Baseball has Begun

We are excited that baseball season has arrived again! It will be hard to ever top last season for the St. Louis Cardinals, but they are looking pretty good so far, even without Albert Pujols. Greg and I went to our first baseball game last night--not a Cardinals game, but we went to a Peoria Chiefs vs. Quad Cities River Bandits game up in Peoria, which was fun because those two teams are the single A minor league teams for the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Bandits (Cardinals team) won the game, so we were happy even though we like the Chiefs too. It was cold outside, but it felt good to be at a baseball game again.

I took this picture of Lily this morning while I was doing some arm workouts with my green resistance band. She is so funny--her favorite toy is a bright green shoelace, and often when I have my resistance band of the same color out, she goes and gets her shoelace and brings it downstairs, then plops down right by me. Then we workout together (actually she usually just lays there and watches me). She's a silly kitty.

I added two more questions to my Titanic trivia, for an even ten:

9. How many women traveling second class on the Titanic went down with the ship?
a. 0
b. 13
c. 25
d. 80

10. Which of these famous Americans was supposed to be on the Titanic, but left Europe early on a different ship?
a. Milton Hershey
b. Theodore Roosevelt
c. Alfred Vanderbilt
d. Andrew Carnegie

Answers to all of the trivia questions will be coming soon . . .

Titanic Week!

Today is an exciting day--100 years ago today the Titanic left Southampton for New York City! Interestingly, there is this ship, the Balmoral, that is currently trying to retrace the voyage of the Titanic. There are over 1,000 people on board, and many of them are descendants of Titanic survivors. They had planned to hold a memorial at the site of the Titanic sinking on Sunday, April 15, but they had to turn back today because someone onboard is having heart problems, and they need to get back to within helicopter range of Ireland. Does anyone else think that retracing the Titanic voyage sounds like a bad idea? It sounds like they're already encountering some bad omens. I think they're planning to still go ahead with the voyage, so hopefully no other bad things will happen!

Plans for our Titanic party are coming along well. I think Greg and I have the menu figured out, and we're going shopping for supplies on Thursday. Mom had the great idea that I should do a Titanic trivia game with everyone at the party--I love the idea! So today I was getting some questions together. Here they are so you can test your Titanic knowledge:

1. The “R.M.S.” in R.M.S. Titanic stands for:
a. Royal Merchant Ship
b. Royal Mail Ship
c. Royal Maritime Ship
d. Royal Majesty’s Ship

2. The Titanic was built in:
a. Queenstown, Ireland
b. Southampton, England
c. Belfast, Ireland
d. Cherbourg, France

3. The wealthiest person on the Titanic was:
a. Benjamin Guggenheim
b. Isidor Straus
c. Margaret Brown
d. John Jacob Astor IV

4. The ship that rescued the Titanic survivors was the:
a. Californian
b. Mackay-Bennett
c. Carpathia
d. Olympic

5. How many dogs were traveling aboard the Titanic?
a. 12
b. 50
c. 2
d. 37

6. The last Titanic survivor died in what year?
a. 1984
b. 2009
c. 2000
d. 1997

7. Who was the highest ranking Titanic officer to survive?
a. Captain Edward J. Smith
b. First Officer William M. Murdoch
c. Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller
d. Third Officer Herbert J. Pitman

8. What is traditionally thought to have been the last song played on the Titanic?
a. “Nearer my God to Thee”
b. “Song D’Automne”
c. “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”
d. “Asleep in the Deep”

The answers to the questions, along with some other interesting Titanic facts will come in the near future!

In other news, you may have heard that Rick Santorum finally called it quits today in the nomination race with Mitt Romney. My theory is that he didn't want to look even sillier than he already does by losing in his home state of Pennsylvania. The interesting thing is that he made his announcement today from Gettysburg, which is funny because Gettysburg is where Robert E. Lee was defeated by the Union Army in 1863, and then Lee surrendered on APRIL 9, 1865, to General Grant in Virginia. So the only thing that would have made this whole thing better would have been if Santorum had surrendered yesterday on April 9, right? That would have been great. Well, I think I am taking this historical connections thing a little too far--but I am just so excited that it is Titanic centennial week. Those who know how obsessed with the Titanic I was when I was younger will understand :)

Happy Birthday/Easter!

Happy Easter! Today is a special Easter because it is also my Grandma Farnsworth-Thompson's birthday. Happy Birthday, Grandma!!! I wish that I could be there in Utah for her party this afternoon, but I'm sure everyone will have a wonderful time. I love this picture of Grandma--isn't she beautiful? I also didn't have a chance to write about my niece Eliza's birthday back at the end of March, which was the same day as my good friend Melissa's birthday--I hope that they both had wonderful birthdays! I'm glad that we could go to church today to be reminded of the reason for the Easter holiday. I hope everyone has a Happy Easter today!

