Kennecott Love, Part 3: Utah Museum of Natural History . . . and Family Visiting!

Our family in front of the "Kennecott Mine" display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

So, this is two posts in one (actually, correction . . . in the process of writing it and uploading pictures, it kinda became three posts in one). And lots of pictures. I had some stuff to catch up on.

First, Saturday Greg and I went with the girls (and Uncle Cody) to the Natural History Museum up at the University of Utah, courtesy of our super nifty Kennecott Family Pass (Kennecott/Rio Tinto, have I told you lately how much I love you?)

Feeling all nostalgic, I pulled up the old email I'd written, and photos I'd sent, when we went to the museum two years ago with Annie (by the way, Gmail, your never ending supply of memory, coupled with my never deleting anything, tied in with the ability to keyword search, I just can't decide if I love you almost as much as, more than, or about the same as Kennecott . . . well, never mind, only one of you signs our paycheck. But Gmail, I love you a whole lot too.)

Anyway, here's that photo collage from 2007 with Annie at 15 months -- she has so much more hair than Ellie! But then again, that's not saying too much! And hey, look, two years later and Ellie's wearing the exact same outfit . . . although that wasn't so much a coincidence :-)

Here's part of the email I wrote in 2007:

With all of our 'family venue' and museum hopping of the last weeks, we've reached a conclusion . . . Annie isn't really a big fan of the newest and greatest, she's more old school. She LOVED going to the University of Utah's Museum of Natural History, versus her much whining at the cool, newer museum at Thanksgiving Point. At the History Museum she loved all the old black phones, which I'm pretty sure have been broken since I was a kid, yet she managed to gab nonstop on them (usually with a phone in each hand). One little boy told us sadly, as Annie picked up one of the black phones, "Oh, they don't work." As we watched Annie talk excitedly into the phone we told him, "That's OK, she just likes to talk." She was also a big fan of all the buttons to push, even though they only actually did something about half the time. Greg and I got a big kick out of many of the truly, truly out of date displays . . . "In the '60s the minerals and chemicals in the average person's body were calculated to be worth 98 cents. By 1978 this figure soared to $5.60. In 1979 the value jumped to $7.28. What will the man of the 1980's be worth?" That's only better than a quarter of a century outdated. Not bad. The giant painting of a "Brontosaurus" was also kind of amusing, being that even though it was a childhood favorite of ours, the "Brontosaurus" is no longer recognized as a real dinosaur, being that it never actually existed, and was just pieces of different dinosaurs that have since been classified with their own dino-names. The museum did have a very cool frog exhibit that Annie liked. Mainly though, because it had lots of buttons and phones to talk on.

I still love all the outdated stuff. And the decades old stuffed animals on display. Ellie's favorite part was probably the dinosaurs, and she wasn't very interested in the phones at all, although I don't know if we really offered them to her. She's not as into phones as Annie was at this age. Ellie'll pretend to talk on the phone, but it's not the biggest deal, nor is it a sure thing for entertaining her no matter where we are.

Here's Ellie, as the happiest little paleontologist on the block, enthusiastically brushing away sand.

Annie was more of the 'only if it means I don't have to put down my purse and sunglasses, or get my hands dirty' kinda paleontologist. Like a paleo-diva.

Ellie really getting into it.
Ellie has recently become quite obsessed with dinosaurs, letting out roars everytime she sees a picture of one. In the museum, we walked into the room with the dinosaurs displays, and Ellie let out a particularly vicious sounding roar upon seeing the first skelton. Someone who worked at the museum just happened to be standing there, looking shocked, until he finally said, "Wow! How old is she? You have one smart baby there!" He hadn't seen her 'moooo' at the Wooly Mammoth though.

Ellie perched a top the big Frog Prince. We have dozens of pictures on or by this, as it was the only thing she was interested in for quite awhile. Greg, Cody and Annie went and saw like half the frog exhibit while I played with Ellie near this thing.

Annie's turn atop the frog.

Uncle Cody, Annie & Ellie.

Mega Cool Cody, Super Fly Annie, and Greg. (Cody is wearing Annie's extra pair of 'Disney Princess' sunglasses . . . we made her leave one purse and one of her pairs of sunglasses out in the car, settling on letting her still bring two pair into the museum, inside one purse. Did I mention the diva thing?)

Annie hopping along the "How far can you leap?" display.

That's a frog, Mom.

Greg getting ready to make his giant leap.

Cody looking crazy while attempting the same.We were excited to find that the museum had added an 'erosion table', equpped with running water and lots of sand. Pretty much Greg and Annie's idea of heaven on earth. Ellie liked getting her hands wet, then throwing her shoe into the water, then she was ready to move on. So, Ellie and I explored like half of the museum while Cody, Greg and Annie tried to build giant sand dams. They were very, very hard to drag away from this display.Annie and Uncle Cody, bonding while playing in the sand. It's how they interact . . . water, rocks, sand and mud. It creates a bond (and concrete in the right proportions.)

The girls playing in the teepee.

After the museum, we got pizza, ran all kinds of errands, then finally got home around 4PM. When my parents came over and picked up the girls and took them swimming, not dropping them off until 7 o'clock. Which just made it like the best Saturday ever.

