Square Peg in a Square Hole: First Official Stout Family Vacation (as a party of 5)

At the Wall of Bones

It may sound silly, but I could not have been more excited to take my tiny people to Vernal, Utah to explore one of the dinosaur capitals of the world. It was a trip that would interest even the babies (turning two in a few days) and Claire, as well as Matt and me.

Upon arriving and seeing our first dinosaur statue, August had one of the best one-liners of the trip: "I don't like da dragons." She eventually warmed up but would every now and again remind us her of her distaste of these creatures. There is a big pink dinosaur statue that welcomes you to Vernal, and I really really wanted to take my kids' picture in front of it. Needless to say, August has not stopped talking about "Pink Dino" and can't really decide if she's horrified or fascinated by it.

The Infamous Pink Dino - impossible to get a calm picture because they were freaked.

Sharing a hotel room with five people is really relaxing - NOT. The twins slept in pack and plays provided by the hotel instead of regular cribs... and they quickly learned the olympic art of hurling their tiny mooshy, unbreakable bodies in and out of their beds and jumping off of Claire's beloved "couch bed." This left us with a bedtime that required turning off all the lights/tv in the room, not making a sound, and Matt and I just sitting in the dark quietly sipping our wine (thank heavens we Brought Our O.B.) waiting for the circus to come to a conclusion.

Other than that, all of the kids were extremely well-behaved, save a small tantrum from our tiniest family member. Sam has become increasingly obsessed with shoes, and shirts, and basically anything he wears. He was just running around our room in a diaper, hysterically screaming for tennis shoes. So, we obliged and put them on, sans socks, and now he was a man in a diaper ready to run. This did not quell the temper. He wanted a shiht (shirt) and chose the one I was going to wear, a fitted, bright yellow scoopneck. He instantly stopped crying and was satisfied at his outfit, however as you can tell by the picture, his insult lasted that it took five minutes for us to prepare his ensemble. Oh Sammy D.. what will we do with you... I adore this child.


One of my all-time favorite pictures of Sam

We obviously saw lots of dinosaur bones, fossils, skeletons, replicas, statues, etc., but we also got to see a ton of petroglyphs, which I loved. The outdoors there are beautiful. We spent one afternoon doing art outside and letting the twins run around at Red Fleet State Park/Reservoir.

Claire became a Junior Ranger at Dinosaur National Monument. She was adorable getting sworn in and receiving her badge. She never misses a chance to do that kind of thing. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Getting sworn-in.

On the tram to and from the quarry.

In between museum and historical site visits, there was plenty of goofing off at the hotel, in restaurants, and in the car. Oddly enough, those were some of the most fun times for the kids and the most memorable times for us as parents.