12 AprDisneyland? Seaworld? No, BYU Library

We live on a very limited budget. Still, we like to have fun. I know families that go to Disneyland or Seaworld for vacations. I know other families that go on cruises. If we had more of a budget maybe we would do these things, too, but I’m not so sure. Yesterday I told the kids we were going to head up to Brigham Young University (BYU) to see the Origami exhibit at the museum. Then we would go hunt books at the campus library. They were genuinely excited. Maybe one day we will go to Disneyland, but I can’t imagine them being any more excited than they were to go to the BYU Library.

So what’s it like to tour an origami exhibit with four kids? My wife and I are down to four kids from eight so activities like this should be simpler now. For the most part they are. Still my youngest kid got painfully bored with all the paper and my oldest disappeared entirely. My youngest survived (just barely) by napping on one of the cushioned seats. We finally located my oldest via a phone call over in the library.

My wife and a couple of the kids went down to the reading room on the second floor to enjoy the books in the lounge chairs around the fire. Jory and Glory were ready to find books. When I was a BYU student I worked at the Humanities reference desk and grew an appreciation for the ability to find information in the library. Although it’s sixty miles away I have been taking the kids to the BYU Library for years now to play. I have been teaching them how to use the various resources to find books and articles in the library. Sometimes I leave slips of paper with call numbers in books on the various floors of the library that they have to follow like a treasure hunt. Yesterday I simply gave them some book titles of books I knew were in the library and told them to go find them. They did. One of the books was in a special collection instead of the usual place. Jory figured this out. I was so proud.

After the library we picked up an adult big brother. We bought some sandwiches at Zubs where his wife works. There was an impromptu two-minute party with her before we sent her back to work. Then we bought pizza and went to my married son’s house to eat and play Monkey island together. Monkey Island is a computer game, but with one person controlling the main character the rest of us can watch it like a movie. It was great. We got home late, but what a fun memory the Saturday afternoon of April 11, 2015 will be for all of us. The pictures below capture a bit of the fun we had.