Back-Posted

Today and yesterday I blogged a lot. Some are back-posted quite a while, and thus you might miss them. If you don't want to page back, click on the links to see those specific, older posts:

June 14th: Springville's Art City Days
June 18th: More photos from Ohio (Meta's family)
July 3rd: Trips to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House and the Hogle Zoo
July 4th: Ballstaedt Reunion on the 4th of July

I still have catch-up to play on the Halverson Reunion, so come back soon for those posts!

Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday. Here's a new version of the old standard (taken from a book of children's poetry given to us by the very cultured Connie Bennion):

Happy Birthday to you!
Squashed tomatoes and stew!
Bread and butter
In the gutter
Happy Birthday to you!

It is cited as a "traditional British street rhyme." Funny! Luckily my family didn't know of it, and so they left messages with beautiful singing on them. I always love to hear their singing!

My brain isn't aging too fast: I got a 6 out of 6 on the Analytical portion of the GRE! Yippee!

Pew Forum Report

The Pew Forum issued a report, timed to coincide with Pioneer Day, which "explores Mormons' unique place in the American religious landscape and is divided into three parts: demographic characteristics, religious beliefs and practices, and social and political views." Not too many surprises here, but still interesting.

Those at FAIR (The Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research) highlighted an interesting graphic showing how LDS members are exceptional in their combined religious belief and practice.

On My Mind: Call of the Wild

I believe I read this book as a child, but didn't remember anything when I reread it this summer in preparation for teaching it this fall. I wonder whether I'll be able to engage Utah 9th graders in some of the issues that prompted London's worldview, including his great respect for the ideas of Darwin.

Anyone have any particular thoughts about this book? What did you think were the most interesting issues in it? Why did you like (or dislike) it?

Kansas City: Crowne Plaza

Ryan, Anna, their boys, Taylor, David and I went to Crowne Plaza in Kansas City today. We visited the Hallmark Museum and the Kaleidoscope play place. The latter was a lot of fun, though we didn't really take photos there. David was excited to be introduced to PAINT, something I haven't bought for him yet.

David's favorite part was the water fountains outside. Just as he did in St. George 10 days ago, he loved playing in the water! It's weird that he's also going through this phase of being afraid of water in the bathtub. Can't figure that one out...but it makes washing his hair a battle of wills.

Kansas City: Taylor's First Home

With Anna and Ryan, we drove to the home in which the Halverson family lived while they were in Kansas City (Overland Park, to be exact).

Taylor, any specific memories to share from this home?

Later we went to the Union Station in downtown Kansas City. I stayed in the car because David fell asleep right before we got there (it was after 4 pm!). But from the photos you can see how lovely the building is now that they've restored it.

Elliot Halverson at the Union Station in KC

Finally, our two families went out for BBQ that night. Ryan's favorite part of visiting Kansas City!

Kansas City: Deanna Rose Farmstead

We are having a prequel to the Halverson Family Reunion which will be in Bentonville, Arkansas from Wednesday through Saturday. But we came a few days early to have extra time with family: Brad and Anne-Marie live in Kansas City, and Ryan and Anna had also flown in early.

Boarding our plane to KC. Direct flight -- yay!

So today we went with everyone to the Deanna Rose Farmstead, about 2 miles from their home. What a fun place! And David had the best time with his cousins: Spencer, Sawyer, and Charlie all have been such good buddies to him!






There were milk bottles you could pay to feed to the goats (or just pick up the half-used ones, as we did). But the goats were really aggressive!






David's younger cousin Elliot wasn't fazed by them at all:






In fact, he was willing to share a bottle with the goats!




But David is going through a phase where he gets scared more easily by lots of things. Here is his experience with the goats (these photos were not all taken in this order!):

Sorry it's scary, kiddo!

Don't Eat the Marshmallow Yet

Someone on the Palo Alto-Menlo Park Parents Club email list passed this along. I sent it to my family. Be sure to watch it to the end!



My sister Anna -- such a fantastic mom! -- did lots of thinking about it and even starting teaching her 4 year old about the concept. You can read her blog on it; she found another similar video.

Join Us in Israel!

Taylor and I will be leading a tour in Israel this winter (December 26th-January 5th). We're so excited to travel together to the place that brought us together (our common experiences in Israel are what sparked our first emails). I am excited to revisit the place that absorbed my studies for six years, and hope I can start brushing up on Hebrew soon (though that won't be necessary for the tour).

Hope you can join us! Look here for more information.

Virtue

For Mother's Day/our 6th anniversary/my birthday (still upcoming), Taylor purchased me a canvas print of James Christensen's painting "Virtue." I had been coveting it for a while. (I know, I know -- coveting is a vice, not a virtue!) Then we went to Michael's and spent 1/2 hour going through mattes to find just the right combination. I wanted the framing and matting to work not only with the painting, but with the furniture and my Minerva Teichert's Christ in a Red Robe, which hangs in the same room.

