Family Fun Times

We try to go do something new and fun each weekend, and Nora is a very willing adventurer. Last weekend we went hiking at Red Rock Canyon. Nora was so delighted to be in the backpack on Mike's back, she kept exclaiming, "Yay!" and "Happy!" Also on the hike, we saw a snake, and Nora could not stop talking about it. She was quite fascinated.

This weekend, Family Fun Time took us to the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. Nora is walking more confidently every day, and she did a lot of walking around in the dinosaur and egg exhibit. My favorite part was where she got to put on a dinosaur costume.

 We have so much fun with Nora!

Discovery Children's Museum

Last weekend we made our first visit to Discovery Children's Museum. Nora's favorite part by far was Water World, which features all kinds of neat water works and a mini replica of the Hoover Dam.

Nora got to wear an awesome rain coat

She got to experiment with floating balls in the water

Do some splashing

And it was great fun!

Later we went to the park:

DAM & Rocky Mountain National Park, Labor Day weekend

We took a little family vacation several weeks ago on Labor Day weekend. We checked out a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Denver Art Museum and then spent two days in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.

I didn't take any photos in Denver, but Nora did pretty well at the museum. She was babbling and noisy in the very quiet galleries and she spit up on the floor when we were looking at Rothko, but other than that, she was quite good. We happened upon the Taste of Denver event, so downtown was full of people and food. We got a snack on the street and then headed for Estes Park.

Nora is learning at an early age that vacation means time to read a book. 

This was our first outing with the hiking backpack, Mike's birthday present.

We hiked about five miles, it was gorgeous, and Nora fell asleep. It was hard work riding on Daddy's back!

I could post a dozen mountain pictures. It was so pretty!

Right before hike number two.

Weekend in Denver

Mike and I just spent a really lovely weekend in Denver -- I guess it was a mini-"babymoon" (who knew that was a thing?).

We saw a theatre production of Lois Lowry's The Giver, which is one of the best YA books of all time.

The book was published 20 years ago, long before the recent rage for dystopian YA novels. It's set in a future where people live in a conflict-free society, but live with no choices and very limited feelings. Everything is very controlled -- there is no sunlight and no color. Seeing the play on stage was not as powerful as reading the book, but there were interesting elements (such as the lack of color) that were really striking in that visual medium.

We stayed overnight in Denver so that we could go to the opening day of a Van Gogh exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, but we failed to purchase tickets in advance. The event was totally sold out for the day, so we didn't get to see the exhibit. We did, however, enjoy other parts of the museum, especially an exhibit titled "When I Last Wrote to You about Africa" by El Anatsui.

Yves Saint Laurent at DAM

Mike and I made a trip to Denver on Saturday for two reasons:

1. One of my good friends from high school, Zac, is currently in Denver with the show Wicked and we got to have brunch with him. It was so nice to catch up and hear how things are going for Zac.
2. The Denver Art Museum has the Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective on display right now. It was fantastic! (Mike was not thrilled about going to see haute couture on display, but he admits that he enjoyed it much more than expected.) There were a few themes in the exhibit: 

Women's liberation through pantsuits -- fashion mirroring art -- fashion as art. I loved the exhibit, and recommend that you see it if in Denver between now and July 8.

Dallas, ALA Midwinter 2012

I visited Dallas in January for the American Library Association's Midwinter meeting. The weather was really lovely, and there were a few fun things to do in addition to committee meetings and library exhibits.

The Dallas Art Museum had an exhibit of Gaultier designs that was just amazing. My favorite part was the collection of Madonna costumes from her "Blonde Ambition" tour.

There were lots of parties and meals sponsored by library vendors, but Elsevier really pulled out all the stops: cowboy hats, longhorn cattle, and a mechanical bull!

The farmer's market was lovely (but deserted) and was the site of my first experience with breakfast tacos! (Yummy.)

Here's La Marketa Cafe

Dallas is the city where John F. Kennedy died, and the 6th Floor Museum traces his presidency, death, and legacy. I was surprised at how moving the museum was for me, and highly recommend it if you're ever visiting Dallas. The above photo is the JFK memorial.

Chicago, June 2011

Last weekend, Mike and I made a quick trip to Chicago. I got to speak at a library instruction assessment symposium at University of Chicago, and we were able to spend some time in our favorite Chicago places together and we visited some new places, too.

As you may know, Laramie is a somewhat remote location and it takes a while to get from here to . . . anywhere. So on our departure date we drove for two hours to Denver, parked and took a shuttle to the airport, had a two hour flight to Midway, took the train into the city, dropped off our stuff at a downtown hostel (more on that later) and THEN took a bus to Chicago Pizza Kitchen and Oven Grinders, home of the best pizza we've ever eaten (and we go there every time we visit Chicago). In other words, we left home at 8 a.m. and made it to dinner at about 5 p.m. and we both agreed that it was totally worth traveling all day long to eat that pizza. Yum!

