Deer Valley Music Festival and the funicular

Ikey and I went to hear the music of John Williams at the Deer Valley Music Festival and we loved it. The little boy nearly fell asleep. 

Ikey spotted the funicular going up and down the mountain, and it seemed a little train-like so we walked over to take a ride.  

Ikey's illustration of the resort and the funicular. It really pretty much looks like this. 

It's so luxurious with a big leather couch and cool curved windows!

Can you see the crowd on the hill enjoying "The March of the Imperial Soldiers"?

African Savannah and the new train at Hogle Zoo

 Opening day wasn't too crazy. The longer train ride and bigger train is fun.

Cottonwood Heights Cafe

It has a smoker shaped like a locomotive. Too bad they don't use it anymore! The pancakes here are pretty good. 

Bees game plus polishing the train

 The Bees game didn't get called on account of rain, but maybe it should have. Everything was so wet!

They retired the train halfway through the game and we arrived on the scene just in time to help dry it off. It was definitely a highlight. 

The Big Boy

We saw Engine 4014 on its way through town headed to Cheyenne for a big refurnishment project. It was actually quite huge. 

We're such train fanatics and everyone knows it. Two family members and a friend notified us that The Big Boy was coming through. We have such one-track minds. 

Bees Game

 I took the kids to the Bees game on a super windy day and we had the greatest time. 

The ball field is pretty big, but when we arrived at our seats, we found our friend Josh Ray in the seats just in front of us. The kids love Josh Ray, and his group of builder friends adopted us a laughed at the kids jokes and shared their fries. It was providential. 

The free train ride was a huge hit.

I went on a bike ride up Emigration Canyon with three friends and it was so windy! On the way back down, I hit a few rocks really hard and got my first ever flat tire on my road bike. My friends rode ahead to get the car to come back to rescue me and I started walking my bike down. Every biker who passed me paused to ask if I needed any help (what a great community!) and when I stopped in front of the canyon fire station to try to change it, a real tall biker stopped to help me do it. 

Draper Library

The children's section of the Draper library has a train theme, which was very popular with this crowd.

The old Park School near the library is just waiting to be restored and put to good use. 

Our art projects

Jovie has been READING, which is super exciting because it's the first time I tried to teach a three-year-old to read. She's also practicing writing her name and she's getting good in a not-consistent way. She loves to paint and draw with markers, and she can switch characters as fast as a song changes. She's energetic and excited and resourceful, a good hider and finder of things, and very lovable.

 

Once Jovie saw Ikey's matroyshkas, she wanted some too, so we picked up the kit at the craft store.

 and painted our faces off...and theirs on. 

Ikey drew this picture of our family on Jupiter.

 He also drew this bunk bed and train table scene...

...which looks a whole lot like this scene from Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we LOVE, but haven't watched for like six months. The things that are rattling around in his head always surprise me when they come out.

Ballet, Drumset Success, Union Station, Dinner in Ogden

TB is out of town this week, so we are working harder than usual to entertain ourselves. 

Jovie was adorable at dance class this morning. We usually arrive early from preschool drop-off so we discuss interesting things with Miss Kim for a while.

After school, we came home to eat some lunch and clean up a little. We had a little drum practice to do too, so Ikey worked on the Crash Cymbal Beat which he refused to do during lessons and which he told me he was afraid of because he didn't know if he would recognize the symbol for the crash cymbal. He was quite brave about it though, and it was his best beat ever. Check it out!

http://youtu.be/8W3NNpyFkH0

 After all that work, we went to Ogden to the Union Station museums. We met Breezy and Kade and Sophie and climbed all over the caboose, chased the model train, and drove the real retired engine. Ikey yelled, "Oh no! Emergency! Cows on the track. I have to use the emergency brake!"  Jovie told Breezy and me that we were the cows. Breezy was only slightly offended until I told her that we should just moo and get out of the way. We'll ( hopefully) be assigned more flattering characters next time. 

We were hungry at this point. Me especially because I was doing a fasting experiment. TB and I have read a lot about the health benefits of fasting and since I haven't missed a meal in about 10 years, I decided to start easy with a 24 hour deal that would only miss two meals. I gave up my first attempt after about 8 hours because I wanted to get Chinese food with Dallin for his birthday. I gave up my second attempt after about 8  hours because I was going to the event at Sundance, although I should have stuck with it because I only ate a miniature cupcake at that one. This time, I fasted for 24 hours between the Dairy Keen yesterday and Slackwater Pizza today. That is following the letter of the experiment, but probably not the spirit as it started and ended with big junk food meals exactly 24 hours apart. I'll do better next time when I have 36 hours as the goal and will really have to skip three meals. Anyway, we had a MacNCheese Pizza at Slackwater and it was tasty.

We saw this weird thing on the drive home. Looks like a space shuttle got lost and just landed on a school in Ogden. 

Ice Castles in Midway

TB is out of town, so we packed up our snow clothes and went to Heber for lunch at Dairy Keen: "The home of the train" and it was predictably delightful. We brought our snow clothes too so we could tour the ice castles in Midway. This big-house-sized castle is built completely with ice, no support structure. The castle wasn't too busy on a Tuesday afternoon so we ran around and climbed through tunnels for about an hour. 

Movie: http://youtu.be/Z9n8KCLuIZg

OLAF!

They installed colored LEDs in the ice and we really wanted to see how it looked, but we just couldn't wait for night fall. 

Last day in NYC

I woke up early early early and rode the subway to Rockefeller Plaza to see the Today Show. I don't watch it anymore because my mornings are more full than usual, but I've gone on all four of my NYC trips, so it's tradition.

 

 

While I was celebrity-spotting, Todd finished packing up the kids and all our junk. We rode the subway to Harlem and then walked a few blocks to the Metro-North train station. Harlem is very different from the other parts of NY that we'd been too. Todd said, "There were all of a sudden a lot more people talking to themselves." Also, a Metro-North train had a fatal derailment the day after Thanksgiving, and those are full-sized trains going pretty fast.

We bought our tickets at a charming old train station and climbed up the stairs to the elevated tracks. We didn't have a very long ride to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

 

We went to the Garden for the Holiday Train Show. The Hapt Conservatory was built in 1902 and it's strikingly beautiful.

The artist had made a whole New York City out of twigs, leaves, acorns, nuts and other natural things, and a couple of trains too.

 

 

St. Patrick's cathedral



Angels around the Rockefeller Center Tree.



Oh the train-lengths we go to for this boy.

 

We rode the train back to Harlem...

 

...then back to our "home" station.

We ran into Piers Morgan in the elevator when the kids were dragging their luggage about. He was kind and patient and he said, "All the best to you." in an English accent when he finally got around the traffic jam that is two preschoolers with rolling luggage in a little NYC elevator.

We loaded our preponderance of baggage into Marsha's car and she and Mitch took us to the airport, after a few last-minute selfies.

 Ikey cuddled up with Todd for the flight home.

Grandpa Joe braved the cold weather (11 degrees!) and load of new snow to pick us up from the airport. We were so glad to be home as always, and we feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful trip to visit a family we love and see things we will remember forever.