I think we got it right! I love it!

(Almost) Perfect Praxis!

I've taught for nearly 10 years, and never before had to take the Praxis test as part of my state credentialing. So I was pretty miffed when I learned that to transfer my CA credential to a UT one, I would have to take this test (and spend $130 to do so!).

I took the exam a month ago, and was super bugged because the test, which was scheduled to begin at 7:30 am, didn't actually start till 8:30. Not because they were late -- that happened at the GRE testing place last week!! -- but just because they combined about 20 different tests into one room, and so the administration took forever. Then they said we couldn't leave until the 2 hours were through (even though I finished 1/2 hour early). I was so bugged -- we had planned to go to the Arts City Days Parade together but instead I was 1.5 hours later than I thought I'd be! -- that I wrote a letter. The response came yesterday. Half of it doesn't even address what I wrote. The ETS administrators would fail their own standardized writing assessments, which say, in effect, no points will be given for answering the wrong question.

But enough grumbling (though I will write another letter or two to follow up on these things!). Today I saw my Praxis score on the English Language, Literature, and Composition exam. 200 out of 200! I didn't answer flawlessly (62 out of 66, 17 out of 18, and 36 out of 36 in the three sections), but still I guess it translates to a "perfect" score. Yippee!!

Am I bragging too much? Sorry!

St. George & Cedar City

Our good friends Mike & Kristin Atkisson, who we first got to know in Bloomington, Indiana, invited us to spend the weekend at Kristin's parents' vacation home in St. George. It was a gorgeous home (Kristin's mom is a fantastic decorator!) with beautiful views of the desert-scapes. Even this Oregon girl could appreciate the beauty of the red sand and stone!




Nearby was a park with a water play area. One fountain would come on for a while, then die down as another one sprang up. David loved the surprise element to it! At first he was very timid, extending his hand but standing back from the actual water by yards. Under Taylor's "tutelage", however, he was soon jumping into the water itself. My boys played for at least 1/2 in the water. By the end David was so soaked that we stripped off all his clothes, since he would be warm faster (in the 90+ temperatures even at 8 pm!) without the wet things to keep him cold.









On Saturday night Kristin's parents watched David, Peter, and Greta, allowing us to drive to Cedar City for dinner and a play. We watched As You Like It. This was one we studied at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute; I had memorized about 100 of Phoebe's lines. Sadly I couldn't remember more than a few lines!




Acoustics, unfortunately, were really poor, and no one could tell me what station to tune my FM receiver to (I think it's against the law to have an audience of more than 200 and not allow for such capabilities). The headset provided by the theatre was a joke: first of all, it only had one ear piece. Then, you couldn't wear your own hearing aids and use the ear piece (both don't fit in one ear!). Finally, the sound that was picked up was super soft! (It didn't appear that the actors were miked; perhaps what little sound was being "amplified" was just being picked up by a general external microphone on the stage.) I really should have brought a copy of the play. Not sure why I didn't think of it. Sigh. I should write a letter to the Cedar
City Shakespeare organizers, encouraging them to do better by their hearing impaired people.




Interesting: as I waited to check out the headset, the gentleman behind me signed his name as Jack Rampton. Somehow we're related, though we never got it all sorted out. Small world.



We left on Sunday after attending Sacrament Meeting and cleaning the house. David couldn't make it till the car ride: so sleepy, he curled up on the living room floor and went to sleep!

Still Behind on Blogging!

Keep coming back! I have 4 or 5 posts that will go up one of these days. Ballstaedt Reunion on the 4th, Hogle Zoo & Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house, St George with the Atkissons, even a few more on Ohio at Meta's! So sorry to be a slow-poke.

Done with the GRE

I've spent far too much time of late preparing to take the GRE, which I did this morning. The last time I took the GRE was in 1996, so if I want to apply to the Comparative Studies MA program at BYU (still not sure how I'll take classes, but perhaps little by little), I needed to retake it.

The portion that mattered least (Quantitative) stressed me out a lot. I got by with one statistic class in college to count for my math requirement. Though math was my favorite subject in 8th grade, I got turned off by precalc (junior year), in part because of two years of "boys club" type teachers (I don't talk sports!), in part because I was doing too much and would fall asleep in the back of the class every day sophomore year, to be woken by my friend Cisca Mok as she left the room! (I still got an 89.4 in the class, but the teacher -- understandably -- wouldn't round up to an A-.)

The Analytical writing task scared me, too. I'm a strong writer, but on some of the topics my mind drew a blank. I made Taylor talk through 5 or 6 topics an evening for a few weeks. It really helps to be married to brilliance!

