All the Adventures!

We've been trying to take advantage of all this awesome weather lately and have gone out on a bunch of little outings. I thought I'd share some of my favorite pics of the happenings, if not to show you how dang cute this kid is!

Antelope Island

We finally broke down and bought a pass to this local state park. I'm sure we'll be making frequent trips there now to check out all the animals and scenery. We love that Sylvie likes to be outside. She's always so happy and giggly when we're out exploring. 

Sylvie loves to hang out with her Daddy.

It was pretty windy!

This was a quick trip Sylvie & I took on a weeknight. Much warmer this time!

The Natural History Museum: "Weaving a Revolution" Exhibit

Our friend Ramona invited us to the museum last weekend to see this exhibit and her sister Joann doing a weaving demonstration. This museum is really cool and the weaving demonstration and baskets on display were amazing. It was fun seeing Joann's baskets on display. And turns out Ramona's brother's basket was the one chosen to be on the cover of all the fliers and banners. You should go check it out if you haven't already. The exhibit will be on display until April 28th.

Ramona & Sylvie finally meet!

The famous Joann!

The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve

While this little gem is only a couple miles from our house, we just barely discovered it. There's a beautiful mile-long boardwalk around the marshy area marked with information about the preserve and the wildlife. There's also a tower half-way around the boardwalk that you can climb up and see a 360 view of the area. It's a great place to go and Sylvie loved it!

You can see the tower on the left in the background.

A view of the boardwalk and mountains from the tower.

Jensen Nature Park

This is a place in Syracuse we've been going to for years now. There's a nice community pond where people can fish, a huge hoard of ducks that love bread, and a field full of cows. The path around the main park is about a mile and a half long, but the trail goes further if you're really ambitious. Sylvie loves the ducks and cows and running fast in the stroller.

I call this picture "Storm Cows"

We really like living here in Layton. There's so many fun, beautiful places to see close by. It's nice to be able to get out just about everyday and explore places like this.

Fancy Childproofing

Since we bought our house two years ago, we've lived with a homely, beat-up, dirty excuse for a railing. It was functional and prevented treacherous falls into the stairwell below. But, we knew with Sylvie's imminent mobility in the next few months the metal monster would no longer be sufficient. It wasn't to code and there was a reasonable chance that she would either be able to get through it or under it. So, we bit the bullet and sprung for a nice, new, honest-to-goodness railing. One impervious to small mobile babies. One with a little flair and beauty. That's right folks, we've got another set of before and after pics!

We opted to go the professional route with this project because after giving the railing world a once-over, we knew it was going to take too much time and effort. Plus, this thing is in a very prominent position in our house and the last thing we wanted was to spend a bunch of money and time on something that would end up with crooked balusters and loose newels (I just learned those words!).

I wanted to make sure we found someone trustworthy who did good work, so I used Angie's List to find a carpenter in our area. Then I picked the guy who had the same last name as us so's I could remember it in the future. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Turns out I'm a genius because Gunnar Hanson from Hanson Home Works did a great job. And people thought we were starting our own business while his trailer was parked our driveway. He also hung up bifold closet doors for us because we've been without those since we've been here too. Turns out doing home improvement projects with a baby in tow isn't near as easy as when you're childless and have large sums of money to throw around. Go figure. Anyway, my point is, if you live in the same general vicinity as we do and have some work you need done, give Gunnar a call.

As you can see, the new railing turned out awesome and we couldn't be happier. And *GASP* we even have a handrail now! Guess we'll have to find some other way besides descending the stairs to get our thrills. Maybe I'll take up crowd surfing.