Nauvoo

True to form this information is a little out dated. My sister and I took a weekend to visit Nauvoo, Illinois before she left again for Alaska. The day we arrived there was a beautiful sunset over the Mississippi River. The temple was breathtaking.

Women's Memorial Garden at the LDS Visitor's center.

Though it was just the day after Thanksgiving the visitors center was already decorated for Christmas. Since I don't have many pictures of it I guess you'll just have to take my word for. The wagon/carriage/oxen rides throughout historic Nauvoo leave from the Visitors Center. They are great and free!




Speaking of free so is everything else the church runs. From the brick yard to the Browning Gun shop, printing press, foundry, bakery and many of the historic homes. There are nice tours for each building given by the sweetest senior missionaries who really know their stuff. These same missionaries put on a great show every evening in the cultural hall. The child of mine even let me see most of it. I've seen it all 13 years before so it was fun showing my sister all the highlights. I'll refrain from spewing the plethora of pictures at you. There's so much history in this city and it's such a beautiful region. It was a real treat to visit.

We found this fun place to stay. A little village of restored cabins within Nauvoo. I think the owner carved this headboard on the bed.

Thanks again Lanisha. You're a real sport being willing to travel with a baby. It was a great trip!

Hill Cumorah Pageant

Finally I'm getting around to posting the good stuff. The whole reason we went to Palmyra, New York was to see the Hill Camorah Pageant. It was wonderful! The cast mingles with the crowd before the performance. They were all very friendly, fun to talk to and patient with camera happy travelers. Here are a few pictures of the costumes we saw. Some were amazing! The snarly guy is King Noah from The Book of Mormon.




Here are pictures from the performance. Not all of them are mine. Thus there are some good ones and some not-so-much good ones. Sitting a 27 miles from the stage was somewhat of a strain for my little camera. But considering the stage consists of 12 stages and takes up the side of a Godzilla hill we felt very much a part of the action.


The whole thing was great. The effects were impressive. With all the fire and explosions I can see why it's outside. Granted, there's historical reasons for being in that locale also. There was a monsoon that I'm convinced drenched the first couple rows of saps-who-saved-seats since Thanksgiving 2003. Waterfalls went from stage to stage, towers broke in pieces tumbled to the ground and exploded and the Savior descended from the Heavens. It was amazing! I highly recommend this to one and all. And it's FREE! Free parking, free performance, free shower (if you want to join the saps in the front row). You just have to get there in July. Happy travels.

We halted our mad attempt at setting land speed records on our drive home to stop in Kirtland, Ohio. This town is also significant in our church history. We toured the Kirtland Temple, dedicated in 1836. Baby enjoyed the freedom to move around. We both enjoyed the air conditioning and the little break it gave us from being on the road.

1,634.7 miles and 5 days later we arrived home. It was a grand adventure.

Lake Ontario

After a restful night of sleeping off two days of driving we headed out to see the sights. The town of Palmyra is 15-20 miles from Lake Ontario. Being so close we couldn't pass up the opportunity to go check it out.


What we didn't do was get it IN the water. Which is the equivalent of going to the Louvre and not seeing the Mona Lisa. Or stopping at Grandpa's Cheese Barn and not tasting the smoked Gouda. All of which are tragedy's.



In our defense of not getting wet, the rocky shore was coated in a thick green slime. So I dangled baby's feet over the waters edge while my toes were mere inches away. We may not have entered the water but now my baby's feet can down in the books as having been "dangled".

We happened upon a good sized farmers market coming back from the lake. They had this adorable train, a pirate ship and extensive jungle gym. The train was the most age appropriate for our doll.

The Sacred Grove

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the Sacred Grove is special to us and part of our religious heritage. Baby and I had an opportunity to spend some time in the Grove. It is a beautiful and peaceful place. A great way to start the day.

Smith Farm

The homes pictured below belonged to Joseph Smiths family in the early 1800's. We were able to take a free tour of these sites. At every turn Baby dearest had many admirers.

The log house was three rooms and housed 11 people. I can't figure out where they all fit! Let alone lived! This is a rebuild of the original log home.



