Football and Fall

Victory!!! Yesterday the BYU football team won their first game of the season against Northern Iowa. The Cougars had a great first half, but the second half was not so pretty. I think the team will have some things to work on at practice this week, and then hopefully they can get their A-game on when they head to Washington. It was so fun to go to the game with Dad yesterday!!! We were glad that our seats were in the shade because it was very hot outside. I love LaVell Edwards Stadium--you can see the whole Wasatch front from the stands, and there's nothing quite like the excitement in the air and the ambiance of a BYU football game. Hotdogs also taste better at football games for some reason. I love stadium hotdogs. The Cougars won 41-17! Northern Iowa's mascot is the panther--just like Eastern Illinois University. Maybe it's a Midwest thing? Last fall when I was at EIU, I felt very out of the BYU football loop, so I'm glad to be back in it this year. I LOVE BYU!!!

Speaking of fall, it definitely feels like fall outside tonight. There is quite a storm blowing through, and the temperature tomorrow is supposed to be 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday. It will be a chilly Labor Day. Speaking of Labor Day, I am going to need to labor at Camp Floyd on Labor Day. That's okay though because I'll be taking the end of this week and first of next week off for Mom's and my trip to DC!! So I'm glad to get in work hours when I can. It's supposed to be quite rainy and cold tomorrow, so I don't know if we'll have many visitors, but we'll see.

Today at church the Primary kids were CRAZY! I only had three kids in my class, but even they were waaaaaay too much to handle. They were literally bouncing off the walls. Our lesson was entitled "Love One Another," but I quickly learned that to five-year-olds, the word "love" means only two things: marriage and kissing. Tanner asked Nauvoo to marry him several times during class today. No matter what I did to try to turn the conversation back to the lesson, there was no changing their train of thought. I was pooped by the time church ended today.

Poor Southern states that are going to get slammed by Hurricane Gustav! They haven't even finished cleaning up from Katrina yet--and that was three years ago. I snapped these pictures in May 2006 when my Natchez ranger roommate Jessica and I took a road trip down to New Orleans. As you can see, even nine months after the hurricane hit, much of the downtown area was still in disrepair. The thing Jessica and I couldn't believe was that there were still cars piled up on top of each other under the freeway--right where they had ended up during Katrina. Of course that has since been cleaned up, but the Southern coast definitely doesn't need another big storm. Hopefully my friends in Mississippi are far enough north that they won't be affected by Gustav. They said that when Katrina came through they all hunckered down and prepared for the worst, but they only lost power for one day and there wasn't a lot of wind damage. She had lost a lot of her strength by the time she made it up as far as Natchez. Luckily people along the coast have actually heeded evacuation warnings this time around. Unfortunately the heart of Gustav is projected to make landfall near Houma, Louisiana--that's where Natchez ranger Jessica is from! Hopefully her family has gotten safely out of the way of the storm.

Happy Addendum

I have a happy addendum to today's earlier post. It seems that the day just keeps getting better :-) I found out that Dad has two 50 yard line tickets to tomorrow's BYU game, so he and I get to go kick-off the BYU football season!! And, I have an article in the new issue of Pioneer magazine which just came out today. The article is called "Utah's 'Gentile' Schools" and talks about the history of early Utah schools that were started by religious groups other than the Mormons. I didn't know very much about said schools to begin with, so I enjoyed doing the research for the article. The editor of the magazine did a really nice job with graphics, so it looks pretty cool. Go Cougars!

HOOOOORAAAAAYYYYYY for McCain/Palin!!!!!!

