We had a very cold January. Weeks went by without the high temperatures creeping above 32. It was also inverted (smog trapped in the valleys), but there was little snow. All of the nasty of winter, without any of the fun. We had to do something to keep our spirits up. So, we put out a lawn display that I had seen in Family Fun magazine a few years ago.

Penguins flocked to our house for Penguin Auditions.

The kids and I made almost 30 penguins out of pop bottles. The kids had a lot of fun making and personalizing the penguins. Then I put out the sign. The kids would put out a few penguins every day.

A small family of penguins.

A whole herd of penguins in our front yard.

We had quite a few neighbors comment and laugh about it. One family from our ward kept driving by our house to count how many penguins were out that day.

The kids love to go on business trips with Aaron. They asked me in early January when we would be able to go again. When I mentioned it to Aaron, he said that he would be going to Cedar City to do a final on a building on the SUU campus. So the last week of January, we went on a quick trip to visit springtime. We drove down to Cedar City early Friday morning. Aaron worked all day. We visited the toy aisle in Walmart and went to a park to play. It was lovely. After Aaron was done, we got to go into the replica of the Globe theater that they have there. We walked all around and talked about how theater was in the time of Shakespeare. There was a stage door open, so we walked out onto the balcony. It was cool to see the stage and theater from that vantage point.

Then we drove to St. George to stay with Aaron's Grandmother Renee. It was lovely to see her again. The temperatures were in the low 60's, lovely weather for playing outside. The kids all jumped on the trampoline and played in the sandbox. We had brought scooters, so they rode scooters up and down Renee's street. In the afternoon we visited the dinosaur museum they have in St. George. The museum is built on a spot where my dad's cousin found dinosaur foot prints. The slab below has the foot prints, tail prints, and hand marks of a dinosaur who squatted near a lake or stream and was probably eating.

Katrina, Caleb, Hannah, and Maggie posing like the dinosaur who made the marks.

Maggie eating something, Lexi, Renee's granddaughter, and Sophie.

This is a drawing of what they think the dinosaur might have looked like.

Here's a diagram of the prints and an interpretation.

The original prints are in the far corner of the museum that you can see in the top picture. Then the dinosaur gets up and walks across the stream bank. The museum has twenty six of his foot prints. It was pretty interesting. The kids played outside in a sand dino-dig for quite some time. It was so lovely to just be outside and not have to be bundled up to our ears. After dinner, we drove home. We didn't get home until midnight, but everyone slept in the next morning.

On a side note, it has been so cold and nasty since then, that I haven't cleaned out the car yet. It still is full of garbage, sleeping bags and scooters. Maybe sometime soon it will warm up enough to make me want to go outside and get that cleaned up. It's not looking likely anytime in the next week.