Spring is Here!

We have really hit the ground running with spring since getting back from our trip!  We celebrated Grandpa's Birthday and have been participating in the home school book share at the library which wrapped up this month. We have been outside as much as possible this month which was a nice extension of our trip.  We hiked around the Androscoggin River on the French's Ledges trails, explored the Mosher Falls waterfall, and have spent many nights watching Ben and Audrey play T-ball.

A few days ago we had one of the most impressive burns of our brush pile. We didn't get a chance to burn last fall, so the dry conditions of this spring caused quite a fire. In less than 3 minutes the entire pile was engulfed in flames... I am not sure our little garden hose would have done anything to stop this fire.

Last weekend we headed up to Carabassett Valley for Noah and I to run in the Sugarloaf 15K. The day before we hiked into Poplar Falls and were rewarded with not one, but two impressive waterfalls.  This was probably a little longer hike than we should have taken the day before a race, but we did it anyway! On Sunday it rained pretty hard before the start of the race, but after the start it was actually pretty great weather.  The course was so nice because, besides being beautiful, it was all flat or downhill.

We have mostly finished school for the year which has given us freedom to get out and enjoy nature when it is nice out during the week.  This week we took on White Cap Mountain in Rumford. The kids did a great job even though we took the harder way up. ;)

Trip Finale- The Great Salt Lake and Salt Lake City!

This was our only day in Salt Lake City, so we wanted to be efficient.  We were up and going early (There is an obvious theme to this trip and it isn't relaxation) to get out to Antelope Island State Park to be able to experience the Great Salt Lake.  We had watched a few videos and done some reading about the Great Salt Lake so we really wanted to make sure we actually got to experience it.  Antelope Island is actually a really interesting place.  There are 500-700 wild bison there that started as just 12 when the first settlers came.  There are also Pronghorns, Mule Deer, and Bighorns.  Unfortunately, what we didn’t read about first were the gnats… biting gnats… it put a damper on our trip and prevented us from doing any hiking, but we got to see the island none the less.  There is an old ranch that was operational for 133 years and the oldest building in Utah.  It was a neat place for the kids to really be able to explore, pick things up, and they even got to try and lasso some "bison".  We were chased from the ranch when the biting gnats became unbearable.  We only saw one bison as this is their calving season and they were apparently hunkering down in another part of the island.  Our last stop on the island was to hit the beach and float in the lake. The section of the lake we were in was 15% salinity compared to the other end which is closer to 30%, but it was still enough to let everyone easily float and there was an impressive amount of hardened salt in the sand.  The sun was bright, there was a nice breeze and the kids happily played in the sand for a bit.  I think we would have stayed longer, but we were also excited to see The Leonardo museum this afternoon, so we headed back to the city at lunchtime. 

The Leonardo is a really neat museum based on Leonard Davinci and his life as a painter, sculpture, artist, inventor and in general a curious guy.  It was a nice cross between a science museum and a hands on children’s museum.  There was an entire section on flight complete with an actual plane and flight simulators. On the first floor there was also a green screen set up as well as an entire room where you could create almost any art project you could imagine. Ben spent his time there drawing a self portrait, James spent his time literally painting the walls, Noah spent his time making a really neat paper bag mask of a knight, and Audrey spent her time doing a little of all of those things.  Upstairs found and invention studio using simple machines, an exhibit about perception with lots of cool mind tricks, as well as an entire section on city planning (another of Leonardo’s skills) using Legos. There were impressive lego models, a station to make a lego movie, some pre made backgrounds with ideas to build your own lego scenes as well as free form build whatever you like Legos with an area to display them afterwards.  Needless to say, I was glad not only that we learned about DaVinci last year, but also that everyone remembered about him! We spent lots of time exploring, creating and learning all we could in this cool museum.

We spent the evening swimming (Audrey is doing amazingly well acting as if she has been swimming forever), relaxing and trying to fit everything back into the bags we came with for the plane.  

PB&J Count: Still 52… we had an extra box of cereal, carrots, hummus, leftover quesadillas, and hard boiled eggs to eat before we got on the plane…;)

Today we flew home and travel was mostly unadventurous... except for the sticker shock of the price for parking at Logan after almost 2 weeks... 

PB&J Count: 58… that’s the official count not bad for 2 weeks and 6 people;)

Miles Driven: 1,538