The only thing that could top it though, was on Sunday, when the girls' only two cousins, Connor and Nathan (and Aunt Liz & Uncle Chris) came into town to visit! We haven't seen them since around New Years (although, we do see pictures and video, and Annie talks about her cousins often), so it was great to see all the kids together.

Nathan and Ellie really remind me of each other, they're vocal, adorable, sport the same hairstyle, chew on stuff, and at only 8 weeks apart (Ellie's older), they're even fairly close to the same height (Ellie's a tad shorter).
Here they are both slobbering on stuff:

This is one very happy Grandma, to have both of her toddler grandchildren, in one place, at one time, able to read them a story altogether . . . it's like a dream come true . . .

Connor and Annie trading 'Mickey cards' . . . I now expect these cards to become all the rage on the playground with swapping/playing/trading . . . of course, they're just some free paint sample cards from Home Depot, but we have found their usefulness as memory cards, playing cards and just cute color swatches (perfect for teaching a toddler their colors) to be priceless! (Or, at least worth more than we paid for them!)

Nathan got in on this too . . . and by 'in on this', I mean he started to eat the cards.

Ellie's thinking, "Hey, they do look tasty, I should try one . . . "

Now Ellie thinking, "That was disgusting! I now have paper stuck to my tongue! What I wouldn't give for some chalk, day old Cheerios or chapstick to eat right now!"

We ended up playing outside for awhile, and it was fun to watch the kids play together. It makes me wish we could have the boys here all the time, but I am glad that they are all having such an amazing experience back at Notre Dame. We all get to go to Yellowstone next week together though, and it will be such a fun trip! Annie's increasingly excited about it, every day asking if we get to go camping with Connor yet. Today on the drive home from dinner with all the family, Annie pointed off to the side of the road at some sprinklers and shouted, "I think those were some geysers!!" Then she conceded that they probably were not, but that would've been exciting to see. She's also been talking about bears and bison nonstop. I think we're hitting those Yellowstone youtube videos hard enough, don't you?

I mentioned before that this became a 'three part' blog post. That's 'cause in that two year old email I quoted from earlier about the museum, there was also a little 'Annie update' on her latest accomplishments at 15 months old. It was interesting to see how alike, and yet how different my two girls are at this same age!
About Annie, it said:

Annie's been really talkative lately (and not just into phones), and has finally agreed to 'mimic' us, and will repeat many, many different words if she's in the mood for the game. She has a bunch of new animals sounds and motions she makes (she now will clap her fingers to her thumb when she sees a picture of an alligator or crocodile, but I can't quite get her to say 'snap snap' while she does it.) Her gorilla impersonation is priceless. I've found that leaving her around my siblings for too long is dangerous because they teach her all kinds of useless things. Uncle Cody has taught her to say "Ninja" pretty well. Aunt Lacy has taught her how much fun it is to hold her sippy cup above her head in her car seat and to shake it until she (and her car seat, outfit and diaper) are soaking wet. If you ask her what her Uncle Cody says, she makes a long, shrill, high pitched screeching noise that's pretty amusing. Her Aunts have been trying to get her to make oinking noises when asked what Grandpa says, but she won't bite. She just looks at them funny, since she knows that pigs say that, not Grandpas. (She does pretty adorably say "Umpa" and "Umma" to call to her Grandparents though).

Ellie is little miss talkative right now too. She chatters and sings nonstop. She actually 'sings' upon request, and whenever her big sister is singing, she joins right in. Sometimes with pretty impressive results, as my sister Talina commented the other day, "I think they just harmonized!" :-) Ellie is also getting pretty big into animal sounds, especially growling at dinosaurs or tigers, mooing at cows and 'woofing' at dogs. She raises her arm up like a truck upon seeing elephants, sometimes with the accompanying 'brooooo' sound, but usually not. I hadn't thought to teach her the whole 'snapping' motion for alligators, but I believe we'll start that tomorrow. :-) She calls her Grandmas "Gammas", and one time she so perfectly said the word "Grandpa" that both my Mom and I couldn't believe it wasn't Annie who'd said it (except we were both looking right at Ellie at the time) . . . but has refused a repeat performance. In fact, there's quite a few things she's said shockingly well, or mimicked perfectly, only for them to (up to this point, at least) never be heard again.

Maybe 'cause Annie is easier to get to say and do hilarious pranks and whatnot at the age of three, my siblings have not seemed as focused on teaching Ellie useless crap. :-)

Ellie seems 'busier' than Annie was at this age though . . . always on the go, and more adventerous and brave. At the pool the other day with my parents, Ellie happily (and repeatedly) went on a water slide that Annie only agreed to try out when promised an ice cream cone for her efforts. Ellie loves the independence that walking gives her, and wants to take full advantage (mainly in public, not when I'm trying to, say, make dinner or something . . . then she wants to be held.) Ellie takes off at the first glimpse of freedom, and screams and yells like you're trying to kill her when you dare pick her up and not allow her to run straight into the men's room at the zoo. Mean Mom.