Mini-cation

My husband had a training two hours north of us, so he booked a hotel through work.
It was a Castle hotel, Nat was so excited. (We passed a really ghetto castle hotel in Amarillo, and she was upset that we didn't stay there and instead stayed in a Marriott.)

The kids and I went up and joined him after it was over, stayed the night. Ahh, staying in a hotel as a child.

He went back to the training and we set off for an adventure.  The kids were so thrilled, overall it just made me sad, we always went on adventures before we moved to Colorado and now they don't even remember them. It started with donuts in the park.

After which my 5 year old told me her tummy hurt, this is while I was changing a dirty diaper, it made me wonder why the heck I even tried to go on adventures.

She seemed to feel better once we fed the ducks. An older man gave us some old bread, the kids loved feeding the ducks.  

My four little ducklings. (Holy smokes four is a lot!)

After an hour or so we had enough fun and enough doubts that maybe we should just go home. I couldn't really decide what I wanted to do for the real adventure, we never go to Denver because I'm just too tired with all my growing of babies.  I ended up deciding on the Art Museum, four year old J and I loved the Art Muesum in SLC back in the day, and baby Nat hated it.

  I picked the Art Museum for a few reasons.
1. We have never been
2. Brent doesn't like Art Museums and he wasn't with us.
3. It was relatively cheap.  kids 0-5 are free, kids 6 and up $3, and adults $10. With $5 all day parking in a covered garage so the car didn't get hot, I spent less than $20.
4. Josh has been obsessed with modern art lately
5. I checked out about 20 art books the other day, and he went through all of them. Mind you they were written for children.

Now my pictures are out of order and I'm too lazy to fix them.
I like to take pictures of my children with their favorite pieces. This was Turbo's favorite. He told me truck truck truck, and would not let it go until I took his picture. He knew I what I was doing.

This is one of my favorites.

And this one. (This girl cracks me up, her pose. Her personality in general. She is larger than life, that's why she is hard to deal with some days. She just has so much pent up in that little body of her, it just explodes out.)

The art museum is actually two buildings connected with this bridge.

Ikey was there too!!!
So I'm terrible at planning these days. So I threw two strollers in the car but not the double. Partly because I forgot and partly because they are huge. I decided to just use two singles and have the bigger kids help me.  I'm not sure if I was insane or not.  For the most part it worked better than a huge double stroller. Although sometimes I fear I expect too much out of my older kids. We were there much too long for me to wear Ikey with my back problems. Assuming I wasn't going through doors, I actually could push A and pull Ike.

She was actually dressed up in the Incan King clothes. The museum had an AWESOME kids room. Especially since it ended up being the first place we ended up, on complete accident. Plus we were also there when it first opened so we had this HUGE room all to ourselves to explore.  Plus great couches to nurse Ikey.

Crafts in the kids room.

A model of the museum to play with.

Guess who, the Game. If I lived in Denver we would definitely come back more.

This was one of my favorite pieces, its a mother who has just slain a bear. What I really love is one child looks like its slipping even though you know a woman who just killed a bear to protect her kids has a vice-grip on that child, and another child at her feet. This is my life. Ikey floppy looking like he is barely hanging on, but I wouldn't drop him, and Turbo following me around all day never leaving an arm's length.

The had SO MANY craft/hands on/kids exhibits.  This was a political art center. My kids working hard on political posters made the political scientist in me swoon. This center was actually the only rough patch of the day, Turbo had a melt down, and the older kids were really loving the area.

More modern art for J.

This was Turbo's favorite. It was red with gray foxes everywhere.

More modern art.

Nat with pink and sparkles.

More pink and sparkles

At one of the kids exhibits Nat made headphones. I really can not say enough for the kids' exhibits, we were there for four hours and didn't have enough time to fully explore all the hands on, create your own art. Plus we skipped half of the art on the wall part of the museum.

Another create your own art. We rushed J here, everyone was losing stamina.  I took this picture because I told him we could do this at home.

Here they are sculpting.

Even little Turbo sculpting, this picture was not posed.

Here they are making faux antique postcards.

Riding the horsey while their brother continues to make postcards.

Across the street was the Denver Public Library. My son was amazed at how large it was. So we went in. I wish we could have stayed longer but my babies needed to get home, and we need to leave before traffic got any worse.

Being up at the Museum and the Library really made me miss living in Salt Lake. I wish we lived closer so we could explore more. But then we got into traffic at 3 pm and I remembered I love my small town. But I hate my library, the only benefit is they give out free duck food.  And the hold system has a huge selection, but it is so lame for kids in comparison to big cities. Sigh, sad face.
I texted my husband that I missed SLC, and he said how bad? I said I miss SLC not Utah. He said oh nevermind.
The more I look at this picture the more I remember how VERY awesome the children's library was and how much I loath my library.