Birthday Eve

Today is my Birthday Eve. For those of you that don't celebrate the holiday, that means it's the day before my birthday :) We started the celebrations so early this morning that we had to wake up Lincoln (usually he is the alarm clock). We went into his room and he was so cute all cuddled up and asleep. Don't worry that he's totally backwards in his crib.

We met my mom and Kerry and Tanner at IHOP in Lehi at 9:00am for breakfast. It was delicious. Aaron had french toast, I had Nutella Crepes which I highly recommend, and Lincoln had a smiley face pancake. It was Lincoln's first time ever ordering food at a restaurant, usually he just eats off of our plates, but we were both too hungry to share with him today. Other highlights of the meal include Lincoln taking a bite of his blue crayon and pulling the funniest disgusted face I've ever seen.

After breakfast we did presents in the parking lot. Mom and Kerry gave me a cutting mat and circular cutter, so that I don't have to measure out my fabric with the twisty thing on the kitchen blinds anymore (hey you do what you've gotta do), and some new dish rags that my mom crocheted for me (hooray!), two movies Ever After and The Sandlot. Very excited about all of it. Thanks guys!

The big activity for the day was the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, so that's where we all headed next. Supposedly it's the largest dinosaur museum in the world. Pretty cool. In one of the rooms a sign told us that most of the smaller skeletons and fossils on display were the real deal, but that most of the larger ones were a cast because the bones are too delicate to be fused and screwed together, and that's why they just do a cast.

I was surprised how much "hands-on" stuff they had. Here is Lincoln and Uncle Tanner crawling though a small tunnel they had on display. They also had tons of exhibits that kids (or anyone I suppose) could touch, feel, sit on, climb through, etc. It was pretty cool, and Lincoln loved it.

Here's Aaron, Lincoln, and Gramma Tam. I can't remember what they are pointing at, but it must have been awesome since all three of them are pointing.

Aaron picked a fight with a raptor. Ok not really, but if this had been real life, Aaron would have been toast. Look at the claws on that thing.

This is probably my favorite shot of Lincoln of the day. He's climbing up the leg (foot and ankle is more like it) of a Brontosaurus. It's one huge dinosaur and took up an entire room. Lincoln barely reaches up to his ankle.

Mom, Kerry, Tanner, and Lincoln in front of the Stegosaurus.

Mom, me, Aaron, Lincoln, and Tanner in front of the Stegosaurus.

This was my favorite exhibit, it's called the erosion table. What it is is a sort of model or a river bed. It's got tons of sand on the bottom and little toy trees and toy dinosaurs in it. Every so often is a water fountain type thing that lets out water. The point is to build little islands, or dams or other structures out of the sand, and then you watch to see how over a period of time water erodes the land mass. It's really cool, especially because it's so hands on. All of us from Lincoln right on up to Kerry enjoyed playing in it.

In this picture, on the far left, you can see the dam Tanner and Kerry built. Aaron and Tanner are currently in the process of personifying a tsunami to speed up the erosion process. Lincoln is torturing plastic dinosaurs by hurling them to a watery grave. :) We probably would have spent a lot longer at the erosion table, but Lincoln started throwing sand, so we had to go.

Here's Tanner in the under water room. All the skeletons they had in there were pretty scary looking. I'm glad I don't have to worry about running into any of those guys while I'm out swimming.

I thought this picture turned our really well. It almost seems like the shark really is swimming up right behind them and they don't expect a thing. They actually don't know for sure that sharks this big ever existed. The only fossil evidence they've found are shark teeth that are 7 inches long. Yikes!

Here is a dinosaur egg and me, looking like I swallowed one! :) I can't imagine having to poop one of those things out and then still having to wait who knows how long for it to hatch so I could see my baby. I'm glad I'm not a dinosaur.

This was another cool hands-on exhibit. It was a giant sand box that had dinosaur bones burried all over the place. The kids got paint brushes and were turned loose on 'em like real paleontologists. Again, we had to leave this one sooner than planned because Lincoln kept throwing sand. Oh well.

After the museum we had a small lunch at a place called JCW's. I made cupcakes last night for Birthday Eve, so we had those too. Here's me blowing out the candle. :)