Visit to UT and the Bean Museum

Mark finally had some time off between school and work and we took 2 weeks and went up to UT for a good long visit. It's a good thing we planned to be there for so long too, because we spent at least half of it sick and in bed... Mark got it first and just as he was recovering, the kids and I came down. We weren't able to see all the people we were planning on, but we did get a few good visits in.

One of our visits was to Aunt Becca. She had a lot of fun playing with the kids. She took Shelly on a walk through the house and when she saw Aunt Danielle's wedding pictures she said 'Aunt Danielle went to the temple and got married and turned into a princess!' It was way cute. I have no idea where it came from either. They did learn about temples in nursery though, so that might have been part of it - but we thought it was super adorable. Then we had Shelly tell Aunt Becca all about her dreams. Shelly has had what we can only assume are recurring dreams about alligators. They want to eat her, but she either gets saved or the alligators eat food instead of Shelly (we don't have the heart to tell her that she would be food to an alligator). Becca was reminded of the Bean museum and she looked up when they were going to be open and found a reptile exhibition. We figured the kids would love that - so we set a date to go. The Schofields came with us and the three cousins had a blast running through the place and the adults tried to avoid headaches trying to keep up and keep them out of trouble!

At the reptile exhibition there was a small dead and stuffed alligator (Mark will tell you it was something else, but I can't think of the right name). Shelly saw the 'Shelly sized alligator' and fell in love! She also had a blast touching all the live animals they brought. The next morning Shelly told us her dream about the 'Shelly sized alligator' and that it wasn't scary. I haven't heard much about alligator dreams lately, so I think she's past them now. I'm sure if I asked her what she dreams about she'd say alligators - but I'm thinking it's more of an automatic reaction and memory than what she really dreams about any more. I could be wrong - I should ask her one of these days...

Shelly and Ethan touching the Iguana

Something spooked her, but at least she's having fun!
Ethan is totally chilling loving being so close to anything icky! :-)