Their frame home built after the log house was more spacious. This is the original building that their oldest son built for the family. The picture of the stone sink is white washed. Which is a major bummer for all of you since it was the coolest sink I've ever seen. Now I want to chisel my own for a mud room. When I say "chisel" I really mean electric dremel tool.

This is how they kept bees. Apiculture has come a long ways since then. Now if we could just train the bees to deliver the honey. "Here'z your clover honey, Ma'am. The orange blossom will be here in 4 weekz." "Thank you. Here's a blueberry bush for all your hard work."

The House that Dennis and Betsy built

We so lucked out when we got to Palmyra. There is a fabulous couple, Dennis and Betsy, that rent rooms. Their beautifully self-renovated home is located in the heart of Palmyra.While they didn't build it initially they have pretty much rebuilt the entire thing in the past ten years. We swapped construction woes and triumphs in good ole Do-It-Yourselfer style. They had an extra hundred years of house on our Tennessee abode. So they win hands down!

They have done an amazing job on this house! Like us they have spent all their time and energy on the interior. I'm still woeful for not taking pictures of the recently finished guest bathroom. It was gorgeous! And perfect for removing all the road grime and sticky puffs from small fry.

Their rooms are so big with all the comforts of home. In fact that bed was more comfortable than my own. Squirt had ample room to cruise around and remove everything from any surface she could reach. Namely the box of food, I, as an intelligent mother left at her level. She was loving it all. Especially when the attention directed at her tripled.

Thank you Dennis and Betsy!

On the Road Again

Baby and I are on an adventure. We pulled out of Clarksville at 5:45am two days ago only to return five minutes later for a forgotten item. Then it was the open road for us!

Highlights, Day 1:
Breakfast in the open near Cave City, KY with a nice breeze.
A cheerful suspension bridge welcoming us to Cincinnati.
Covering 448.3 miles by 3pm.
Recovering from an un-air conditioned car in the hotel pool.

The best part of all - an amazing traveling baby. She has done phenomenal! She sleeps the morning away. Wakes up for breakfast. Sleeps again allowing for some miles to pass away. Wakes for some play time. Then sits back in her car seat talking or singing along with her tone deaf mother.

Highlights, Day 2:
Pennsylvania rest stops. Yes, they are so great they make the highlight list. There are an abundance of beautiful shade trees, lovely picnic tables (under stated shade canopy), amble clean restrooms, friendly people willing to retrieve toys from under vehicles and this cool ambulance. Which will increase the neat-o factor of pretty much any place it rolls into.
Passing a Camry loaded to the gills with swords. Judging by the dragging bumper the trunk was also full of blades. Gave them a wide berth. Invisioning a wreck with them is ugly.
Rain to keep the temperature down.Baby dearest enjoying her travel toy box.Arriving at our destination of Palmyra, NY 852 miles and 33.5 hours later we feel pretty happy with our excursion thus far.

Notice anything missing in these photos?

It's the dog!

We are dog free for a whole week! Sigh... It's been a great couple days so far.

Hit the ground running

Baby and I are back from the lovely Alaska and enjoying a beautiful Tennessee Spring. Details of the trip will come in a later post with pictures when I get them all. For now I will placate you with a picture of the babe and one of my sisters in Alaska. I have so much to tell of the last week that it needs to be recorded before it's lost to the crevices of my memory forever.

The flight from Anchorage was the duration of Wednesday night. Here I need to shout to the world that we have The Best Baby Ever. She traveled like a champ. Better even. A silent champ that seems to do better on 6 hour flights than one hour Sacrament Meetings. What's up with that? Again I will detail that part of the trip later. I'm just pointing out that I did not sleep the night of said Wednesday. The next few days are kind of a whirl wind but here it goes.

• Thursday morning land in Nashville.
• House AC gets running as we are twenty minutes from the driveway. (Cutting it a little close guys. Especially since it was supposed to be done two weeks before.)
• Deal with AC guy for the first 30 minutes home.
• Come to terms with the destruction caused by the dog.
• Hop down to Rural King to get chicken supplies. (A little random I realize. But I needed to get there before all the good ones were gone.)
• Set up chicken brooder.
• Attend Missionary Correlation Meeting at 8 pm. Still haven't slept at this point. Pretty sure most of my comments were slurred.
• Baby still on Alaska time zone had a rough night. Which translates into we both had a rough night.
  