Shiloh 150

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. This is a picture of the sunrise at Shiloh National Cemetery this morning--I wish I had been the photographer! :) Some of my lucky friends are at Shiloh today participating in a two-day battle re-enactment. The Battle of Shiloh began when Confederate forces under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston attacked Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army. The Union ended up winning the battle, but both sides suffered heavy losses--3,482 men were killed and 16,420 men were wounded.

One of the most significant losses for the Confederacy was when Albert Sidney Johnston was killed on April 6, 1862. At the time he was the top Confederate general. Here is his monument at Shiloh in the general vicinity of where he was killed. You might recognize his name from Mormon/Utah history--he is the one that President Buchanan sent out to the Utah Territory in 1857 to quell the "Mormon Rebellion." Since there was no rebellion, Johnston and his troops ended up just kind of hanging out for a couple of years at Camp Floyd in Utah, where I used to work! If Camp Floyd had hired me when I applied for a job there last year, we would have had some Johnston programs there today to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his death. But since they didn't hire me, they didn't get any of my good ideas :)

I took this picture and the one of Johnston's monument when Mom and I visited Shiloh National Military Park in August 2007 on our way from Natchez up to Charleston, Illinois when Mom was helping me move to graduate school. We spent the night at the General's Quarters Inn B&B in Corinth, MS, and then went to Shiloh the next morning. I'm so glad we stopped there! I was a little sad because I was missing my Natchez friends, but Mom and I had a nice visit to the battlefield. It is hard to comprehend everything that happened there!

Today, in commemoration of the anniversary of the battle, Curator Bill (the guy in the middle), Intern Joe, and I set up a new exhibit featuring some of our coolest Shiloh artifacts at the museum. Our boss Stew wanted to take a picture of us with the display. The hat on the left belonged to an Illinois soldier who was injured at Shiloh and then died one month later from complications with his wounds. Shiloh was a very costly battle, and I am grateful to all of the soldiers who gave their lives. I always tell the kids who come visit the museum that the United States emerged from the Civil War as a stronger, more unified country. I'm glad for days like today when we can be especially mindful of the sacrifices made by people in the past.

Abe Lincoln Chair

This was one of my favorite weekends of the year: General Conference!! Every six months, all of our Church leaders speak about various topics over a two-day period from Salt Lake City, and it is broadcast all over the world on TV and the Internet. It is always uplifting and enlightening to hear their words. I also enjoyed an outing with my friends Laura and Kris and their kids yesterday evening while our husbands were at the Priesthood session of Conference. We met up at the park and had dinner and played all evening. It made me not feel quite so homesick (I always get homesick during General Conference--especially missing the fun girls' nights out with my mom and sisters). I am grateful for the technology that allows us to listen to General Conference, no matter where we live!

Greg and I have an interesting new piece of furniture--an antique toilet! But it is not just any old antique toilet. This one was possibly used by Abraham Lincoln! It goes well with my Abraham Lincoln hair--now I have an Abraham Lincoln chair :) This antique toilet was stored in the attic of the funeral home where Greg works in Athens, and when he and his boss were working up there the other day, his boss told Greg that he could have the chair if he wanted it. Who are we to turn down an antique toilet with an Abraham Lincoln connection? As the story goes, the chair used to be in the old Athens post office/general store constructed by Colonel Matthew Rogers in 1832 (this building, now the "Long Nine" Museum, is located just down the street from the funeral home). Abraham Lincoln used to borrow books from Colonel Rogers, and he would sometimes stop at the building to pick up mail when he was the post master in New Salem. Later in the 1830s, Lincoln may have met in the post office/general store building with eight other men to decide how they could get the state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield. This group became known as the "Long Nine" because they were all over six feet tall. Supposedly their meeting lasted for hours and hours--so you would assume that sometime during their meeting Lincoln would have had to use the bathroom!--but I can't find any documentation that this meeting ever really took place. But I do know that Lincoln was for sure at that building on August 3, 1837 for a banquet to celebrate his and the other Long Nines' efforts in getting the capital moved to Springfield. So the potty chair came from that old post office/general store building and might have been used by Abraham Lincoln. It's a good conversation piece anyway, right? It was in pretty rough shape when Greg and I brought it home, but I gave it a very thorough (although gentle) cleaning. It's pretty cool with all of the hand painted touches. It is just missing the chamber pot, which would go inside the box on the bottom of the chair. But maybe we can find one at an antique store sometime. So if you come over to our house, you can now sit where Lincoln might have sat!