Off to an Energetic Start

I'm having an extremely hard time believing that we've only been out of school for a week.  We have hit it hard on the "getting out of the house" end of things.  I'm going to confess that it's partly a coping skill seeing as how two of my three children reside on the brink of warfare with each other at all times.  We've been gone so much and so busy that our to-do list is already diminishing.

Our first big outing was to the Kennecott Copper Mine, and just getting out there proved as big an adventure as seeing the mine itself.  I've never been there in all my years of dwelling it Utah, and though it was a little alarming to take in the scope of the mine, it was certainly educational.  We went with a small group from our soccer team and we had a great time, especially having lunch together afterwords at a local park where we discovered that local kids have kept a running list of every bad word they could think of etched into the play equipment.  Stomper quickly comforted my fears by letting me know that he only knew the first one and the third one.   

The very  next day we got up early and drove an hour north to Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville Utah.  Troy was sad he wasn't able to join us - he spent much of his childhood driving to Honeyville to visit his Grandpa Preslar, who used to own the little corner store there.  We stopped to take pictures of the kids on the rickety wooden porch on the way home, which was fun.  The springs themselves were really fun.  The water was quite salty and turned all of our suits slightly orange, but its warmth felt wonderful. That is until about 1:00 in the afternoon when we all started to feel like we were stewing ourselves.  Then it was time to leave.  I was so proud of Stomper - there were two big water slides there that intimidated him, especially the part where you crash land into rushing water at the bottom.  He almost had a major meltdown, but rallied and eventually gave the slides a try and of course loved them.  I'm really excited to head back there come November or December.  It was a fun little destination.

We've been to the aquarium, out to lunch, and had play dates.  We've been to the park and eaten popsicles.  And the weather has been perfect, which we heartily deserve after the past few months as winter just would not give in to spring.  It's not so hot that going outside is miserable yet, and yet warm enough to do some swimming, which we did yesterday: 

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep this up all summer. My kids are going to have to get along at home a little bit!  Please!  But really, we're off to a very fun start to a hopefully great summer.  I think I've taken more pictures in the past two weeks than I have in months.