  


• Friday Morning hopped down to Rural King again and purchased ten Rhode Island Red chicks. We now have a wonderful chorus of chirps coming from the laundry room.
• Took the mutt for a swim. It was a glorious 85 degrees.
• Set three packets of pumpkin seeds on their happy little road of plenty.
• Prepared the living room for a life changing paint job.
• Finally showered. But still haven't unpacked as of the writing of this. How sad.
  

• Saturday slept in. Thank you Baby Dearest.
• Dropped baby off at a reputable day care and painted our ceiling with primer. We have a white ceiling! This is the first time our ceiling has been white since I moved in. Dave started the awful task of removing the popcorn ceiling (insert here malicious popcorn invented by the Devil himself) before I moved to Tennessee. Instead of aging sheet rock we have a gleaming white ceiling. It is a marvel to behold.
• Aired the fumes out while the dog and I completed a run to the dump. I have this fear that the truck will fail to start while I'm inside that odorously foul place. Who puts the dump inside a warehouse?
• Continued to air out the paint fumes while baby and I attended the Rivers and Spires Festival downtown with some great friends. Hopefully I can get some pictures of that to share soon.

Sunday. The typical Sunday. Everything but restful yet full of Sunday things, meetings, visits, lessons, the whole works.

• Monday. A package of bees showed up as I was pulling out of the drive way headed for yoga. It's awesome that we have a mailman that has handled bees, doesn't freak out at the mention of them with a can of Raid and delivers them to your door.
• Quickly sprayed the bees with water and left them in the laundry room too. Now I know you are expecting me to follow up with some disaster where the chickens eat the bees and all havoc has transcended my home into Pandora's box. But I'm happy to report that I came home an hour later to a content buzzing from the floor while the chicks were oblivious on top of the freezer. This is where they all stayed for many more hours. Unfortunately for the bees.
• Next baby went to her six month check up. She's 14lbs 9ozs of happy and laughs. She has the greatest laugh. Now that I have a camera I hope to get it on video for all of you to enjoy as well.
• Here is were I would love to say I went back to the disaster on the verge of exploding in my house. But, alas, Sully had to go the vet. On the way home he did a little exploding. In the car! He chose to puke in the car as we were pulling in the driveway at the house. Thanks dog.
• Hived the bees around 4pm. Oh how I wish I could report that had been uneventful. But I did something uber dumb. I left my hair in a pony tail. Doesn't seem like a big deal but, oh, the devil is in the details. I bent down to seal up the last of a long list of to-dos and eight of those girls got caught in my pony tail. Before extracting them all from my hair four of them got me. Three stings on the scalp and one on my jaw. My elephant man impression is super hot. This is the first time I have been stung by our own bees. Dave was stung once when he dropped a crowbar in a hive and then retrieved it with his bare arm. Hopefully we've learned our lesson. We have gear. We need to start using it instead of acting like, "I'm the bee whisperer, watch me fearlessly go into the lair of pain and suffering with just a loin cloth."

A room with a view

Baby and I are visiting the lovely State of Alaska for a few weeks. We kissed the dog goodbye and headed to snow and beauty. THIS was the view out our room the first morning!

Which, hello, is the best view ever! Thank you JD and Caitlin for letting us stay with you, enjoy your amazing view and sharing your Life cereal. It's an awesome way to wake up.

Not only did the dog lick us goodbye as we left but the crocuses came out to bid their farewell. Look at all the color! This year all the colors shared the stage.

Remember that one Spring I complained about the crocuses making an appearance based on color. Only one color at a time decided to grace the yard. And I complained about it. Who in their right mind complains about flowers? No one, that's who. No one in their right mind complains about beauty in the world. That post now stands as testimony of my temporary bouts of not sane.

