Let the Fun Fridays commence!

This is the fifth summer we have done our Fun Fridays. It started in Summer 2004, when I was teaching piano lessons Tuesday thru Thursday. The boys had a babysitter for part of the time, and the rest of the time they just played quietly. They were so sweet and cooperative during piano, and I wanted to reward them by having some quality time together each Friday. Nathan started calling our activities "Fun Fridays." We have loved them so much that we have kept up the tradition every summer, even after I stopped teaching piano (when monster baby Luke came along).

We have included everything we can think of -- Hogle Zoo, Tracy Aviary, Hutching's Museum, Thanksgiving Point (the Children's Garden, Farm Country, and Dinosaur Museum), Jump on It Party, miniature golf at Trafalga, Children's Museum of Utah (which is now Discovery Gateway), sleeping over with cousins, Clark Planetarium, Seven Peaks, Chuck E. Cheese's, the Living Planet Aquarium, bowling, Kangaroo Zoo, the Treehouse Museum, Peppermint Place candy factory, playing in the creek at the park, and even a BYU day (which included touring the Bean Life Science Museum, checking out the recently dedicated Hinckley Center, going to the bookstore for BYU hats, and ending at the Creamery with ice cream cones and the most divine chocolate milk on the planet).

Last summer, on the Friday that Harry Potter 7 was released, we had a whole Harry Potter day, including Harry Potter camp at Hutching's, a cousins' party where we turned our house into Hogwarts, bookstore parties at Barnes & Noble and f.y.e., and finally, after the other boys went to bed, Nathan and I went to wait in line at Wal-Mart at midnight, so we could get reading right away! Oh, that was such a fun day, I think I might have to post pics of it. Watch for those!

I do have a few new ideas for this year, and I'm always looking for more great activities. If you can think of anything else that we might enjoy, please let me know!

I guess our Fun Fridays kind of started last week -- with Seth's party at Boondocks on the last day of school. But I feel like the official beginning was today. We went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point with my mom. After the museum, we got lunch from Hogi Yogi and went back to the T.P. Gardens to have a picnic. Approximately two minutes after we sat down in the waterfall amphitheatre, an employee came zooming down the hill on a Segway to tell us there is no outside food allowed. LOL! (I can't even imagine how they saw us eating, we were so far away from the path and from any other people. Do they have surveillance cameras everywhere? Scary -- Big Brother is always watching!) So we packed up our picnic and finished it in the van, then went to JCW's for shakes. (See Alison's blog for details of potential addiction to their cheesecake shakes.)

The above pic is the boys goofing off on the rock outside the entrance to the museum. Enjoy a few more pics of our fun day!

The boys LOVE the erosion table! Direct quote from Seth: "Caleb, quick, help me! The water level is increasing, and the dam is being knocked down. We need more sand!"

Luke couldn't quite reach the table from the outside, and he didn't want to go on the raised part in the middle, so he stayed on his tiptoes and tried to see what his brothers were doing.

SHARK ATTACK!