I am so happy. In fact, I have not been this politically happy since Mitt Romney won the primary elections in Michigan. When Romney dropped out of the Presidential race, I thought that all was lost for our country. As you know, I was not originally a fan of John McCain. But, as of late, especially about such issues as abortion, McCain has proven himself to be a true conservative. And he's also shown that he is willing to take a stand for what he believes. His decision to make abortion a big part of his campaign scored him many, many, many points in my book. Since I was liking McCain more and more, I was really hoping that he would choose Mitt Romney to be his VP. My first reaction to this morning's news that Mitt was not the VP candidate was disappointment, BUT when I heard he had chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his VP, I was overcome with joy. I realized that the Democrats would have ceaselessly pestered Mitt about the fact that he was a Mormon, so maybe it's all for the best anyway. Sarah Palin rocks!! She is a slap in the face to the Democratic ticket. She is a WOMAN (good-bye Hillary), she is a working mom, she is a member of the NRA, and her husband works in Alaska's oil fields. She's perfect!!! Obama has been using his daughters as a big part of his campaign--but move over Obama girls--five new cute kids have just stolen your thunder. The Palin's newest son is little Trig who was born with Down syndrome. He is adorable! His loving welcome into the world is another slap in the face to Obama--especially in light of the nurse who testified before the Illinois legislature that she had witnessed the death of a Down syndrome baby who had been put into a linen closet after a failed late-term abortion attempt. Obama opposed the Illinois bill that would have protected such babies who survive late-term abortions. Another of Sarah Palin's sons is being deployed to Iraq next month. Basically she is the perfect pick for John McCain's running mate. The Democrats are already trying to say that she doesn't have enough experience--BUT, that will backfire on them because, truth be told, she is younger than Obama and still has more political experience than he does. And, she's not even the one running for President! I'm sure that the Obama camp is in a panic about what to do. Obama has been touting "change" as his mantra, but Sarah Palin is change. The Dems have been criticizing McCain as being an old white guy--same old, same old--but then Obama picks an old white guy to be his running mate, and McCain picks a cute, young mom as his. Excellent move. No more do I need to worry about voting for McCain only to avoid voting for Obama--I now whole-heartedly support the McCain/Palin ticket.

On an equally happy note, BYU football begins tomorrow!!!! I am so excited! I love football and I love BYU. And I love Sarah Palin.

Extreme Makeover: Crate Edition

The last extreme makeover I did was when I reupholstered the infamous $2.00 chair while I was back at school in Illinois. Today, since I didn't have work, I decided to be constructive and try my hand at another extreme makeover project. Lately I have been wanting a crate. I know that's a random thing to want, but I love crates because they are useful--you can store things in them--and they make great decorations. This morning Mom and I went over to Treasures Antique Mall in Springville, and Mom spotted just the size of crate I was looking for. It was outside by all of the wrought iron things they have for sale. The only problem was that it had basically been cast off and was full of dirt and other such things. We dumped out the dirt, found a piece of wood to scrape off the unpleasant residue, and hit the crate a few times to knock out some of the cobwebs and other junk inside. We took it in and asked the people how much they wanted for the crate, but they didn't even know who it belonged to. They finally tracked down the person who claimed to own it, and he sold it to us for $10. Sweet deal. Then the fun began! We took it home and I cleaned it up with a wire brush and a vacuum. Then I sanded it and applied some special wood finish which brought out the natural wood grain and also added a slight gloss to the surface. I've had orange crates on the mind ever since I saw an episode of "Antiques Roadshow" a couple of weeks ago where a guy had some orange crate labels that were worth $30,000.00. So, I decided to turn my crate into an orange crate. I found some orange crate labels online and, of course, chose the "Lincoln Brand" label--featuring my favorite historical figure. I found some cool adhesive stuff to attach the labels which also seals them onto the wood. And, voila! We have a cool new orange crate!! I will use it to haul books and things back to Illinois, and then Greg and I can use it as a house decoration. It looks pretty awesome, if I do say so myself--especially considering the condition in which Mom and I found the crate this morning!

Tonight Mom and I started addressing wedding invitation envelopes. My favorite envelope was to "Mr. and Mrs. Brigham Young" :-) Yes, Brigham Young will indeed be coming to our wedding! (His wife Julie is one of my mom's best friends.)