After dinner we saw the play "The Gospel According to James" at Victory Gardens Theatre. It was a fantastic show, and as a bonus one of our friends from Utah State, Chris Martin, was in it. We got to chat with him a bit after the show.

We stayed two nights in a hostel near the downtown public library in Chicago. We had never stayed in a hostel before, but our funds for the trip were limited and this hostel was less than half the price of a downtown hotel. It was also recommended by the librarians at University of Chicago, so we went for it. Here's a photo of our room:

It was narrow, to say the least, and kind of like staying in a dorm room, since we shared bathrooms with the other people staying in our suite. Overall, it was not bad. The location and the price were definitely right!

My presentation at University of Chicago went really well. I won't bore you with too many details, but I presented on a mixed methods study I'm still working on this summer that attempts to measure the impact of library instruction on student achievement through focus groups with graduating seniors and a transcript analysis of a large sample of UW students. There were some great presentations at the symposium and a keynote address by my librarian hero, Megan Oakleaf.

The University of Chicago campus is really beautiful. Here are a couple of photos:

This is the Quadrangle Club, where we ate lunch during the symposium. (This is the fancy faculty clubhouse. Feels like a men's club, with lots of dark wood paneling and tweedy professor types.)

This is the reading room of the Mansueto Library, which is a brand new robot-powered library. It looks like a greenhouse from the outside, with that glass dome, and 3.5 million books are stored in the basement. You can call up a book by typing your request at the front desk, and a robotic arm gets the book for you. It's pretty cool, and obviously a popular space for students to work.

While I was conferencing, Mike went to the Adler Planetarium and to Millenium Park:

Here's a view of the museum campus, which includes the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, and Adler Planetarium. Maybe you can tell, we had beautiful weather for our 3 days in Chicago. It was warm and humid, but overall pretty nice.

Millenium Park

Mike and I met up at the University of Chicago and had a refreshing beverage at a cafe just off campus. All the servers were wearing t-shirts that said, "Obama Eats Here." The Obamas do, in fact, have a house in Hyde Park, which is the University of Chicago neighborhood. We went from the University to Navy Pier specifically to see the stained glass museum there. (I really wanted to go because I recently read a historical novel about the women who worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany in the first years of the 20th century, designing and creating stained glass windows and lamps. The book is Clara and Mr. Tiffany and I highly recommend it.)

Here's a stained glass window designed for a Chicago home, meant to go in a staircase.

And here's a Tiffany window. Honestly, the room full of Tiffany windows made all the others in the museum look a little bit dull. The colors are so brilliant and the landscapes so evocative.

Also at Navy Pier we enjoyed some Garrett's popcorn and the view of the city skyline.

If you visit Chicago, you must visit a Garrett Popcorn Shop and order the Chicago blend. It's caramel and cheese popcorn mixed together, popped fresh, and it's sooooo delicious.

On our last day in Chicago we visited the Art Institute, which is another of our favorite places. Last time we were there (two years ago), the modern wing was not yet open, so we were excited to have a chance to see it. The new space has an awesome, open design created by architect Renzo Piano. Here are some of the interesting pieces of modern sculpture we saw there:

Venus de Milo with Drawers by Salvador Dali

A set of sculptures by Constantin Brancusi

Chicago is our favorite city. Public transit makes it easy to get around, the architecture of the place is fantastic, and the Midwesterners who live there are pretty darn friendly. It's a fantastic place to spend the weekend.

The Return Trip

Part of the fun on our trip to Yellowstone was traveling through parts of Wyoming we hadn't seen yet. We covered big swaths of the state since we live in the southeast corner of Wyoming and Yellowstone is in the northwest corner.

On leaving the park, we went through Cody, Wyoming. We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and looked at art and artifacts there. Here are a few sculptures we saw:

Buffalo Bill Cody himself

Sacajewea

Crazy Horse

After spending some time in Cody, we hit the road again and stopped in Meeteetse, Wyoming. Meeteetse, a town of about three hundred people, has one of the best chocolate shops you're likely to find anywhere. The shop is owned and operated a cowboy-chocolatier named Tim Kellogg. Check out the Meeteetse Chocolatier's website for a promo video that show's Tim's skills in the rodeo arena and in the chocolate shop.

We spent that night in Thermopolis, Wyoming, home of one of the world's largest mineral hot springs. We stayed at a really great hotel. The building is historic, and the amenities were great, including a mineral springs hot tub. If you're ever passing through Thermopolis, we highly recommend the Best Western!