Reception center hunting and dinosaur hunting

It has been a busy weekend. I have had very little time to take a break. Yesterday, Joseph and I took Alison and Ryan reception center shopping. We looked at 3. I think Alison liked the last one best, but we will see what she ends up choosing.

Because Joseph has had very little play time the past couple of weekends, I asked Alison if it would be all right to take him to The Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. One of the reception areas was at Thanksgiving Point, so I figured we could spend a couple of hours at the museum between reception center appointments. Joseph was so excited on Friday when I told him, that first thing on Saturday he woke me up saying that he wanted to go to the "dinosaur skeleton bean museum." He wanted to wear one of his dinosaur t-shirts for the occasion.

Here is Joseph riding on the back of one of the dinosaurs. His current favorite dinosaur is the pteranodon (formerly called a pterodactyl). He looks at his Schleich models of dinosaurs and points out that we still need it. Maybe I can find a Schleich pteranodon model for his birthday. Joseph made sure that when I took a picture of the T-rex, that I took a picture from the mouth side.

We had a hard time getting him away from the sand and water play area. He wanted to play there and probably would have lasted there for over 30 minutes. He didn't want to leave. I finally convinced him that we would go and dig for dinosaurs, but that we had to leave. After a lot of coaxing and arguing (Joseph kept saying, "just one more minute."), we got him to leave.

Of course, he didn't really want to leave the excavation area. Getting him to walk in the sand was a challenge. He didn't like the way it felt, so I had to go in with him. He was still very reluctant and cautious as he stepped into different sand areas. I was sad that I didn't think to record it.

Once we did leave, here are the boys in the car. All tuckered out after playing for so long at the museum. They slept until we got back to Provo. Alison was being nice and trying to get Joseph out of the car for me, but she ended up bumping his head on the ceiling of the car. He cried and didn't nap again after that.

Joe was nice enough to set up the baby crib. It didn't have instructions, so Joe pieced it together. It looks pretty nice overall. When I get crib bedding, I will take pictures and post them. The crib is currently in Joseph's room. I also came to the realization that Joseph has way too many toys. I need to decide which ones to get rid of, but it is hard because he seems so attached to all of them. I will focus on big items first. I managed to get rid of some at the stake give and take, but 1 bag of toys does very little to counteract the toys that, I swear, must be breeding in his toy cupboard. Either that or mommy and grandma have a hard time saying no to the cute little face that you see all over this blog. :)