In the end, I did fine. I'm still waiting to hear how I scored on the Analytical; if I didn't overstep by adding a 4th argument (that even in art, "facts" -- perspectival painting -- can be altered through the tricks of anamorphosis. All ideas from my "Theology of Painting" class), then I think I kicked some "behind."

So glad that it is done!

David's "Work"

My sister Sara was telling me that her friend, whose kids go to a Montessori School, said that using the term "work" with kids can help them better understand what a peer is up to -- and thus not grab their toy away. When David grabbed Jasper's toy (or vice versa), Sara would explain to David that Jasper was working on the toy, and that we should find other work for David. I guess the idea behind the theory is that, for kids, playing really is their work! They can conceptualize that another kid is also working, and thus should be allowed to retain the toy their are playing with.




In any case, David loves "working" on his train! We purchased a train table off of Craigslist (funny -- when I arrived at the home in Draper where it was being sold, I found that the woman I had corresponded with via email is married to an old Stanford Ward friend, Erik Oh! He helped me arrange everything to fit comfortably into my Honda Civic).




On the first day, David played with it non-stop. It has since lost some of its novelty, but he still loves it. Fun to see him captivated by something!

Egberts in Town!

Sara, Rob, and their boys Jasper and Gideon have been in town for an Egbert Reunion. Luckily, they broke away from the festivities to spend two nights with us, and have dinner tonight with us, too. Also, they invited us to join in an Egbert campout, so we drove up to Tanner Flat in the Little Cottonwood Canyon for the evening. (We didn't try to camp for the night, though.) David has been talking about marshmallows ever since!

I didn't take a ton of photos (Sara, do you have any?). Above is my beautiful sister Sara with her little Gideon. Below is Jasper -- greatest hair ever! -- playing at David's new train table. (Jasper being the alpha male, David actually acquiesced to share!)

Ballstaedt Fourth

Taylor with his great aunt, the only surviving child of Carl & Marie Ballstaedt

We drove up to Cottonwood Heights on the afternoon of the 4th of July. There we met with many of Taylor's cousins and more distant relatives, gathering for a reunion of the ancestors of Carl and Marie Ballstaedt. 2009 marked the 100 year anniversary of their immigration to the United States.

David enjoyed playing at a nearby park and trying to drink from the water fountain; he wanted to run up and down a steep cement ledge so I had to try to thwart that. When not involved in that business, I really enjoyed talking to Taylor's cousin Ann. She is lovely, inquisitive, and a good listener; I talked her ear off!




Two of Taylor's cousins, Joel and Brooke Ballstaedt, were on the BYU Jerusalem program with me in Winter/Spring 1994. It's always fun to see them at such gatherings (though Brooke wasn't actually there this time).

Celestial and Terrestial

Today we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House, and then to the Hogle Zoo. We had such a fun time!

Celestial: Oquirrh Mountain Temple




Since we've moved to Utah, we've been able to visit two temple open houses: this, and the Draper Temple. Both visits were so beautiful. Even with the crowds, you sense the peacefulness of the buildings. I'm so glad we dedicate our very finest craftsmanship and resources to these places of worship. I'm so glad we believe in having holy places on earth.

It was a beautiful, sunshiny day!

David loves temples. He recognizes them (though anything with a really tall spire -- even a very tall rock formation -- may be called a temple by him). A wonderful blessing of adoption is that we will continue to go to the temple to be sealed to future children we adopt, and David will hopefully remember some of these visits as he grows older.

Excited to visit the Temple

He was pretty good throughout the tour, though he was mad when we walked away from the baptismal font (pictured below. Note that cameras were not allowed inside, but I got these photos off of a Church media website.)




The next two photographs come from the celestial room, which is to help us envision being in heaven, in the presence of God Himself. Of course it's just symbolic, but I love the beauty of every temple's celestial room.






Below is a photograph of a sealing room. Taylor and I were married in such a room, holding hands across the altar. On the other most beautiful day of our lives, we were able to take David to the temple 14 months ago to be sealed to him.




While we walked through the Bride's Room of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, Taylor told me that men don't have a similar, beautiful room off of their dressing rooms. They should!




Terrestrial:

Then we drove to the Hogle Zoo. I hadn't thought about it being a crowded holiday, but we finally found parking in a nearby parking lot for the Emigration Canyon Memorial.

David and I went to the zoo a year ago with Anna, her boys, and my high school friend Kelly Davis Garrett. It was fun to go back with David again, now that he's so very verbal.

Taylor bought matching baseball caps to keep off the sun.

Notice that the giraffe is resting its head on its haunches! Made me laugh!

I think Taylor's favorite part was the jumping monkeys -- other rather, the fact that he caught their jumping on film!