Still alive at 25

For my 25th birthday we decided to celebrate by going on vacation. We went on a tour of the far off land called Salt Lake City -- and we loved it ;) If you haven't been to alot of the attractions downtown you really need to check out the Connect Pass -- we probably saved at least $40 this way.
Here is an overwhelming catalog of pictures -- and it's not even half of what we took in a 12-hour time period.

We started off the day by packing the essentials: sunglasses, sunblock and snacks. Dd is oh-so-ready in her sassy pink sunglasses (she is all about accessories).

The first place on our amazing getaway was The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. This is still relatively small, but it has some awesome exhibits. Dd was SO excited about all of the "wishies" that she could hardly contain herself.

I have to point out that all three of these pictures are in front of dioramas rather than actual fishes. The real fish were cool, but not very photogenic -- apparently they don't prefer people flashing in their face the whole day.




While we were there we (meaning Dh, definetley NOT me) took the opportunity to pet the sting rays, crabs, starfish and slug-looking water creatures in the tide pools.
Here is dd petting a starfish. I'm willing to bet my life that the ONLY reason she touched it was because she had no idea that it was a live. I'm pretty sure she thought it was a star-shaped plastic thing that you put in fish tanks.

If you don't believe me, just look at how uncomfortable she is in this picture, with glass separating her from the moving "wishies"


Here was my favorite fish of the day:


While there we learned oh-so-fascinating facts about creatures of the deep, like the aptly named "June Suckers" a normal not-cute fish with an "interesting" looking suction-cup mouth.

This sign made us laugh. Real hard. Can you imagine the jokes that would come if the state animal was a SUCKER?? I'd like to meet the historian who has a credible argument WHY the state animal should be a SUCKER.

After the aquarium we went to the planetarium downtown. Dh and I have been there before, and the whole concepts of planets and a solar system was beyond the comprehension of our 2-yr-old (imagine that) so we spent most of our time in the awesome gift shop (playing with toys that we didn't know we NEEDED).



Luckily we only came away with a $2 bracelet and a gross bubble ball.
Next stop was the fantabulous Lion House for lunch. YUM YUM. And just because every aspect of our day had to be photographed, here is a pic of dd eating her lunch:

Next we drove down to Thanksgiving Point to visit the worlds largest dinosaur museum (at least I think that's their claim...) Well, um, gotta be honest ... we thought it was pretty boring.
We breezed through the museum, stopping only to take pictures of the photographic dinosaurs like this one:
Dd enjoyed digging around in the water and sand while playing with the plastic dinos:

I found the ginormous shark head to be amusing so I (unsuccessfully) tried to coerce dh into posing in front of it. The idea was for him to look terrified. He interpreted that to mean look incredibly bored and pretend to swim:


I then made fun of him (warned him that I WAS going to blog it) and demonstrated what I really meant:


Very scary. I know.
For our last stop on the Marcie-Celebration-Extravaganza was the Thanksgiving Point Gardens -- a place I've always wanted to go. Let me just say I LOVED IT!!!! The sun stayed hidden most of the time so we had a cool breeze, a beautiful walk and amazing places to photograph. If you can't already tell, dh decided that he needed to take over the picture-taking action so we have a TON of pictures with me and the kids. I'm glad we got some cute pictures because this will be one of the very rare occasions that I will sit in front of the camera :)




My favorite spots were the Secret Garden and the Rose Garden. I am now of the opinion that I MUST have my own secret garden in my backyard. That place was AMAZING. The benches, the crumbling stone archways, the cobblestone paths and the large shade trees. I want one. Badly. In fact, I assured dh that I would personally learn how to become a mason so that we could build our own personal secret garden. Here are some pics to illustrate:

The rose garden was beautiful because roses come in so many amazing variations. Here are some more of my favorites:

The end of our million-acre walk was the incredible waterfalls. Dd was very excited about the waterfalls.

Finally our trip was over, and as you can see we were VERY sick of having our pictures taken. But it was an awesome day -- I couldn't have asked for a better birthday!