Utah Kids Club Highlights

We've done so many things this year with the Utah Kids Club that I had to go back through my calendar to find our favorites. There's the Kangaroo Zoo of course. This year we went to something new called Foam Days. The firefighters bring their big trucks and hoses and then spray foam on all the kids. My kids had a blast playing in the foam and then running under the big hose to get sprayed with water to clean it all off. We'll be making that a tradition for sure! Then there was the Utah Lake Festival that was totally fun and my kids walked away with so many prizes and free things you would have thought it was Christmas. But I'd have to say that my most favorite memory of the year was at the Hutchings Museum. They were doing a lot of crafts and such for pioneer days and I had invited my sister in-law and her 3 boys to join us for the festivites. They had fun making rope, playing tug-of-war, going on a few train rides, coloring paper snakes and paper dolls, buying marbles and playing outside. But the highlight of that day for me was the cricket race! On the paper it said Cricket races from 1-2pm. So I assumed that meant real live crickets racing. I thought it would be fun to watch. So we headed over there and saw that all these kids had little antennas on and then I figured it out. The kids were racing as the crickets. I signed the girls up, they were on the green team. I learned a little later that part of the race included eating real crickets. "They were baked and flavored and taste like sunflower seeds" they told us. I knew that Emma (4 at the time) would never go for it if she knew they were real so I lied and told the girls that they were candy crickets that they had to eat and swallow. I told them if they ate the crickets I would take them out for a milkshake. They were all for it. Emma was in the little kids group and they ran first. She stood there with this little cricket in her hand waiting for the go ahead and I looked down at it and I knew there was no way she was going to eat that. She looked up at me and asked if it was real. I said no, it's pretend it just looks real. She just stood there and looked at it. They said GO! She put it up to her mouth and then started to cry. I took the cricket from her and picked her up. I totally didn't blame her, they looked real and I don't think I could have eaten it. Maddie (7) got lined up. I gave her Emma's uneaten cricket. One of the legs had fallen off and Maddie stood there and looked at it...asked me if it was real...I told her no...she got the GO! and shoved it in her mouth and chewed fast. They had to show that they had swallowed it before they could start "hopping" like a cricket. Well, little did I know that there were TWO more stops they had to make along the way to get ANOTHER cricket to eat. She was such a trooper and ate every last one and hopped all the way to the finish line. When she was done she came and opened her mouth for me and there were still tiny bits of cricket on her tongue...almost made me gag! I gave her a big hug and told her I was so proud of her...and then I told her the truth. She hadn't eaten candy bugs but REAL crickets!! She grabbed her throat and said "uuggghhh!!! I just ate real crickets!! That's so AWESOME!!" She was so proud of herself and kept talking about it all day long. I asked her what they tasted like. She replied, "Bacon!" I followed through on my promise and got her a milkshake. Kristy and I took the kids over and Emma could only get a cone because she didn't eat the crickets but she still enjoyed it. She told me "Mom, maybe next time I will eat the crickets. When I'm a little bit older like Maddie. I tasted the leg and I didn't like it. But maybe next time I will and then I can get a shake." "You tasted the leg?" I asked her. "Well, no. I touched it to my lips but then I got scared." She admitted. "That's ok," I assured her, "Mommy probably would get scared to eat crickets too." I love being a part of the Utah Kids Club. There's always a TON of things to do and not enough time to do them all. My husband and I have even gone Laser Tagging and had a blast...I beat him one game :) I have yet to join in on the fun of Ladies Night because I always have something else going on that night...but next year I'm keeping my schedule wide open! Go to www.utahkidsclub.com and see what's going on and sign-up!