Skyscraper Day 2012

Today, September 3rd, is Skyscraper Day.  We started off our celebration last night by reading a book called, "Just Me and 6,000 Rats: a tale of conjunctions," written by Rick Walton, illustrated by Mike Gordon and Carl Gordon.  In it the main character and 6,000 rats take a trip to the big city and see the skyscrapers. 
Around here, the big city is Salt Lake City, and we don't go there very often.  Jeremy does more often than we do for shows.  Well, it just so happened that he was scheduled to twist balloons today at City Creek, the new mall in downtown Salt Lake City.  He'd been wanting to show us the mall anyway and since today is also Labor Day, the kids didn't have school.  So... we all made the trip to Salt Lake City to see the skyscrapers on Skyscraper Day.

The mall is neat.  Besides the normal shops you would find at a mall, it also has a creek running through it and different fountains, some of which were designed by the same people who created the Ballagio Fountains in Las Vegas. 

Every hour on the hour one of those fountains shoots water in time to music (like the Bellagio Fountains do). 

 (See the skyscraper in the background of that first picture?  Yep.  It helps the celebrating when the mall is surrounded by those buildings.)

Another of those fountains is like a splash pad encouraging kids to play and get soaked, and help Mom be creative when she is not properly prepared with enough clothes for them to change into.

Next time, I need to remember to change them into bathing suits before sending them into the water (and bring an extra pair of shorts for Nichole).  I think I underestimated how wet they were actually going to get.

Nichole was bummed when I made her get out, but Jr. was shivering from being so wet and I really wanted to get him changed into something a little warmer.

Jr. Jr. was too intimidated by the water so he had fun climbing up a side that was slanted and sliding back down.

 He also had fun just being cute while Jeremy made balloons nearby.

 

The kids and I also did some wandering around the mall, but the water was the highlight.

When we got home, we watched some of Batman: The Animated Series because Gotham City has skyscrapers and we watched The Muppets because Los Angeles also has skyscrapers.

Yeah, fun celebrating.