FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Happy Birthday Jonah!

My baby turned three today. The first thing he asked when he woke up was if we were going to Disneyland. It guilted us into a small celebration today. The initial plan was to celebrate it at Disneyland with a character meal. The character meal has been booked so I guess he's getting both!

We took the opportunity to visit Mammoth Site while we were at Hot Springs. It is essentially a pit where Columbian mammoths fell in eons ago. At the moment there are about 57 remains of mammoths that have been dug up, all of them male. No further comments there. The site was small, educational, simple and well set out. Perfect for the attention span of a three year old. We continued on our way back into Wyoming. Our stop for the night was the capital Cheyenne.

Mammoth Site

Mammoth bones

A life size re-created Columbian Mammoth. He weighs about 20,000 pounds!

We have been fortunate with the weather being good. It changed today with a storm system moving through the area. The rains came and it became very windy. We were grateful that this happened on a driving day. It had an additional bonus of washing our very dusty car. We stopped only for a quick lunch at Lusk before pushing on. By this time, the temperature had also dropped dramatically. When we arrived at our hotel, we got changed into warmer clothes. Lara was glad of any excuse to put on her new boots. We got out our jackets and headed to the closest mall we could find. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon. Jonah decided that he wanted a pair of boots like Elliot's. So we went into the Boot Barn and bought a pair for him on behalf of nanna and grandpa. The children now also have cowboy shirts to add to their boots and belts.

Only happy to show off her new blouse, belt and boots

Boot barn, a store full of cowboy attire. One of the many shelves of boots....

We decided to have dinner close by. We wanted to have Japanese, but the cold prevented us from walking the extra 100m. We sought immediate refuge at Appleby's instead. We ate way too much, so much so that we couldn't order dessert. Most unlike me. It was probably a good thing. We wanted to have Jonah's cake there if they had candles but they didn't. So we stopped by Kmart, bought some candles and small cookie cake. Jonah thought it was very special!