Yesterday at work James taught me how to use the Utah State Parks artifact cataloging system that is used at all of the state historic sites and museums. Unfortunately, no one had worked on artifact cataloging at Camp Floyd for about six years, so all of the artifact records were quite haphazard (not to mention the artifacts themselves--they're all piled away in a storage shed). But, when it comes to collections, you have to start somewhere, so yesterday I started cataloging the books that we have at the old schoolhouse. After I had been entering information into the computer for a while, I started coming across a bunch of Bobbsey Twins books. I have no idea why this would be the case, but I swear that Camp Floyd owns every Bobbsey Twins book ever written. We had the Bobbsey Twins in Mexico, on the Pony Trail, at School, at the Snow Lodge, Treasure Hunting, in Tulip Land, at Spruce Lake, at the Ice Carnival, and everywhere else they ever went. So if you ever need a Bobbsey Twins book, you know who to call.

Yesterday a tornado went right through Clemson University! Needless to say, we were all very worried about Sarah, Joel, and Eliza. Sarah and Joel were there on campus and Eliza was at daycare when the first bout of bad storms went through. Then luckily Sarah and Joel went to pick up Eliza when they did because shortly after they left was when a confirmed tornado touched down and went across campus. It went past the football stadium, across the intramural fields, knocked down a bunch of trees, and knocked out the power. Yikes! We were very glad that they left when they did and that they made it home safely. Tornadoes are scary! There are a lot of things I love about Utah, and one of them is that tornadoes are extremely rare here in the mountains.

Golden Spike!

Today was the most fun day ever!!! Mom, Dad, Rich, and I took a little road trip up to Promontory Point to see the Golden Spike National Historic Site. It is such a cool place! None of us had been there before, and today we realized the reason behind that fact--Golden Spike NHS is in the middle of nowhere. But it's definitely worth the trip out across the salty desert to reach the site. After all, it was here at this very point that the east coast connected to the west coast in 1869.

Here is a picture of the golden spot. They placed this special railroad tie to mark the meeting of the Central Pacific (coming from the west) and the Union Pacific (coming from the east). It was into this tie that THE golden spike was nailed. Unfortunately THE golden spike is not here in Utah, but rather it is at Stanford University's art museum. The president of the Central Pacific Railroad was Leland Stanford (as in Stanford University), and he brought the golden spike with him, so I guess it makes sense that he took it home with him too. There was an engraving on the the golden spike that read: "May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world."

Here is an exact replica of Engine 119--the Union Pacific's coal-burning engine.







And here is an exact replica of Jupiter--the Central Pacific's wood-burning engine.





Each day at the park, they do several locomotive runs for visitors. It's so neat! Here is a video of Engine 119 coming down the track:



And here is a video of Jupiter pulling up to the "Last Spike" site:



Isn't that cool?! Here are Rich and Mom with Engine 119.








And here are Mom and Dad in front of Jupiter.











And here I am straddling the golden spike railroad tie. That was quite a feat they accomplished just four years after the end of the Civil War. When the golden spike was pounded into place, telegraph operators sent word to all of the major U. S. cities. There were celebrations all across the country as people realized that the nation was now truly united from coast to coast. We realized today that it is quite significant that in 1869 all imaginable technology barriers were surmounted with the completion of the transcontinental railroad, and just 100 years later in 1969, man landed on the moon--another seemingly impossible technological milestone!

After our very fun visit to Promontory Point, we headed over to Richmond, Utah. We ate lunch at our favorite place: LD's Cafe (they make the world's best hamburgers). Then we went to the Richmond cemetery to visit our ancestor Amanda Barnes Smith's grave. She is Dad's great great great grandmother and is a well-known Church history figure because of her experiences at Haun's Mill, Missouri. Her husband and one son were murdered in the Haun's Mill Massacre, and another son, Alma, had his hip shot out by the mob. Amanda, by divine guidance received through prayer, constructed a poultice that later formed into a new hip for Alma. She was a remarkable woman and my family and I have gained strength and faith from her writings. It was very nice to visit her grave today. After the cemetery stop, we went to the Pepperidge Farm distribution center and the Fat Boy ice cream headquarters--both located in Richmond. As you can imagine, we had some yummy cookies and ice cream. It was a wonderful day!!!