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!

Soup of the Day

This is Mike, making my debut as an official blogger on Adventures in the Midwest. I know you've all become great fans of Melissa's blogging style, so I hope I don't disappoint you, our faithful readers, this week. If you're interested in new and interesting food, I think you'll like what you're about to read.

Melissa and I love to try new recipes, and the soup recipe we attempted a few days ago turned out so well, we knew we needed to share the goodness. When I first tasted this soup, I immediately thought about my parents and brother, who are currently freezing their @*$es off in Alaska. Mom, Dad, Nick, and other culinary adventurers out there, I hope you like the "Easy Mulligatawny Soup" from our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup chopped apples (2 small)
1 cup chopped carrots (2 medium)
1 7 1/2-ounce can tomatoes, cut up (we used a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes)
1/2 cup chopped celery (1 stalk)
1/3 cup long grain rice (we'll probably use twice this amount of rice next time)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup raisins
1 tablespoon snipped fresh parsley (dried works too)
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground mace or ground nutmeg (we used nutmeg)
1 1/2 cups chopped cooked chicken or turkey

Instructions:
In a large saucepan combine chicken broth, apples, carrots, undrained tomatoes, celery, uncooked rice, onion, raisins, parsley, curry powder, lemon juice, pepper, mace or nutmeg, and 1 cup water. Bring to boil; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in chicken or turkey; heat through. The recipe says it makes about 4 main-dish servings, but we found that it made closer to 6, probably because we added the extra tomatoes and a little bit more of a few other ingredients than what the recipe calls for.

If you like vegetable soup, apple cider, and chicken curry, you're bound to enjoy this invigorating combination. It's great for a cold autumn or winter day.

Bon appetit!

Tornado warning

Tornado: Violent, low-pressure storm, relatively small in diameter but with very rapidly rotating winds and an intense updraft near the centre.

The relatively low pressure at the centre of a tornado's funnel-like vortex causes cooling and condensation, making the storm visible as a revolving column of cloud, called the funnel. Tornadoes normally travel at 30–40 mph (50–65 kph). The winds around the vortex average nearly 300 mph (500 kph) and have been known to reach 500 mph (800 kph). Tornadoes often occur in groups. (Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise)

I don't know anything about tornadoes from experience, just stories that I keep hearing from others. I hear that the sky turns greenish, the air gets sort of thick, and as one librarian keeps telling me (in a very dramatic voice), "You can just feel something coming."

Thursday night I was working at the library and a tornado watch was in effect. The weather radio under the desk kept on going off, warning people in several Illinois and Indiana counties (including Champaign County) that a tornado may be coming our way. At about 6:45 the watch became a warning and we evacuated all library users to the "tunnel" -- an underground passage from the main library to the undergraduate library. It was crowded and hot down there, so I was glad that the warning expired after about twenty minutes and we were able to go about our business.

In other news, the Primary program today went really well. The kids performed their songs and spoken parts even better than I had hoped they would -- and all fourteen of them were there! I was so proud of them. They were adorable and earnest and very, very sweet. I'm trying to think of a favorite moment to share, but I'm afraid I can't. I just loved the whole program too much to pick a moment that stood out.

Franklin County is too, too small

Here's proof:

I was working at the library at the reference desk tonight and had forgotten to silence my cellphone. Since it was Dad calling, I answered: "Hi! I'm at work at the library!"

"I just have one question. I was sitting next to R.W. at county commissioner meeting today and he said congratulations on becoming a grandpa."

"What?! Are you kidding me?"

"He said his daughter read on your website that you're expecting, but I was just hoping that you'd tell us before you put it on a website."

"Well, of course I would tell you first! But don't expect any announcements! Don't expect anything!" (While logging on to Facebook and checking my blog for anything that might have been misconstrued . . . Also feeling some passing resentment towards persons who may have misread and misinformed . . .)

I got off the phone and told M., the librarian I was working with, what had just transpired. Laughed somewhat hysterically for a few minutes; resentment passed, disbelief set in.

In conclusion, in case anyone is wondering, I am certainly not "expecting." Thank you and good night.

How to talk to kids -- and how not to

I stole the above title from This American Life. Their show last week was all about how to talk to kids: how to entertain kids, how to answer questions about sex, how to instill fear into kids without using physical force. I'll admit that I was most interested in the final act, in which parents discussed why they yell at their kids and why it's an important disciplinary tool. One of my concerns about having children (not in the immediate future -- maybe 3 or 4 years down the road) is my lack of patience. It's a quality that I lack, to say the least. I've tried to work on it, but it seems to be just a part of my modus operandus to want things to happen really, really fast. I'm most impatient with myself. In fact, when I was in 5th grade (warning: this is a really pathetic story) if I wasn't the first kid done with my test or assignment, I'd get so angry at myself that I'd cry. It's a bit sick, I know. So one of my major concerns about childrearing is: What will I do with them when they don't do what I want them to do and/or they don't do it quickly enough? The answer: Probably scream like a banshee.

My current role at church is leading the children in their singing. Next week the kids are doing their yearly presentation to the whole congregation: they'll be speaking and singing for about 45 minutes. We practiced today and, although the practice went more smoothly than I expected, it was pretty exhausting. There are several older boys (9-12 range) who are a bit too cool to be up on the stand in front of everyone and they don't always pay attention when it's time to sing or to come to the microphone. There are three little three-year-old girls who also have a hard time paying attention. Do I scream at the kids? No. Because we're at church, I hold up a little stop sign on a popsicle stick and they know to stop whatever they're doing and look at me. Surprisingly, the stop sign on a popsicle stick works pretty well. But I can't help thinking that getting the kids' attention with volume might have a more lasting effect.

So, maybe the point is that I'm learning there is another way, besides yelling. But a good scream can be cathartic . . .