Trip into Spokane

My family came into town this last Saturday for my birthday.  I got to open presents - yeah!  And then we went into Spokane to spend time doing some fun activities.  The only down side was Will had to work that afternoon, so he only got to spend half the day with us.  But we had a lot of fun together.
We went to Riverside State Park where they have mini-golfing.  Here are a couple of pictures of us.

Whitney was a pretty good little putter.  She loved running around the mini-golf course and placing the ball into all the little holes.  My mom was very nice and watched her while the rest of us did some golfing.  My dad was the ultimate golfing champion, but I came in second and was happy about that.

Whitney stands by the funny tiki man at the golf course.  It was hard getting clear shots of Whitney; she kept moving around to check out everything and didn't want to hold still long enough for pictures.  Oh well.  I'm glad she thought it was fun.
We walked around the park after mini-golfing.  It is a really huge park with lots of fun things for kids and adults.  Oktoberfest was going on that weekend, so we avoided that area with the people drinking, but the rest of the park was great.

Whitney checks out the huge water fountain area.  She loves playing in the water at home.  She wasn't too sure at first what she was suppose to do.

But then Whitney got really into it and got herself all wet.  We finally had to pull her away from the water because she was starting too shiver.  Thankfully, it was a really hot day and her clothes dried in no time.

Whitney and grandpa go down the red wagon slide.  There is a huge red wagon at the park that all the children love to go down.  Whitney was a little afraid to go down the slide by herself, but she was happy if someone was holding her.  My brother Conner liked going down the slide as well.

We weren't tall enough to put Whitney on top of the big wagon wheel; so she got to sit on the little cog.  Unfortunately, she refused to look at the camera.  I think she was more fascinated by all the children and small dogs that were running around the park.
Then we went to a great children's museum that is in the Riverside Mall across the street from the park.  I wasn't sure if it would be any good because museums in malls are usually pretty small, but this was one awesome.  I could have spent hours of fun here if I were a kid, or even now.  Some of the hands-on exhibits looked really fun.

Whitney's favorite place was this water table.  She met a new friend and they shared little water boats and ducks and whatnot.  I think Whitney mostly liked splashing and seeing the current take the duck away to the other side of the table.  You are suppose to use the walls to move the water currents in the direction you want and see how that affects the toys, but Whitney mostly just liked getting all wet.

I think one of Conner's favorite exhibits was these cars.  You could get them moving by steering and there was a little driving course that was suppose to teach driving safety.  Kids could hold stop signs or be school crossing guards.  Whitney really liked the cars as well, but she kept putting her feet on the ground and then the car wouldn't move very well.  So maybe when she is a little older she will learn to keep her feet up.

There was a large bamboo house with play kitchen areas.  Here Whitney is checking out the plastic fish.  I don't know what she thought of them because she wouldn't hold them for very long.  Whitney did like the other plastic food though and kept trying to eat them.  Maybe she was getting hungry.

Here Conner shows Whitney how to dig with the crane.  There was a rock pit and you could move the crane around to pick up and dump the small rocks.   Conner was very patient at teaching Whitney the different things she could do, but I don't think Whitney was quite old enough to understand.  She wanted to just play with the small rocks.

There was an area for children under three that was perfect for Whitney.  It had a little slide and huge pillows and this little trampoline.  I didn't know it was a trampoline until Whitney threw out all the toys inside and started jumping.  She really likes jumping on anything that has even a slight bounce to it.  The nice thing was there was a little bench outside the area where parents could watch their kids and not have to go inside if they didn't want to.

My older brother, Michael, went to the Philippines on his mission and had to learn Tagalog.  My mom and I were both surprised to see this sign in the museum teaching some Tagalog words.  I wonder if they switch the languages every couple weeks or something, but it was just kind of random that out of all the thousands of world languages, this one happened to be up while we were at the museum.

The last thing we did before the museum closed was the lego wall.  Conner put up his name to see how long it would last.  I just helped find the right pieces in the right colors.  So this was a really great museum.  They had huge building blocks and dress-up clothes and an art area.  I liked that it catered to both younger and older children.  Conner and Whitney were both able to have fun there.
We were all really tired by the time we got back to Cheney.  We did a lot of walking, but we had so much fun in Spokane.  I am glad that some of my family was able to come up and celebrate with me (Although my birthday isn't technically until Thursday).  But next Saturday is conference and would be too crazy to come.  So we had a great time in Spokane.  It is really a fun place to visit, but probably a little too crowded to ever want to live there.

Whitney is covering the 'C', but you get the idea.  We had a really fun day together.  I have such a great family.