It's wonderful to live in such a beautiful world. Happy Easter everyone! Enjoy your beautiful Spring where ever you are.

Girls trip

A number of years ago while I was in the financial grasp of higher education my mother, sisters and I rarely saw each other at the same time. Though I traveled back to the grand State of Alaska every summer it was to exotic places like Shemya, Reddog Mine and Kensington. There were seasons where contact with my family was limited to thank you notes for the use of a shower during midnight drive-by's. All us canny girls decided this lack of true interaction must stop. Thus, the Girls Trip was born.

This is from our first trip.

Here we are a few weeks ago outside the Orlando Temple.
(The color scheme in the Celestial Room is purple and green. Usually I'm most opposed to purple, however, this was delightfully elegant.)

Till this year our trips have been within the State of Alaska. This time we broke our geographical bonds and met up in Florida. Spending time with my mom and sisters was wonderful! We had a great time eating amazing foods, visiting water parks, applying copious amounts of sunscreen then promptly sweating it all off, taking pictures in every lighting, angle and pose conceivable and just being together. It was a marvelous week.

The fireworks at the Magical Kingdom and Epcot Center were great, though a wee bit crowded. If there had been a suggestion box, I would advise more seating options at the Magical Kingdom. The sidewalk got a little hard after a while. The Epcot center was more accommodating even if a pagoda was slightly in the way of the show.

Pastries in Paris are a must if you're ever in the area. I just hope the French girl filling my order for the third time within two hours was too busy to recognise me. Maybe putting my hair up, down and then in a hat worked.

To dodge the Florida heat and humidity, large amounts of cold desserts were consumed. Ghirardelli's did not escape our mob descending on their air conditioning and devouring some great ice cream. Here is where I would like to write that all four of us ate this boat of sweetness. Hmm... not so much though. I pretty much had all of it.

After scoffing at lines of people standing in the sun to get signatures and pictures with Disney characters I trampled a little girl in a princess dress and tiara to get to the Beast. Her prince charming must have been busy at the October Fest. How could I not pass up an opportunity to kiss the Beast? What character would you go out of your way to meet?

Long before our arrival each of us picked one eating establishment and one activity that we could not leave without completing. What a great system! There was no way to see everything and this way no one whined about their ideas being shot down like guinea fowl. For my birthday we ate at the Rainforest Cafe. I tried to call Dave during one of the thunderstorms so he could hear the elephants and lions roaring. It didn't work so much. We went to a show of my choosing that would not have been possible without Dave's birthday present to me of his June allowance. Thank you, Honey! You're the best!

Look at what they got me for my birthday cake! It even had a candle somewhere in the oohey gooey foot-high greatness. Now, this we all ate. I don't think there was a crumb left.

This is evidence for my drums instructor that I did practice while on vacation.

In my absence Dave purchased Rock Band. "Honey, now you can practice all the time." What things have your spouses managed to sneak into the house while you were away?

Thanks for a great week girls! Can't wait till next time.

Stupid Rail Road Companies anyway!

All the experiences with time zones in my existence have been either so-so or bordering on the negative. Such as: trying to facilitate phone calls to family members without waking them up in the mornings. Or vise-versa, them waking me up at night. All in all, not that big of a deal since I like talking to family and we all agree sleep is highly over rated. Most recently we experienced one of the negative aspects of time zones.

Dave and I had a little jaunt up to Louisville, Kentucky a few weeks ago. (Yes, we saw the big bat outside the Louisville Slugger Museum while driving around. It's hard to miss since it accents the skyline.) Even though Louisville is only a 3 1/2 hour drive away, we had planned on staying a few nights and seeing what the city had to offer. Due to school madness and timing we were limited to one evening. Before returning home from Afghanistan Dave purchased tickets to Wicked in Louisville.

By process of elimination, we choose to go the night of the show and leave our packed overnight bags to gather dust on the living room floor. Arriving 4+ hours before the show we killed time in a local book store and at dinner. I've just got to say that I judge restaurants by the quality of the raspberry lemonade. Hard Rock Cafe is one of the few that still puts real raspberries in theirs. They are now on the good list, even though they're way mainstream, which usually takes people off the list. Melting Pot, on the other hand- I have no words for serving me hard lemonade. My lawyer might though. But that's for another post.

