Utah Trip - Thursday

More from our trip to Utah. This is what Alan and the girls did on Thursday while I baked cake:

They visited monuments to the pioneers: 

Went to temple square and saw the tabernacle and organ:

Tidbit about those marble columns: They aren’t really marble. They are wood painted to look like marble. Give it up for faux finish!

Grandpa and grandma Welker joined them and got to spend a rare day with them. We don’t get to see them much so it was great that they had that chance. 

 

 

In front of the organ. Alan tried to get them all together which he managed but this in spite of Katherine’s attempted…

And eventual escape. 

She enjoyed testing daddy to see how far he would let her go.

(Looking back at that series of pictures brought many giggles from the girls as they remembered trying to keep Katherine in the picture.)

Katherine sitting on a bench in the tabernacle.

Here’s Gabby upstairs in the assembly hall.

 She said it was “very crooked”. Alan says “it was built with a slope – like stadium bleachers. If you’re walking along the rows of benches it is definitely slanted. And Gabby felt sea (see?) sick.”

This is the Assembly Hall. Alan says he’d never been inside here before that he can remember.

It’s really pretty. I like the blue reflection behind the organ.

And an Assembly Hall stained glass window.

   

After lunch they went to the Seagull Monument but they didn’t take pictures. Oh well.

Gabby says it was just a statue with a bunch of birds.

Alan: Why were the seagulls important?

Gabby: Because when the pioneers finally got their crops to get up, the locusts came and started eating all the crops. Then one day the seagulls came and then ate all the locusts.

Alan: and saved the crops

Gabby: yep

Next they went to the Museum of Natural History.

They dug for dinosaur bones and saw a real paleontology lab, complete with working paleontologist! Gabby had seen and spoken with one at a class field trip last year at a museum in Philadelphia. She was able to ask him lots of questions and he was happy to answer her. I guess the lab here has glass walls so you can’t talk to the scientists. Oh well. Not as interesting this time around.

 

But they had fun digging for dinosaur bones…

putting together dinosaur puzzles…Gabby and Samantha put this one together in spite of Katherine’s help.

Climbing on the frog prince inside the “frog and toad exhibit”…

Gabby says it was too slippery to climb up on.

And getting their pictures taken whilst boiling Katherine in a cauldron of potion!

They also had a room where they could put on a puppet show. Alan recorded a much longer video of Gabby doing a show but the sound didn’t come through well. This one is of Samantha doing the alphabet.

And here is the picture of the day. Katherine looking so much like my mom!

I think they had a fun day. And certainly a full one!