Astronauts on the Farm & Kings in the Corner

Day 7 of our vacation to Utah was my all-around favorite day of the entire trip.

On Monday morning, we went to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake. I've wanted to go there ever since I was in high school. I used to LOVE learning about the solar system and the stars and planets so much! In fact, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up! The Planetarium was so interesting, and the boys and I looked at all their interactive displays. By far the boys' favorite one was a giant closed-in obstacle course with balls in it constantly moving, a model based on Newton's Law of Motion & Force. It was so huge, it was two stories tall!

The downstairs portion:

 The upstairs part:

There was information about asteroids and planets and the sun. Here's Kanyon on Mars!:

We learend about the space shuttle, the space station, and the Moon. This is the boys walking on the Moon:

We read about gravity, and light distance, and what we'd weigh in other worlds. We loved their weight scale!

After going through the entire planetarium, and making a stop at the gift shop before leaving, we headed to Pleasant Grove. It was about lunch time by then, so we stopped to eat at my favorite childhood restaurant in Pleasant Grove....

It was so delicious! Our burgers were huge, and the boys loved eating what they called "real" hamburgers. They kept commenting on how the burgers were so much larger than the ones we get from Burger King or McDonalds! I had sweet potato fries with mine, and they were super yummy, too! It was the perfect lunch spot!

After lunch, we drove to my Grandma Rose's house in Pleasant Grove. Every summer, I take the boys to visit one of their great-grandparents (sadly, there are only 4 of their great-grandparents still living). This year it was Grandma Rose's turn for our visit. We spent two hours visiting and playing at her home. We ended up doing what I loved doing at Grandma's house when I was a kid: playing cards and drinking hot drinks!

We sat around the kitchen table: Jonah and Micah played war, Ammon and I played several rounds of Kings in the Corner with Grandma, and Kanyon sipped on his hot chocolate watching the rest of us play! Ammon, Grandma, and I took turns shuffling and dealing the cards, and Grandma whooped us on several rounds of play! 

We all had a great time, and words cannot express the joy I felt doing things with my boys at grandma's house that I used to love doing there as a child. My grandma taught me how to play cards when I was a kid, and I can remember drinking tea and sitting around the table playing cards and feeling so grown-up! I love that my grandma still has the same cupboards in her kitchen now as when I was a kid, too! I feel right at home in her house! And my boys really enjoyed being there, too!

After Grandma's house, we went shopping at a crafts store in American Fork where I bought me some new cricut cartridges, and I can't tell you how happy that made me! Then we drove to the Thanksgiving Point Farm Country. Every Monday night in the summer, they have family nights centered around themes. That specific night it was all about Astronauts, and I thought it would go perfectly with our trip to the Planetarium earlier in the day. They even had a photo backdrop all set up that I thought was so cool!

 When we first got there, the boys each made their own astronaut helmets and Jet Booster Packs:

After those were made, then they each got to launch a rocket several times. After the rocket launched into the air, they loved running around trying to catch it when it was falling to the earth, too!

Then we participated in the Astronaut Scavenger Hunt. All around the farm, pictures were posted with information about astronauts and space shuttles and NASA and telescopes. We were given a paper with phrases that had missing words, and we had to find the corresponding hidden picture with the information on it to fill in the blanks. So, as we walked around searching for the clues, we looked at all the animals, too. And of course, the boys had to have a pony ride:

I think it's so funny that even though we live on a ranch with horses and cows, the boys were so excited to ride ponies and pet calves!

Even though they liked looking at animals that they get to see all the time, my favorite was one I've never seen: this beautiful white peacock!

After we completed the scavenger hunt with all the correct answers filled in, the boys were each given a popsicle, and they ate them while we went on a tractor-pulled wagon ride.

Then the boys spent a while playing inside two of the buildings with some of their interactive activities. They had so many cool things! Before we left for the night, I sat on the cowch. I really want one of these!

After Thanksgiving Point, we drove back to Tremonton for the night. I went to bed with a smile on my face--it had been a successful day, and I felt like I was on the moon! Visiting my grandma, playing on the farm, and learning about astronauts all with my boys sure made for a fantastic day!