Grand Junction

We were having such a great time with the Bradleys over our Christmas break that we decided to pack up the car and travel 4 hours to Grand Junction to see even more Bradleys.

This picture shows Grandpa Bradley with his youngest "sons." Brian is Grandpa Bradley's youngest son, Michael is his youngest grandson, and Sawyer is his youngest great grandson (we'll see how long he gets to hold that title!) I don't know who realized this, but it's pretty impressive.

Lots of great things happened when we visited Grand Junction. Avery and Michael bonded over the I-pad

Uncle Brian secured a place of adoration in each of my kid's hearts .

We spent time with Kyle's sister Rachel and her husband Tim. With their help a new game called "spin ball" was created.

Rufus made incredible catches with the frisbee.

Avery smelt a recently burned candle and got soot all over her nose,

and a nice ring around her mouth. :)

And we visited the Dinosaur Journey Museum in Fruita, Colorado.

Avery tried her hand at paleontology.

Sawyer was on the hunt for fossils.

And Kyle's dad was mesmerized by the crushed walnut shells used in place of sand.

Austin, Kyle's mom, Rachel, and Tim kept a safe distance from that stuff (which was a good choice, Avery's diaper had a goodly portion of little walnut pieces in it.)

We made dinosaur tracks.

I comforted Avery about the dinosaur animatronic that would shoot water out of its mouth at the viewer. We still talk about the "spitting dinosaur" on a daily basis.

Fortunately there was a great water table to distract the kids,

but we quickly called it a day when Avery kept trying to drink the water.

Not too bad of a museum for a town with less than 13,000 people living in it!