Jack's Batman Party

While my good friend Jenny was visiting here in Utah (from California) she threw a birthday party for her son Jack at Boondocks! He chose to have a batman theme for his 5th birthday, and asked the kids who came to dress up as a superhero. Of course that didn't take any convincing with my boys. They were super excited!

Noah went as Mr. Incredible...

And Lincoln went as Buzz Lightyear...

Allison & Jenny. I love these two girls. I can hardly believe that I've been friends with them now for 20 & 25 years respectively! It's so fun that all three of us have boys close to the same age, and I love when we can get together and watch them run amok while we catch up with each other.

Noah & Jack (the birthday boy).

Lincoln & Grace (aka batgirl...and the birthday boy's sister).

It was fun to watch the kids chase each other around in all their superhero-ness...


I think it's so cute how excited little kids get about the birthday boy or girl blowing out their candles. I guess that there aren't very many times that it's acceptable to light something on fire and stick it into something sweet and smothered in frosting! Such strange traditions we have...and I love them. Not much is better (in my book) than a kid's birthday party!

Jack blowing out his candles.

Mmmm...cake.

Such a cute little Buzz.

This may be my favorite picture that I took from the party. How sweet is this picture of my friend Allison's son Isaac?! Love it.

Present opening time!

And then it was off to play games! Each kid at the party was given their own card, preloaded with money, to swipe at any game they wanted to play - how fun is that?! Noah was beside himself with excitement. We've never played any games at a place like that, and he loved that he could choose whatever game he wanted to play...or ride any of the little rides.

Noah & Isaac. (I love Noah's little nonchalant hand on the hip)

Grace and Noah on a little ride.

Lincoln had a really great time too! Check out the smile on his face while playing this race car game with Isaac!

Focus....focus...

Noah playing a basketball game:


Yes, I was one of those moms that originally said I wouldn't let my kids play with guns. When will I learn never to say "I'll never..."? I'm tellin' ya' - there is something built into boys' DNA that makes them innately drawn to weapons. And if you don't have toy weapons in your home (and provide parameters for them), they'll find things to use as weapons anyway...sticks, spoons, whatever. I give in...

Eventually we did take off the costumes for the boys to play in the Kiddie Cove. Besides the little issue of overheating...vinyl doesn't move very well when going down slides. I don't have any pictures of the kids on Kiddie Cove, but here is Lincoln riding their little carousel.

Carol (Jenny's mom) hit the pennies game to win all these tickets! What the...?!

Noah, with one of the other little party-goers, playing a car racing game.

I had a hard time catching a good picture of it, but at the end of the party Lincoln and Isaac were running around holding hands. So cute.
Thanks, Jack for inviting us to your party! I think that I had almost as much fun as Noah & Lincoln did!

Museum of Ancient Life

Back on the 7th of April, my mom & I took the boys to the Museum of Ancient Life (which we just all the "dinosaur museum"...not to be confused with the "dinosaur park" coming in a later post). Apparently the museum has the world's largest display of mounted dinosaurs! They have done a really great job too...displaying things in life-like poses, and having a good balance of things to involve all age groups.

A picture of my mom with the boys before we all went in:

And me & my boys roaring like the t-rex behind us...

As we've learned about dinosaurs Noah thought it was fun to learn about people whose job it is to dig for and study their fossils. So 'paleontologist' was a word Noah threw out several times when talking about exhibits like this. It's just so cute to hear a word like that come out of your toddler's mouth.

Noah choosing his own dinosaur pose for this picture...

A perfectly placed little hands-on exhibit for the younger kids, which I felt seemed to reassure them that this place would continue to keep interesting and fun intertwined.

Later on in the museum the boys enjoyed playing at this erosion table. They could dig to discover plastic dinosaurs (or bury them) in the sand, as well as dam up water to be released in flash-flood fashion. It was a perfect hands on exhibit to both explain things to the boys, as well as to just sit back and let them play.



I stopped the boys for a photo later on in the museum, and got such a laugh out of what I ended up with that I simply had to include it. I'm pretty sure that Noah was trying to make Lincoln look at the picture while not wanting to step out of his dinosaur role for the pending photograph.

Another try at getting a shot of the boys together. Noah was really into being one of the dinosaurs in our pictures.

I thought this shot of Noah was just sweet. Sweet meaning cute.

Toward the end of the museum there was a replica of the Carcharadon Megalodon - the largest carnivorous shark ever. Lincoln was actually a little bit hesitant to go up to it at first (understandably), but after he watched Noah approach it safely he agreed to go stand next to it for a picture.


Noah, on the other hand, thought the shark was suuuper cool. And he insisted that I take a picture of just him posing like this in front of the shark. "Aaaaaagh!"

The last hands on exhibit before exiting the museum was this dig site where kids could be little paleontologists and excavate dinosaur fossils. They both thought that was really cool, and so did I until they started to throw sand at each other. *sigh* It was a good thing that the museum was closing at that point anyway, because I didn't feel as bad sticking to my guns and make them leave after warning them that we would leave if they threw sand "one more time..."

One last sweet photo of my Noah before the final sand throwing incident. They really did love it there, and they were really good most of the time. I'm so glad that we went, and it was really fun that my mom was able to come with us too! Thanks, Mom!
Addendum: I have to add how amazed that I continue to be at how much information kids' brains absorb. Over the last several weeks since our visit to this museum Noah has randomly brought up several different things we saw or discussed there. For example...before exiting the museum there is an area that shows pictures of other animals that are extinct, as well as animals that are endangered. That really interested Noah, and when have seen pictures of various animals (emperor penguins, for example) Noah has piped up..."Mom, that animal is endangered to become extinct! We better be careful!"

Kangaroo Zoo

Back on the 5th of April my mom and I took the boys for an afternoon of fun at the Kangaroo Zoo! The boys absolutely loved it, and while none of the pictures that I took were of very good quality...I still think that they show both what happy, active boys they are as well as how much fun that they had that day. First of all, here are pictures of Noah & Lincoln enjoying the bounce house.

I love Lincoln's how care free and happy Lincoln looks in this picture.

I think Lincoln particularly enjoys bounce houses because he can run, jump, scream, and not worry at all about getting hurt if (when) he falls. This picture cracks me up...as Lincoln is screaming you can literally look into his mouth and see all the way to his throat.

At the corner of the bounce house there was this little gap the boys liked to peek through and goad me on to come after them. Look at Noah's sweet little face...don't you just wanna smooch him?

Unfortunately this happy little guy managed to squeeze through this space and fall on his head while looking for me. He cried hard for a few minutes and then was right back at it...

The rest of the place is full of inflatable things to climb on or slide down and the boys had a lot of fun running around together doing just that. Here is a picture of Noah going down one of the larger slides. He was just giddy about the whole thing. After getting to the bottom of the slide he would just laugh and then jump out and run back to do it again.



This is a shot of Noah (on the left) and Lincoln (on the right) going down the slide at the same time.

Noah pretending to be the dragon. Yikes!

Whew. After all that playing we were ready for a refreshing treat. We went next door to a self serve frozen yogurt place and indulged ourselves. The man working there was super friendly, the place was nice and clean, and they even had a kid sized table with chairs and a tv playing cartoons! The kids loved it (and so did we, especially since we were able to enjoy our dessert with the boys being occupied)! I couldn't get Noah to stop for a picture, but here is Lincoln giving me an audible "cheese"!
Thanks for coming with us, Mom! We had a great time!