The 24th and the Aquarium

To celebrate the 24th of July Rachel and the kids slept outside under the stars.  No one was sleeping, really, so Ken went out and joined them for a while and gave them a short lecture on the stars and other outer space things.  On Monday we hiked up by Bridal Veil Falls because Rachel had never been up there.  David and Lisa joined us.  David picked up a snake for the kids to see and Jessie brought her book on Utah birds and had fun looking up ones that she saw….but we couldn’t find one bird in there at all, it must not have read the book to let it know it wasn’t supposed to be in Utah :-)!After the hike we had a fabulous BBQ at Ken’s parents of which I took no pictures, oops!  Then we went down to the city’s fireworks.  We played with glow sticks (my personal favorite firework) while we waited and hoped that it wouldn’t start pouring on us at any second.  Ken stayed home with Neil because he was already asleep and after that Sunday incident I couldn’t take much more of a tired baby!Abbie came home and put a glow stick around each of her stuffed animals.  It was really cute and guess what!  Those glow sticks were still working the next night too!!  I like it really dark when I sleep and had to turn over and sleep the other way to ignore the glow coming from her room.  I ‘m not at all sure how she got to sleep.We went with Ken’s mom and the cousins up to an aquarium in Sandy.  It was pretty fun.  I got to try out my new birthday lens too.  Neil thought it was pretty funny when Abbie smashed her nose up against the glass.  Here’s a toad and an octopus too.They have a “petting zoo” there consisting of some sting rays and a tiny type of shark.  The kids loved this.  One of the sting rays was especially playful and loved swimming to the surface to get pet.Neil was pretty good in his stroller as long as he could see into the aquariums.  Some of the fish were so big.Mark especially LOVED the electric eel they had.  It had some sort of machine hooked up to it’s tank to read the amount of electricity it was putting off and changed that amount into a sound.  Quieter if there wasn’t much electricity and quite loud if there was a lot.  Once while we were there he reached the biggest amount of electricity he could put off.  Mark loved it!And I simply love this picture of Spencer staring down the piranha trying to see it’s sharp teeth.  I so wish the lighting in this place were a little better for the sake of pictures.  And you couldn’t use a flash with all the glass…oh well.They had one room of cool and outrageous animals.  They even had a mud hopper from the “Living Planet” movies we have by the BBC.  The kids were so excited to show me.  Unfortunately for the mud hoppers there was no mud in their cage, only rocks.  I felt really bad for them.  But they are the coolest little fish ever (come borrow our movie and you can learn all about them.)  Afterwards, we had a nice picnic lunch at a park and then headed back home.We went to the ward swimming party and my kids prayers were answered….it didn’t even rain on us like it has the last four years so they got to swim the whole time.  Although Abbie and Spencer were freezing and wanted to go home part way through and Ken didn’t want to get in until they wanted to leave… it was a crazy night and I’ve decided that children staying up late is for the birds!!Mark made his very own Coconut Cream Pie (with me directing and him doing all the work).  He was so excited and it was SO good!Neil also loves to help in the kitchen.  Abbie was helping me make some Peanut Butter Cookies for our Yellowstone trip and he had to be in on all the action.