So, back to Louisville. We would have loved to continue killing all our oodles of time down at the river and enjoy more of the city. As fate would have it, the weather was bitter butt-cold, and the wind howling like a banshee, so we opted to go the venue about an hour early and see what they had to offer by way of visual art. Bah, as if we saw any. The show had started 7 min. before we got there. While trying to wrap our minds around this concept it dawned on us that we must be in a different time zone.

DUDE! I mean really! Shouldn't there be like some loud voice that announces when you've entered a new time zone. Or, at the very least, a sign on the freeway. Every city and county we passed through had a sign letting us know we were in their territory. We were in one county for less than 2 miles. And how do I know this? Because there were signs. I even commented to Dave on the matter when he was wonderfully reading Treasure Island. Our city alone has 10+ signs letting everyone know that it's the home of Miss USA 2007, who fell on her face at the Miss Universe pageant. OK, so it doesn't say all that. I can't help but think of it when I see them though. So signs, they're handy, they're informative, they're helpful, they're necessary. Come on people, work with us here!

And another thing: why are there two times zones in one state. They should all take after Alaska and become one time zone. It took like four years for Alaska to get there once they started (it's just that big). But they did it. And if Alaska can do it, you can too.

On a completely different tangent, Wicked was pretty good. The Defying Gravity song, spectacular.

Daddy's Home!!

I'M BACK! And I love America. It's the best. I haven't sat down to write a blog because I've been to busy having fun, and I forgot all about it. Valli is at a lathe class so instead of pinning I'll write a blog about being home.

I got back to Ft Campbell around 8pm on the 23rd of December. Happy Birthday Joseph Smith, Lindsay Firth, and a bunch of other people not listed att. After 4 hours of time-wasting bullcrap I got to go home. The Army sucks. Literally, who on Earth wants to listen to the crappy band, sing the crappy Army Song, and be speached at about 'How great it is to have us back, now don't kill yourself or get sent to jail the first night back' for four hours, after sitting in airplane and airfields for 30 hours while our families are waiting in bleachers. Army: you suck for that. Suck. Anyway, after that mess I had seven days of repatriation/paperwork/dont-kill-anyone-including-yourself-beat-your-wife-drink-and-drive-drink-and-anything speaches.

I told you I was busy having fun. Now that that worthless crapfest is over with I have finally started my vacation. I have 30 days of Army-free bliss to spend doing all the things I've been waiting for. It's been awesome. Valli posted the bike pictures already- which is uber-cool, but not the best thing. The BEST thing is being with Valli, and includes a billion smaller reasons rolled up together.

Other best things about being home are:

Peace and Quiet. I could go on and on about the one. But I'll just say that Afghanistan was a very noisy place.

The House. Valli has done so much work on the house that I hardly recognise it. The bathroom is awesome and the eternal hot water is awesome and the new kitchen counters and cabinets and no more crappy carpet and crappy panelling is awesome too.

The huge truck Valli bought.

Christmas Holidays and rad gifts like friggin-awesome fuzzy slippers, REI gift certificates, and a monster gas grill. Also, Jenny- your gift is almost done, I swear I'll have it sent by February. And Ed, sorry man, not this year either.

Cooking my beautiful cow. He is so delicious.

Not working. There are no words.

Not being in Afghanistan. Way too many words.

The. Bike. Is. AWESOME!!! In case you also want one now, it's a Yamaha RoadStar Warrior 1700, and it has a ton of power! Who knew? Apparently not the insurance company because the premiums are so cheap! About a quarter of what they were for the last one. It is so sexy and loud and fast and shiny and cold to ride on in January but I DON'T CARE! I just bundle up and suffer because it so much fun!

The list has to end somewhere and I guess this will work, but I could go on and on. Being home is wonderful, and Valli and I are doing great, and if I haven't got around to calling you yet you are not alone because I've hardly called anyone. But I love you guys and hope you are having at least as good a time as I am, if not better.

