Staycation

A few months ago the kids started asking us where we were going on vacation this year. Last year we went to southern California. We saw my brother and his family and did all kinds of fun things, including the beach, Disneyland, and a Yankees game. Our plan was to do some kind of getaway with the kids every summer. Unfortunately our cash flow is a bit tied up in paying off some of Henry's medical bills so a big trip was out. We settled on a weekend trip to Salt Lake City. We stayed in a hotel and did all kinds of fun things there. We can categorize them as follows:

The Good

Temple Square - The kids loved walking through Temple Square and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We walked through the visitors centers and the gardens and had a nice time checking things out.

Boondocks - How can you go wrong, really, with mini golf, laser tag, bumper boats, go carts, batting cages, and arcade games. We spent about 4 hours there on Friday and the kids had a blast.

Despicable Me - We know we can see movies in Cache Valley, but it seemed like a fun, cool (as in not hot), inside thing to do when the temperature was hovering close to 100 and we had spent a few hours outside at Boondocks that day. The movie was cute. And did I mention that it was cool in the theater?

Mayan Adventure - This restaurant was really fun. The food was OK - nothing fabulous - but every so often there were cliff divers and fire dancers that kept everyone entertained.

Clarke Planetarium - We spent Saturday morning at Gateway and saw the IMAX movie "Under The Sea". It was really good and just what a 3-D movie should be. The exhibits in the planetarium kept us occupied for a while as well.

Utah State Capitol Building - The kids didn't want to browse through the new Deseret Book store so Jay took them up to the Capitol Building. They had a fun time checking out all the ins and outs.




The Bad

William's Fear of Heights - This manifested itself more often than you might think - walking up the rounded ramp to see the Christus at Temple Square, during mini-golf at Boondocks, dinner at the Mayan (we had an upstairs table right by the lagoon and William wouldn't even walk over to watch the divers), going up a level on the escalator at Gateway. For a kid whose favorite ride at Disneyland was Soarin Over California, which even freaked me out a little, he sure doesn't like anything that requires you to go UP.

Sleeping 5 to a Room - This really wasn't bad the second night, when we moved "I sleep like a log but move around a ton" William to the sleeping bag on the floor and let Henry and Tessa share the other bed. But having that many people in one room just made everything stuffy, so Jay and I kept waking up and throwing covers off because we were hot.

The Ugly

Chinese Gourmet - This place to eat (I hesitate to call it a restaurant) is on State Street about 45th South. We figured - buffet, Chinese, should work for everyone. Uh, no. Seriously, I don't ever think I've had a worse meal than this. It was terrible. The food was either tasteless or tasted horrible. Even the desserts were bad. The worse part was watching William shovel food in his mouth like he had never eaten anything so good. We finally made him stop eating because we were worried that he'd be sick. This will go down in history as the rare time that Jay makes a bad call regarding an eating establishment and why I was in charge of picking a place to eat on Friday night (see above, Mayan Adventure).

So there you have it. Staycation 2010. We'd do it all again, minus the trip to Chinese Gourmet of course.