A little while back, Matt and I went to the Imagine Dragons concert up at Weber State. I am a big fan, so Matt got me tickets for my birthday. It was really fun to see them at a smaller venue, and having a date night was pretty nice, too! We have WAY too few of them right now.
Once the leaves started falling, Beckett was in love. He jumped in LOTS of piles of leaves this season. This one is from Matt's parent's house. Matt had gone up on his day off and ended up helping with the leaves in the grass. Beckett was very happy to help, too.
I do have one slightly-depressing-at-the-time-but-now-kind-of-funny story to share, though so this post won't be just pictures :) Here goes:
A couple weeks ago, during a crazy warm spell we had in November, Matt and I both had the same day off, and we decided to take Beckett and make a day of it and go do something fun in good ol' SLC before the snow hit. It was so warm that we thought we'd go to the zoo. We had wanted to get down to the zoo all summer, but with the crazy year we've had, it just hadn't worked out. The more we thought about it, it just felt like the right thing to go do for an afternoon. Why not go to the zoo?? What could go wrong?? We had this spontaneous trip planned in no time as Beckett was waking up from his nap. We asked Beckett if he wanted to go to the zoo and he just about lost his mind, he was so excited. We quickly got everything all packed up and were on the road before we knew it. Beckett was an angel for our entire drive, which is beyond rare. That's a long time for a 2 year old to sit patiently in his seat. But he did! He just looked out the window, and when I'd look back and ask if he was ready to see some animals, he'd get excited and start listing off all the animals we were going to see. It was adorable, and we were all way excited. Then we got there. We walked up toward the gate (never once noticing it was too quiet because we were lost in our excitement) only to find out it was closed for the day. YEAH... PARENTING. FAIL.
Beckett was beside himself, I kid you not. He was distraught. He just could not understand why we couldn't go in. And why we had teased him with going all the way to zoo for nothing. He was bawling, I was bawling because he was bawling and because we must be the worst parents ever!, and Matt was looking at both of us like "What do I do here??" Why didn't we check to see when the zoo closed BEFORE we traveled all the way there with a toddler?? Doh! We must be the worst parents ever!!
We were scrambling to find something else to go do so it wouldn't be such a huge failure, but the aquarium is still closed until the grand opening of the new one in Draper, and the aviary would be closing as soon as we could get there. And for some reason, I thought Beckett wouldn't find as much joy in Ikea as I would. Yeah, we were feeling like big losers at this point. Finally, we just started driving toward downtown, when we thought we'd go see what was at the planetarium. I was frantically google searching on my phone and trying to comfort and explain to Beckett while Matt drove. It looked like there were some cool things going on, but I was worried it was a little old for Beckett. We felt like we had no other choice but to try it as Beckett was STILL bawling when we got to the Gateway. As we pulled in ... TADA! we passed right by the Discovery Gateway children's museum. Thank goodness!! We had never been there, but had heard advertisements on the radio about it, and decided it might be a little more age appropriate for Beckett, so we gave it a go.
I'm so glad we did! This place is amazing! Everything on the main floor is geared for toddlers and younger kids. Everything is kid-proof, so you don't have to chase your kids around every second and worry they're going to break something (which for us is a huge deal), you can just let them run and have fun. They have all sorts of fun things inside, like a farm where you can feed (stuffed) chickens and collect their eggs, plant vegetables and harvest them into farmer john's truck, a mini grocery store with little carts and pretend registers, a water table, a pretend house with babies to take care of, a fire truck, a construction site, just so many fun, fun things for our little man to enjoy. It wasn't the zoo, but he had so much fun running around and playing... Which is obvious from the fact that I hardly got any pictures where he's not blurry, haha.
Matt might have liked this one more than Beckett. (Or just had more patience for it, anyway. haha)
After playing for a while, we decided to go down to one of the restaurants in the mall and get some dinner.
This is Beckett at Applebees, biting into a mozzarella stick. He thought it was HILARIOUS that the cheese was stringy and just kept coming. He was laughing hysterically. (I think after such a busy day, he was so exhausted that anything would have been funny.)
After a quick stop into Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a caramel apple to eat at home, we were on our way. I am so happy this turned into a funny story. I cannot even describe the drama that was this day. So bad. At least it ended on a good note.
Ever since that little warm spell ended, it's been FREEZING here, so we've had to get a little creative with our outings. One of our favorites right now is driving around to look at Christmas lights, especially the lights by the bay at Willard Bay. I am a naughty parent and will unbuckle Beckett and let him climb up in the front seat with me while we drive around (you only go like 1.5 mph, chillax) and see the sights. He loves it. At one of our most recent trips, they had "jingle bells" playing over the speakers. I was very impressed and also bursting with pride when Beckett belted out singing "Jingo da bells". He's pretty good! We've heard it about 100,000 times since because we can't stop making a fuss over it, but that's completely fine with me.
Anywho. I think that's about it as far as our adventures for now. But what post would be complete without a craft I've been working on lately? This is my Thanksgiving wreath. It says Gobble on the little banner, but you can't really see it in the picture. I loved that my turkey turned out like some South Park looking creation. He cracked me up, so I left him chubby and also left his eyes... a little bulge-y. haha. Now someone come finish all the Christmas projects for me that I've started and haven't had time to finish!
