids got to check out a helicopter:

Thanks so much to our friends who got us out on the outing in the first place. :)

Summer fun at our local library

We may have missed the summer reading program at our local library, but we still got to have some good times. One day we happened to arrive during craft time, which we'd never tried before. The Muffins loved it! The first time we went the kids got to mold their own pencil toppers. The next time, shown above, they made Halloween decorations as part of the library's summer Halloween event. There were also outdoor story times with puppet shows to attend after the craft times. The Muffins definitely had fun at the library this summer.

Fossils in our backyard (so to speak)

After much searching far and wide for fossils to keep the Muffins entertained, we finally made it over to the BYU Paleontology Museum, which, in addition to being quite a bit closer to us than other museums we've visited, has the neat bonus feature of being free.

Although it is a relatively small museum, it is nevertheless well stocked with very nice fossil displays. Here are the Muffins checking out some kind of reptile:

Here's a giant sloth skeleton:

Here's Amanda with a fossilized tortoise shell (note that she's standing by the sloth's leg, for size comparison):

The Muffins wanted to see more stuff after they'd had their fill of fossils for the day, and so Mom took them across the street to see the cougar in front of the BYU stadium, just because: