'Tis the Season

I can't believe it is December already! This year seems to be going by so fast. Fortunately we haven't had to deal with any winter weather (a.k.a. freezing rain) yet (knock on wood), but it has been quite chilly out. On Tuesday Greg and I met up with our friends Rose, Chris, John, and Jen at the St. Louis Science Center to see the Star Trek Exhibition. It was SO COOL! I was never really into Star Trek until Greg and I watched the "Voyager" series last year, and I loved it. I especially loved Captain Janeway, so the highlight for me on Tuesday was seeing an actual uniform worn by Captain Janeway! Unfortunately they didn't let us take pictures in the exhibit. You could have your picture taken by the exhibit staff at various locations, but the pictures were crazy expensive, so we just took pictures with our minds. We had a great time!

Things have started looking pretty Christmasy around here--especially with Spike Claus walking around! As you can see, he doesn't really like the Santa suit we picked up for him. It was a little too small, so we had to take it back, and they didn't have one his size, so he got off lucky :-) But he looked so cute!



And here is our pretty Christmas tree (a.k.a. giant cat toy). Lily loves it when we get the Christmas tree out . . .









(flashback to three years ago when Lily was a brand-new kitty who loved to climb the Christmas tree)

Fortunately she doesn't climb the tree anymore, but the ornaments are still too tempting!





And here are our stockings (the Spikes share a stocking) all ready for Santa's visit later this month.









And we've been doing a few little improvements around the house. Look at this coolest towel rack I found at Hobby Lobby (my favorite store) for our Route 66 bathroom! We thought it looked very Route 66-ish. We also installed a cool Ford light switch in the bathroom.





Today at work something pretty cool happened. Some folks from Arkansas showed up and were interested in learning about the 30th Illinois Infantry in the Civil War. It turns out that the man's great-grandfather fought for the Confederate Army in a Tennessee regiment. During battle in 1864, his great-grandfather captured the 30th Illinois flag. He later gave the flag to his commanding officer. Before his commanding officer died, he returned the flag to the great-grandfather, who then sent it back to Illinois. So I got to take this gentleman over to the base and show him the very flag that his great-grandfather had captured 147 years ago! It was really cool.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, yesterday! I missed being with my family, but it sounds like everyone had a wonderful day, so that is good. We had a nice day as well. Greg and I got up bright and early and drove to his Aunt Linda and Uncle Steve's house in Farmington, Iowa. It was fun to see Greg's cousins and everyone, and we had so much delicious food! We also enjoyed watching some football and exploring Linda and Steve's property. They have a lake which is really pretty! It was such a nice, relaxing day. Our drive back to Springfield last night was very quiet until we reached Springfield at about 10 p.m.--then we entered a world of Black Friday madness (but it was still Thursday!). The traffic was insane, but we finally made it home. Today we had to venture out to have a CD player installed in my car (it is awesome!!), and it was pretty scary out and about. But we did stop at Denny's for some bread pudding French toast and pumpkin pancakes--divine! We also went to the mall and Best Buy (crazy, I know) because we had some coupons to use. But we made it back home in one piece. Now it's time for some leftover turkey sandwiches--one of the best parts of Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow I have to work, but I was glad to have the day off today. I'm kind of nervous about work these days because some pretty weird stuff has been going on there. On Wednesday I was opening up the museum by myself, and I turned on the lights in our conference area. I then went down the ramp and was turning on the lights in the bathrooms when I looked back over my shoulder at the conference area . . . and I literally watched the lights turn off by themselves. It was super creepy! My co-worker Peter has been hearing footsteps upstairs, and the elevator keeps running on its own without anyone in it. I don't know what's going on, but it's giving me the creeps!

But anyway, at this time of year I enjoy reflecting on all of the many things I am grateful for. I am especially grateful for my family! Yesterday I was remembering all of the fun Thanksgivings we had when I was growing up. I am also grateful for Greg and our animal children, our friends, our nice house, our jobs, and our cars that don't break down. And I am of course grateful for the gospel in our lives! I am so very blessed. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Violet!

Thank you, Mom and Rich, for your new car name ideas! After much contemplation, I have decided to name the new car Violet. Violet wasn't Greg and Rich's favorite name idea, but since Mom and I both thought of Violet, I decided to go with that name. She kind of looks like a Violet, don't you think? As Rich suggested, she can go by "Vie" for short. Rich's name suggestion of Rally (after the rally squirrel!) was the runner-up. Greg's suggestion of Barack was not even considered :-) Here are some more pictures of Violet. You'll notice that her first accessory was a St. Louis Cardinals 2011 World Series Champions license plate frame!

Fiesta Time!

Well, after almost eight years of faithful driving, poor Stryder finally died--literally. :-( After Sunday's breakdown along Veteran's Parkway, we realized that Stryder had probably reached the end of his road. He had just been at the car repair place the week before (for about the fifth time in the last month), and we realized that it would probably be unwise to keep spending money trying to figure out what the problem was. So on Tuesday Greg tried to drive Stryder four miles to the car dealership. Stryder made it about three miles, but gave up and died in the parking lot of Sports Authority. The car-buying process took all day, so after we had purchased the new car, the guy who sold us the new car rode back to Sports Authority with us to see if Stryder would drive the last mile to the dealership. But, Stryder wouldn't even start--I know it sounds funny and that cars don't really have feelings, but it was kind of like he tried his best to get me where I needed to go, and once he saw that I had a new car to pick up where he had left off, he was finally able to just completely give up. Poor guy--I was sincerely sad to give him up. We have had a lot of good times together!

But here is my cool new car: a 2012 Ford Fiesta! As they say in the Fiesta commercials, "It's a pretty big deal." :-) Greg and I had hoped to save some money by just buying a used car, but unfortunately this is not a great time to buy a used car--the prices are crazy high, and anything "affordable" had really high miles. So for just a little bit more than a car with 80,000 miles on it, we were able to buy the new Fiesta. I really enjoyed driving it yesterday, and I am looking forward to its great gas mileage. I still haven't thought of a name . . . any ideas? It is a really cool color--it is called Gray Violet. It's mostly gray, but in certain light you can see a hint of violet. So hopefully this is the beginning of a new car journey that will last many years and many miles!

Veteran's Day Week

I should have expected that Veteran's Day would be the busiest time of year at the Illinois State Military Museum! This week has been CRAZY. In fact, today is my first day off since last Tuesday. On Wednesday and Thursday we had 450 school kids from the area come to the museum for "School Days" where we had re-enactors from all eras set up displays and talk to the kids about various wars in American history. It was insanely cold and busy, and I was starting to have flashbacks to my Lincoln Home days. We survived school days, only to have to turn around and get ready for our big Veteran's Day weekend World War I encampment.

To celebrate the Armistice that ended World War I, from which the Veteran's Day holiday was created, we held a World War I re-enactment at the museum. Our volunteers constructed a really cool World War I trench on the east side of the museum which they used for their first re-enactment back in March. Our event this weekend lasted through Saturday and Sunday, and we had a pretty good turnout. Our re-enactors are pretty hardcore--they even slept outside all weekend!

Here they are re-enacting the capture of a German machine gun nest by Illinois soldier Johannes Anderson (born in Finland!). Johannes Anderson was awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking 23 German prisoners when he captured the machine gun nest. His family donated his Medal of Honor to the museum, and it was cool because a lot of his descendants showed up for the event this weekend.


And yesterday when I was on my way home from the event, my car broke down again :-( We thought we had finally gotten it fixed--the last time it was in the shop, they discovered that one of the fuel filters was original to the car and weighed three times what it normally should. So they switched that out, and the car was running great . . . until yesterday. So, sadly, I think that my car is trying to tell me that it is worn out. I have loved this car which I named Stryder (Aragorn's nickname in the first "Lord of the Rings" movie) when I first purchased the car in early 2004. So I have had Stryder for nearly eight years, and he has taken me back and forth across the country many times. We have certainly had some adventures together! The only time (before now) that he ever broke down was one time when Mom and I were on our way from Utah to Mississippi. He broke down for a few days in Moriarty, New Mexico, but that ended up being a blessing in disguise because the next day, when Mom and I would have been driving across Texas, there were tornadoes all across Texas, including along our planned route--so really Stryder saved us by breaking down :-) So unfortunately Greg and I are going to need to go find me a new car tomorrow. At least we have tried our best to save Stryder! It's just so funny that he keeps breaking down, then we have him towed to the car repair place, and they can find nothing wrong with him. Like I say, I think he is just trying to say that he is worn out--he is 14 years old, which is pretty old in car years!

Also, I've been thinking about how cool it is that the Cardinals won the World Series. Who knew that when Greg and I got to meet David Freese at the Cardinals Caravan back in January that he would be the hero and MVP of the whole series?! I had a job interview with the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City this week, and they asked me what my hobbies are. I told them that I really like baseball, and they asked who my favorite team is. I said the Cardinals, and the lady in charge of hiring said, "Oh, I'm a huge Red Sox fan. But my dad says that the Cardinals are one of four teams that it's okay to like, so I suppose that's all right." :-) Anyway, it's fun to be a Cardinals fan.