The Largey Clan!: Salt Lake Vacation

Wait, you say, don't you live in Orem? Aren't you like, 30 minutes from Salt Lake? Why yes, yes we are. But, we happened upon a fabulous deal we couldn't pass up and it just happened to work out to be the cheapest most exciting thing we'll do for vacation all year!

Step one: We found a Living Social deal for the Salt Lake City connect passes. $20 a child, $30 an adult for passes to every museum and fun place in Salt Lake. Afton was still free, because she's still 2. Then, we had three more people sign up with our code so we got one pass free= $80.

Step Two: As a one year 'anniversary present' for having a Marriott rewards credit card, we got a free night at a 5 star Marriott hotel= $14 for parking.

Step three: My dad borrowed the little car for registration and brought it back filled up with gas. Yes, it's a lot smaller than the van for travelling but the gas mileage is much better- we figured since we weren't going TOO far, it would be worth it to squish. (Hyrum didn't agree. He's used to the leg room.:) After the whole trip, we returned with more than half a tank of gas= $0

Step four: Food. We ate breakfast before we left, Wednesday. We brought lots of snacks, the Lion House pantry is included on the passes- big meals and delicious food for all! It just happened that the Yelp community (an online group of people who review restaurants and other places.) was having a Yelp party for the Yelp elite (yes, Zach loves to review when we go out, and he was invited to this 'special' group) at the Saffron garden restaurant in SL, that night. We used a coupon and bought the kids some McDonalds and Robby and Lauren came over to the hotel to swim (for THREE hours they swam! Robby is the favorite uncle, for sure!) while Zach and I went to the dinner. It was pretty awesome. They went through a whole menu of appetizers, veggies, main dish and dessert while we chatted with fellow reviewers, watched a bellydancer, etc. Zach loved it! We bought breakfast at Denny's the next day, ate some sandwiches from Grandma at snowbird for lunch and stopped for dinner at Cafe Rio on the way home= $35

Step five: Have so much fun! We hit the Discovery Children's museum, the Clark Planetarium to watch a 3D IMAX about the Hubble telescope (fascinating!) and the Leonardo on the first day. The second day we visited the Tracey Aviary, the Hogle Zoo and the Snowbird Tram. We were too worn out to go to the Red Butte Gardens and the Art museum as planned, but we got our money's worth!

Afton could have spent all day at the Children's museum in the shopping center- she acts just like a little mom!

Hyrum was too big for most of the activities at the children's museum- it's geared toward pre-school- 2nd grade, I think. But, he did like the climbing wall.

The kids had the most fun in a big room full of giant foam blocks. Weston built these stairs and Hyrum had everyone watching him build and shoot a catapult- it was pretty ingenious.

We took the trax train over to Temple square to get our Lion house pantry meal. As you can tell, the boys had fun?

At least Afton has a cute face!

The Leonardo was awesome. It was in between big exhibits which was kind of sad except that there was no one there- we got to play on all the scientific, creative exhibits as long as we wanted!.

Afton and Weston on the rainbow stage playing with lights.

Our Pixel picture- look closely and you can see the man, clouds, flowers and sun.

The green screen in front of the camera.

And on the screen!

We played with computer animation characters, painted with paint brushes on computer screens, made animated shorts with little sets and cameras, built catapults and air planes and many other things. I love being able to open up my kids minds to what they might like to do when they grow up- there are so many cool career choices!