Spring Break, YO!

I just got back from looking at my cousin's pictures from HER Spring Break vacation to the Caymen Islands and listening to my friend tell us all about HER trip to Disneyland. Well, it was NOTHING like MY vacation (for one day) to Summit County, Utah!

When the kids are in 4th grade around here, they do a "county report" and so far we are 2 for 2 in visiting the county to help give them some awesome pictures for their horribly homemade posters to accompany their report. And as an educator, I want my kids to realize the importance of good visual aids. Powerpoint, shmowersmoint. Good, old-fashioned posters with some glossy 4X6's are where it's at! It's the future of education, I'm just sure of it! Here are some highlights of our trip:


First thing's first: let's eat! Here we are at a historic diner transported from the east coast, right to Summit County! We are impressed already! At this point in the trip, we're still enthusiastic. We're throwing snowballs, we're laughing. We hit the road while spirits are high.

Our waitress was super great (drinks always full) and friendly (you know how I feel about talking to strangers--I like it), and served Topher the best reuben sandwich he's ever had.

Margaret's not in this photo because she's too busy throwing glass salt and pepper shakers and jumping on the antique tables.

Here's Owen at the Summit County museum. Luckily, no one was manning the store, so to speak. We could wander in and out at our leisure and not worry about any museum representative judging me on my parenting skills as I yelled at Margaret to stop touching all the antiques and passive-aggressively rolling my eyes at Topher. My favorite part of this museum was a framed newspaper clipping from the late 1800s advertising a nutritious vegetable compound for "women who are too tired to do their work!" One testimonial stated, "Now that I drink (this special "vegetable" snake oil), I now weigh 165 pounds and I feel so energized and healthy! I can finish all my household duties and chores!" Can you imagine that ad running today?! Then I cracked open a diet Coke and took a nap in the car.

This is the outside of the museum. My kids always want to climb on things and have me take a picture. I'm not sure if it's for artistic reasons: like, it improves "the shot," or if it's just so they have an excuse to climb on something they're not sure they can. We're on vacation so anything goes!

We thought this looked like a still shot that belongs in an episode of "Parks and Recreation." Yeah, Pawnee!

Here are the kids experiencing some interactive learning at the Park City Olympic museum. It's free and I highly recommend it because kids can touch stuff and it teaches you what to do in case of an avalanche which is something I'd been meaning to cross off on my "stuff my kids should know" mental parenting list. Done and done!

Owen is awesome.

Here's a historic (old) church in Summit County. This is the point in the trip when half of the car had fallen asleep and the other half were lamenting that we didn't let them bring their DS's and Topher told everyone to "LOOK OUT THE WINDOW!" and enjoy the beauty of Utah, as any good dad would. Then we took a picture.

We love Summit County!

Incidentally, this is how our trip both started, and ended.