Last Friday I sent a text to Josh in the afternoon threatening to make him do yard work all weekend if we didn’t get out of here. (I am experiencing some cabin/spring fever to say the least.) He sent me a text a 4:00, which I didn’t receive until he called and was headed home at 5:00. His message was pack your bags. Needless to say we had our bags packed, a hotel booked, and we were headed out of town by 5:45. We had no idea what we were going to do, but we were getting out of here. If you have never used hotwire to book discount hotel I recommend it. (www.hotwire.com) We stayed at the SLC downtown Hilton for $85. It was a fun adventure for the kids and for us too. On the way down we stopped and had dinner with the Coombs’ family and went to the donut factory, aka Crispy Cream. While swimming at the pool Friday night we ran into one of Josh’s friends who introduced us to the Salt Lake City “Connect Pass” which was THE BEST PART.
I had to get home and spread the word because it was such a great deal. If you want more info go to http://www.visitsaltlake.com/what_to_do/connect.html. The pass was only $18 for adults and $14 for children for a one-day pass. I had no idea there were so many fun things to do with kids in SLC. It included so much that I almost felt like I was cheating. There are 14 SLC venues to choose from with the pass, and you can do as may as you can fit into the day. We did the following in one day and all for $50 for the family. We went to the Hogle Zoo. We had lunch at the Lion House Pantry. (Amazingly lunch was included with the pass.) We got tickets to the Clark Planetarium IMAX show but missed the show because we were distracted at the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum. We went to The Living Planet Aquarium. (At this point Cara and I took a nap in the car, but Josh and Caleb were going strong.) Finally, we went to the worlds largest dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was so fun! We really felt like we were on vacation. The only unfortunate part of the day is that I didn’t grab the camera. We did have our phones and took a few phone pictures. I guess we will have to do it again to get some more pictures.
Friday night we went to Orem to a Flash game. Flash is a semi-pro team that feeds into the Jazz and another pro team that I don’t remember. NAI, the company Josh works for, is a major sponsor and has box seats. It was fun to see how that works. We ended up extending our vacation one night and spending Saturday night with my cousin Tamie Bateman. I had no idea that Josh and I would have so much fun with Tamie and her husband Nate. We laughed and laughed. It goes without saying that our kids had fun together too. It was so fun to get away. I loved spending the quality time with the kids, and of course I loved that I was getting a deal.