This Spring Break has been a fun one for us. We are loving the warmer weather, and the melting snow. We started our Spring Break down in St. George along with the rest of Northern Utah. We went down for Grandpa Maxwell's funeral and Braden's farewell. We had a blast with family in the sunshine.
We especially had a good time with our Farnsworth cousins. Charlotte loves Uncle Tyler and was always with him. The first thing she would do when we got to Grandma Farnsworth's house was find Tyler. We thought this was a funny picture of Charlotte and Tyler. Tyler was just laying on the grass talking to Jen and Charlotte just came right up and laid down on Tyler's back. They stayed like that for quite a while.
We also enjoyed checking out a few of the new parks in St. George. This park is right down the road from our old house. Too bad we don't live there anymore because this was a fun park.
Emily and Charlotte loved riding the springy horse and the teeter totter. Logan and James loved the climbing ropes. Colby loved riding his scooter around the park on all of the trails. The best though was playing sand volleyball with all of the grownups. There may or may not have been some cheating involved...
Another day, we went to the Tonaquint park and the new all-abilities park. These were fun too. While we were there, we got out our Rollerblade's and bladed the bike trails around the park.
We headed back home on Tuesday so that Russell could go to work but that didn't end our fun. We spent Wednesday rollerblading some more, this time at the Cache Valley Fun Park. We were able to go with some of our neighborhood friends and we had a blast.
On Thursday, we headed to Baby Animal Days at the American West Heritage Center. This is one of our favorite spring traditions. The kids love seeing, petting, and holding all of the baby farm animals. Here they are with some rabbits:
Charlotte was in seventh heaven. She loved the bunnies. Colby also said that rabbits are his favorite.
I think my favorites were the baby chicks and ducklings:
Those poor baby chicks and ducks were just getting man handled so much! Luckily they got switched out every 10 or 15 minutes. All of the kids loved holding them. They went to every box and held about every one of them. The babies were so soft and they were so cute!
We also saw a bunch of other baby animals as well:
We loved petting the baby cows and sheep. The cutest thing was the baby horse that was only a couple of days old. We didn't get to pet him but we could see him from the fence. There were also some exotic animals we got to see and touch. There was a huge iguana, a wallaby, a falcon, and more. We were even lucky enough to see the peacock fanned out and acting larger than life.
Another cool exhibit was the baby bears from Yellowstone's Bear World. They were so cute and so small! I wish we could have petted them but they wouldn't let us.
My other favorite, and I think this was one of the kids favorites too, was the baby turtles! They were so small! The little turtles were smaller than Charlotte's hands. We just held them and let them crawl all over our hands. Their little claws scratched us but we didn't care because they were so cute!
Next came the scary thing... I am not a fan of snakes. In fact I hate big snakes, small snakes, and even sticks that look like snakes. Well, they had a snake at Baby Animal Days and of course Logan wanted to hold it.
And then he wanted to wear it as a necklace... and then Charlotte thought that was cool and wanted a snake necklace too. Then Emily thought she couldn't be out done and wore the snake as well. Colby was the only smart one and wanted to pet the snake from a distance. They all thought they were so brave and cool. Charlotte is still talking about wearing the snake as a necklace.
There were also some fun activities at the Baby Animal Days like Panning for Gold:
And meeting Smoky the Bear. There was also a western shoot out re-enactment, candy cannon, cow milking, pioneer doll making, and just touring the farm.
No trip to the American West Heritage Center would be complete without a ride on the train:
And of course a horse drawn wagon ride. This was the amazing view of the Wellsville Mountains we saw on our wagon ride. We love coming to the American West Heritage Center and enjoying farm life for a day.
I loved it so much that I came back the next day and worked the ticket booth from open to close. Unfortunately, Colby was not feeling well or Russell would have brought the kids back for more fun with the baby animals.
On Saturday, we did something we had been wanting to do for some time now. The one thing Colby told us he wanted for his eighth birthday was to go to General Conference at the Conference Center. We thought this was a great birthday present and were very impressed that a 7 year old kid would make such a request. So we did all we could to make it happen. A counselor in our bishopric was able to track down 4 tickets for us and we were able to go to the Saturday Afternoon Session of General Conference!
Jen was awesome and watched Logan and Charlotte while we took Emily and Colby to the Conference Center. They were so amazed at how big the Conference Center was. We told them that it could hold around 20,000 people. We arrived about an hour early and were able to walk around for a bit and see some of the things in the Center. When we got to our seats, we realized we had fairly good seats for being in the nosebleed section.
We were on the first balcony but on the third row from the front and were directly facing the podium. The speakers still looked like little ants but it was still cool.
Here was our direct view. The conference was amazing. As always it seemed to me like the speakers were speaking right to me. Unfortunately we did not get to hear President Nelson talk while we were there but we did see him in the room. When he walked in, we all stood and when we left, we all stood and watched him wave to us and to everyone. Colby said the reason why he wanted to go to Conference at the Conference Center was to find out for himself if the prophet was real. When I asked him what he thought now, he said he knew that the prophet was real and he was so glad that he got to go to Conference. I am so glad that we got this opportunity to take Emily and Colby to General Conference. I hope it helped their testimony grow a little bit more. I think this will become a new thing we do when the kids turn 8. So I hope to go back in 2 years when Logan turns 8. He has already requested it.
As we came out of the Conference Center, there were millions of people exiting as well. We were able to stop for a minute for some pictures before walking around the Salt Lake Temple grounds. It was fun to take the kids and show them some of the great things about the gospel and the temple.
We had an amazing Spring Break this year full of fun and new adventures. And to top it all off, it decided to snow in April:
On the Monday after Spring Break, we got about 2 inches of new snow. Thankfully it melted by the end of the day. Bring on Spring please!
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