Fold My Laundry Please

Today Andrew had yet another round of doctor appointments at the Veteran’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.  Instead of having him drive down there on his own this time, we decided to make it a family road trip.  It’s a four hour drive to Salt Lake from Rexburg and Andrew’s first appointment was at 9:30 am, so we left in the wee hours of the morning.  Even the farmers were still sleeping!  The drive was nice.  I drove first and Andrew read a book to me for about two hours.  Then, because I am a creature of sleep and Andrew is not, he took over driving while I got cozy in the passenger seat and passed out for the remainder of the trip. 

Eventually we reached our destination safely.  I had kind of dreaded waiting around in the hospital with my children.  For one thing, hospitals are not the most kid friendly places.  For another thing, it was a Veteran’s Hospital.  This means that a lot of areas smell suspiciously like urine (and not just near bathrooms), all of the other people there are irritable/in pain/a little too touchy feely, and, to be frank, there’s a whole passle of KUH-RAZY in a Veteran’s Hospital!  Don’t forget, most of those people, along with all of their physical ailments, also have a healthy dose of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to contend with.  So the thought of taking my "4 and Under" crowd inside and trying desperately to keep them from trying to undo the brakes on some poor old man’s wheel chair, or lying down and rolling on the floors, did not appeal to me in the least!

Upon pulling into a parking space, however, my husband had a brilliant idea.  He suggested I drop him off and take the kids to breakfast.  While the thought of me alone in a restaurant with a 4 year old, a 3 year old, and a 14 month old was not my idea of relaxation, it beat the pants off of chasing them around the VA hospital!  So off we went!  After driving around Salt Lake for a bit, we found a Village Inn and went in for breakfast.  The kids were really well behaved and the food was great!  Even better, Andrew called while we were eating.  His first appointment had finished really early, so he went to his next appointment and they were able to take him in early.  Long story short, what was supposed to have been a full day at the hospital ended up only taking about an hour and a half!  So we sucked down the rest of our breakfast as fast as we could and hurried off to pick up Daddy!  Yay!

With so much time to kill, we decided to go wander around the Gateway Mall and Clark Planetarium.  It’s an open air mall and the weather was perfect!  We had a great time wandering around the different stores, spending a little money, and eating lunch.  Then we headed over to the planetarium and had a wonderful time roaming around the different space exhibits gettin’ all edjumucated and stuff.  That was where Andrew and I experienced a serious maturity regression.  We were doing fine at first, looking through telescopes, playing with globes, staring in awe at models of different space exploration vehicles.  Then we headed upstairs to the giant model of the solar system. 

We headed down the row of planets, reading off of the plaques to Ethan, and making intellectual comments and observations of our own.

"Mercury is so tiny." 

"Venus is a lovely blue planet."

"Look, there’s Earth!  Wave to Grandma!"

"Mars is the red one.  It’s smaller than Earth."

"Jupiter is HUGE!"

"Aren’t Saturn’s rings neat?"

"Uranus is a lovely shade of green," I stated innocently.  Here we paused and tried desperately to contain our laughter.  Snorts of air kept managing to escape and mine and Andrew’s faces were turning red.  Ethan and Gideon, oblivious to the maturity of our humor, ran off to look at a video of the space shuttle that was playing on a nearby television set.  "If I remember correctly, Uranus is your favorite planet."  More repressed laughter nearly caused my brain to explode.

"No, my favorite planet is Neptune because it comes after Uranus!"  The laughter escaped and my husband and I just stood there, laughing out loud in front of a large model of Uranus (can you hear me bursting into giggles as I typed that last bit?), unable to grow up and stop making Uranus jokes while other adults walked past us with looks of disgust and revulsion on their faces.

"Look how tiny Pluto is.  You could fit a whole bunch of them inside of Uranus!"

"Take a close look at Uranus.  It must be a very gaseous planet!"

I could go on, but I might burst open stitches that healed up years ago!  It’s official, I’m the most mature person on the planet.  (Which planet?  Why, Uranus of course!) 

HOOOO!  

WOOOO!  

Hoboy…*wipes tears from eyes*…give me a minute…okay, I’m better now.  Anyway, the parents had a good laugh, the kids got to pick out one toy space shuttle each from the gift shop, and we all got a little bit more smarter.  What more could you ask for in a day out with the family!

See, it really is a lovely shade of green!