America Needs This

I spent a few hours in Jalalabad this morning and went buy the hadji-shop for a snack. I didn't find any snacks, but they had an amazing collection of DVDs for sale. The DVDs are produced by a company called World Movie BBK. I bought three for a dollar apeice. They each come in their own brightly coloered, glossy cardboard jacket which is covered in little thumbnail pictures representing their contents. Each disc holds about 30 hours of program. I got one featuring the Discovery Channel series called Wild World, A Disney disk that has a dozen or so full-length aminated classics and every Pooh movie ever, and a Kung-fu disk full of Bruce Lee, Let Li, and Jackie Chan. There were maybe 40 different disks on sale.

What is wrong with you America? I never thought I would say this, but Afghanistan has you spanked. At least in the cheap movie department. About 50 movies for 3 dollars, and I didn't even haggle with the guy.

R and R

I'm back!

My vacation was awesome. I can hardly describe how great it was to be back in Alaska for the last 20 days. I didnt get to do all the things I wanted, and I didnt get to see half the people I wanted, but still had such a wonderful time.

Before I left Bagram, and again in Kuwait, we were repeatedly warned that things will have changed while we've been gone. Expect things to be awkward for the first few days. These little pep talks were always at least an hour long and included a detailed list of activities that were prohibited. Ironicly, I always had the impression that they expected us to go out and do them all anyway. Such as- drinking and driving, going to jail, doing drugs, spousal abuse, murder, tackling and detaining american citizens of middle eastern ancestry. Personally I never had a desired to do any of these things. In fact, once I landed in Anchorage I didn't feel any akwardness at all. It was great.

I had such a good time. I could go on and on about all the fun stuff I got to do- but I won't. I will say that I got to eat great pizza and other wonderful foods, I went kayaking in Seward, 4-bying in Palmer, rafting in Denali, rollerbladed through the solar system, and hung out with some of the best people you would ever want to meet.

I'm not happy to be back in Afghanistan. But it's not so bad.

Wild life.

Unique experience this morning. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes this morning was movement. On the wall, about 2 feet above my toes, was a largish fluttering thing. My first thought was- "That looks like a huge spider about to land on my foot." And by huge I mean, the size of my entire hand. After blinking a couple times and letting my eyes come into focus, I found that it was that, indeed. The largest camel spider I have ever seen was dangling from my internet cable, right over the foot of my bed. I thought about turning on the light, but they hate light, and I was afraid of where it might decide to run. My next thought was to find a gun, but the thing closest to hand was bottled water. I chucked this at the wall and leapt from my bed (5 feet from the floor) without looking at the outcome, because even half asleep i could remember that these things run faster than I do. I'm assuming I missed it because I was never able to find the body. There was a gap in the plywood walls very close to where it was hanging. Presumaby it escaped through that. The rest of the morning I dreamed of killing a steady stream of nasty spiders that dropped one after another through the ceiling.



The image below is a picture of the standard Iraqi solpugid, or camel-spider. They have 10 legs and huge crushing jaws, known to eat lizards and rats, and probably infants. Mine was dark brown are fury, like a tarantula from hell- but bigger and faster. Pretty frikkin sweet, eh?

Who needs November anyway?

So we missed November. Or maybe November missed us, cause we had a great time!
There was a little traveling involved with seeing family, ruins, sandunes, sea turtles, snow covered Rockies and a miriad of other things. Thanksgiving happened somewhere since then but that was after the trip.

This is Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Penisula.


At the solstice the shadows form a serpent along the left edge. There's a serpent head carved out of stone at the bottom. Sadly the only things we got pictures of were the ruins and stuff in Mexico. The camera got sand in it at the sand dunes in Utah. Imagine that. This was poor timing since that was the start of our "visiting family" section of the trip. So, no family photos. Or us plowing 4wheelers through the snow on top of mountains in Idaho.

What a fun trip! Exactly one week prior to the snow excursion we were scuba
diving in Cozumel. Dave spotted a sea turtle. It was hilarious seeing him try to get our attention. He resorted to hitting his oxygen tank with his ring.

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