First a “thank you” to all our soldiers who have served and helped to shape this great country.

I decided it was important to spend the day with the family- moving tires and boxes to a storage unit could wait until another time. We started the day off with a trip to Fran’s favorite restaurant, The Sweet Tomato. It’s a buffet with salad, soups, pasta pizza and some desserts. The pasta is lackluster, but everything else is really good.

Lunch at The Sweet Tomato in Sandy

After lunch we visited the Living Planet Aquarium. What a cool place!

My wife and kids have been there before, but this was my first time. When I was on business in Georgia I visited the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The Living Planet Aquarium is much smaller, but I thought it was just as fun.

The Jelly Fish are so weird, but they are mesmerizing:

The Lion-fish are beautiful but extremely poisonous:

All kinds of cool underwater life:

You can pet a Manta ray too:

And they even have penguins! These guys are adorable. You almost want to take one home with you:

And the otters. These guys were as cute as the penguins. I’d probably take one of each home. Wonder if they would fight?

There was a lot to see- I think we spent almost two hours at the aquarium!

The aquarium is absolutely worth visiting. In additions to fish, sharks, turtles, otters and penguins they have a spiders, snakes, frogs and other really cool underwater life. Now I’m excited to visit the zoo later this year.

One the way home we swung by REI to get the kids hiking shoes (kids grow- really aggravating). I’ve never seen the store that crowded. I should have taken a picture of the line we stood in.

I took the kids with me to run some errands (well, Gabe was asleep at this point) and they “helped” me wash the truck. I love my kids, but I got so sick of hearing “I want a turn” and “Let me try” every single time I switched the wash settings.

We used almost 15 mins of time washing the truck. Thanks kids!

After we got back Fran too the kids hiking with her sister. And I got those tires and boxed moved. A fun day, if ever there was one.

On Saturday (May 26th, 2012) Erin & Doug Atwood came to town! We had offered a game of laser tag last time they were in town so they took us up on our offer this time. The whole family went to Jack & Jill’s (in Lehi) and played a couple of games and then bummed around the arcade for a bit. I really like the Jack & Jill’s laser tag because the two story arena is fun and I like to see the laser beam when I shoot at people. I wish the facility was was run a bit better (one surly teen just doesn’t cut it).

The scores from our second game. No one checked to see who they were. We don't play to win. We just play.

Posted by Cam

I already have several blogs that I update on a regular basis. I love to blog. I wish I could blog for a living (I’d probably have to blog about interesting things though… how boring). But I’m trying to decide if I want to add another blog to my pile. I’m already the busiest guy in the world (especially when it’s convenient) but I feel like it’s important to create a record of what we do as a family.

This wouldn’t be a  “Hey look what we did!” kind of blog. Rather, I’m interested in making quick little posts when we do something as a family so my kids can look back and see that we cared. We spent time with them. We loved them. Sometimes we’re so busy living in the moment that we forget what we’re doing (which means there’s no way we can ever remember what we did).

Yeah, not sure what I’ll do (blog? no blog?) This is a big decision and I’m sure not going to make it tonight at two in the morning. “Oh man! I did what last night?” If I commit to it I’m in for the long haul.

Cam

HughesFamily.com finally expired (someone let it drop) and I was able to pick it up from the GoDaddy auctions. For any other other bidders who may visit here to see who ended up with this: It’s in good hands. Don’t feel too bad- I was ready to go into the thousands to get this if I needed to (and Dave, if I was bidding against you again, man… I swear… I’ll kick your butt).

My plans for this domain are simple. I’ll optimize it for keywords like “Howard Hughes” and sell ad space thus netting millions! Nope. I’ll probably just use this as a hub for my family. Most of them are tiny now, but soon they will be using the Internet and, instead of actual family gatherings, we can meet online (virtually) here at HughesFamily.com.

I’ve popped in some links if you want to learn more about us, what we do, what we like (so you can send us gifts, of course). Yes indeed- very pleased to get this domain.

Cam