Happy Thanksgiving

It's hard to believe that the holiday season is here. We're counting the weeks (4) until our Christmas trip to Cache Valley!

We had a really wonderful Thanksgiving. I baked pies and rolls and Mike cooked the apple and yam dish. It all turned out great! And I only called Mom twice on Thanksgiving morning to find out what to do with the rolls.


Mike carved up the turkey after we were done eating. We've got a ton of leftovers in the fridge, but we're sure enjoying them!

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the Holms, a sweet family from our branch. Kira and Steve Holm are a couple of years older than Mike and me and they've been living here (in St. Joseph -- about 15 miles from Chambana) for the last few years while Steve has been doing his residency in oral surgery at Carle Clinic. (His supervisor is extracting my wisdom tooth this coming Tuesday!) Kira and Steve have three kids: Maci (almost 4), Micah (2), and Caitlin (1). They are a high-energy herd.

This is Micah and Maci. We were playing while Kira and Steve finished getting dinner ready and I asked the kids if I could take their picture to show to my family. They suddenly got very awkward and Micah's hands went straight to his nose.

Micah likes to play rough sometimes. He enjoyed running and jumping onto my lap and Maci enjoyed running to the kitchen to tell her mom that Micah was being rough. Ahhh, big sisters.

Maci took this series of pictures of me, Micah, and Mike:
We missed being with our families very much, but I felt a lot of love from the Holm children. All day they were saying, "Sister Terry! Sister Terry!" and sharing stories with me. They gave me lots of hugs and kisses and made the holiday very happy. We hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.

St. Louis again

Last Saturday we went to St. Louis with our friends Heather and Devin. We went to the temple and then we went to the arch and to the Museum of Westward Expansion. The museum has a really interesting layout -- it's designed in concentric circles, beginning in the center with a statue of Thomas Jefferson and the year 1800 and then it moves out decade by decade. Wayfinding was a bit confusing at first and I felt that I was always going "backwards" since we started at the outside edges and moved towards the center. I didn't fully understand the layout until I got to the middle of the museum and saw the concentric circles unfolding around me. Then there was an "ah-hah!" moment when I saw what was going on.

By the way, I took the above picture and I call it "Arch in Autumn." When Devin saw me taking the photo he said, "You're getting the leaves in the photo!" And I told him that I wanted the leaves so that the season would be represented. But he's an engineer -- one can't really expect him to understand art. :)

Last week there was an article in the New Yorker about libraries. It starts with an anecdote about the New York Public Library, then discusses the Google Book Search project, which the University of Illinois is participating in. Google is scanning and digitizing millions of books from some of the most important libraries in the U.S. to create a digital library, accessible anywhere. Microsoft and Amazon are competing with their own projects, and there is also an Open Content Alliance that is working on a similar project, but it is a non-profit.

The article gives a brief but fascinating history of libraries, starting with the Alexandria library of Egypt and analyzes the possibility of a "universal library" -- but concludes that we will always need physical libraries, even if they turn out to be museum-like archives of very old books. See what you think -- read the article (it's short). and post any comments that you have here.

Allerton Park

What a beautiful fall day -- today was perfect for spending time outside. Michael and I went to Allerton Park, in Monticello (about 40 minutes from Chambana). Allerton Park is the estate of a very wealthy Illinoisan who donated the property to the University of Illinois in 1946. There's a working, diversified farm; many formal gardens with extensive statuary; a Georgian mansion built in 1900; and miles of hiking trails through woods and gardens. We spent a few hours there hiking the "yellow trail" and seeing what we could see.

Michael at the pillars at the end of the cross surrounding "Death of the Last Centaur" statue

Death of the Last Centaur

Collection of Foo Dogs, seen from upper-level of House of the Golden Buddhas

Melissa on the upper level of House of the Golden Buddhas

This is a hedge apple -- something we'd never heard of until today. They're gooey and heavy, and may have shattered that rear window in the picture. (Don't worry, that's not our car.)

Girl with Scarf. (This Allerton guy must have had a thing for boobs.)

The mansion, which is now used as a conference center.

Foo Dog!