My little helper

For the Grandma's and Grandpa's:

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!

The wheels on the bus go round and round.

A wonderful family we have the privilege of knowing invited Lillian and me to look at some of Nashville's greatest Christmas decorations at the Opryland Hotel the day after Christmas. This grand hotel recently reopened after the floods in May. I was very excited about this opportunity. This family travels in their own bus! I was as excited, if not more, about the bus ride than the destination. Old Man Flake did a great job getting us there and back with such a beast to drive.

The bus is needed with this bunch. To date the family count is as follows:

Twelve children

Five child-in-laws

Four foster children, a recent and unexpected addition

Nine grandchildren (I think), with two more on the way

And then they invited the two of us! It was awesome. We all fit nicely. And I do mean all. Everyone was there! We were quite the parade going through the hotel ogling at the lights inside and out.

Thank you Flakes!

Merry Christmas

Lillian received a book from her cousins today. She loves books. She'll bring them to me all day long. I've recently caught her flipping through her favorite jungle book while doing her lion roar. "Baaawwh!"

Lillian loves her new book. Though my voice is on vacation somewhere warm without me we read it six times in twenty minutes. How she heard me is a mystery.

The Parthenon

As everyone else is appropriately blogging about Christmas I am trying to play a little catch up on recent events.

While my sister was visiting we patronized Nashville's own Parthenon. It's the world's only full size replica and has an interesting history in it's own right. Built to last only 6 months during the world fair in 1930 it was refurbished much later to stand in the glory that it is today.
The double brass doors on each side of the building are 24 ft tall 6 ft wide and a foot thick. They weigh 7.5 tons each! They were very impressive. I'm lamenting that none of my pictures show the scale of these beautiful doors that were made in 1930 in Long Island, New York.

The 42 ft Athena wasn't added till the 90's.

It's an impressive building surrounded by a beautiful park complete with reflection lake. It was a great November day for a picnic.

I hope anyone visiting the Nashville area gets a chance to see this wonderful structure and the art museum they've added on the main floor.

Guy Fawkes Day

Who loves bonfires?

Ooh, me, me, pick me!

Really, who doesn't love bonfires?

They are warm and bright on a cold dark night. A gathering place for friends. A beautiful pit of crackling and popping in the midst of a quiet evening. They're great!

Thus Guy Fawkes Day is a great day to celebrate. Not only do you build a bonfire you get to build Guy Fawkes. Then BURN him! Mwaahaaha!

Here is my Guy Fawkes Fire. For those of you who are in-the-know this takes place on November 5th. Which shows what a slacker I am in updating our blog.

Here is one of the kindly firefighters putting out my fire. Party crashers! I've learned a valuable lesson in this. Invite all your neighbors to the celebration. That includes the ones that live through the woods, over the river (creek) and across the fields. Yes, invite them before they erroneously report a house on fire. Thanks guys. Love you too.

To my smug satisfaction it took "Clarksville's I-fight-fires-for-a-living" over 30 minutes to put my fire out. With my previously prepared and nearby water hose and my water that I pay for. Again thanks for that. During this 30 plus minutes of praise for a well built fire, apologies for ruining an obviously harmless event and watching my beautiful creation dwindle to smolder my concern for our surrounding community increased greatly. These so called fire fighting machines failed to scatter the logs (in my ample fire pit) to remove the hot spots. Which resulted in a nice little camp fire within a few hours.

We were able to scorch our Guy Fawkes after all.

RIP Guy. It's been fun. See you next year with a few more neighbors present and less flashing lights in the driveway.

A Terrific Athlete.

No, not the Homestar Runner. And not me either. If I hadn't broken my camera doing something silly you would see me standing with Mr. Lance Armstrong. Instead you can see a picture of two very fuzzy people and my word that it's us. But it is. He and Robbin Williams stopped by our little patrol base the other day to say hello. They probably had a more organized agenda than that, but I don't know what it was. But it was neat to meet them and chat for a minute.

Posting a picture of a fuzzy man that I say is Lance Armstrong is my way of announcing to The Internet that I have officially started my pre-training training for the marathon I am running on April 30th in Nashville. Today I went to a spin class to ease in with some low impact endurance exercise. Low impact my butt. My heart nearly exploded! Our danish cycling instructor had us going up and down hills and pyramids and fighting pirates and all kinds of craziness. How all that was accomplished on stationary bikes is hard to explain. Like the photo, you just have to believe me: there were pirates. Tomorrow its going to be a 5 or 6 mile jog. Like I said, easing into it.

I'm following the Furman Institute of Running Science and Training program for my race prep- I know you're all dying to know that. Three run days a week, two or three days and week of low-impact cardio. I'll post how its going on Facebook so anyone who wants to can follow along with the agony and the ecstasy. It would be great if one of you readers out there took the plunge with me! Your not dead yet, but you aren't getting any younger either- Go for it!! The real training starts on January 8th, 16 weeks before race day.

Peace out.