Happy Mother's Day!

Today was a wonderful Mother's Day!! It was a special treat for me to get to spend Mother's Day with my mom. As I mentioned yesterday, she is the BEST MOM in the whole world!!! We had a nice time at church today and got to see Eliza and the rest of the Primary kids sing some special Mother's Day songs, and they had delicious treats in Relief Society. The Barretts came over for dinner this evening, and the kids all had fun running around and playing together. Here is Mom (aka Grandma) with her two little grandguys Ben and Leo.

And, of course with it being Mother's Day, Mom and I had to take a self-portrait. A lot of people tell me that I look like my mom--and that's the best compliment they could give me!

After dinner and dessert we rounded up all of the kiddos and got a cute Mother's Day portrait with Grandpa and Grandma. Now that's a good-looking crowd!

And here's another good-looking crowd: Mom and Dad with all of their kids. It's nice that we can all be here together. If only we had Greg and Joel here, we could have an entire family picture! Maybe one of these days . . . . But it was a wonderful day today and I am so grateful for my mom and my grandmas. Even though Grandma Taylor passed away years ago, I still have fond memories of her, and she has always been a wonderful example to me. We are also glad to have Grandma Cathy in the family now too! And, I know that my mom is such a great mom because of her mom, Grandma F.T. I have so many special moms to look up to and try to be like. Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Take Me Out to the BYU Game

It's been a fun past few days here in Utah! The weather has been perfect, and I snapped this picture of Mt. Timpanogos when we were on our way to take Rich to work the other day. Isn't it beautiful with the snow?!! It did snow in the valley the first Saturday I was here, which wasn't great, but it's great that Timp still looks so pretty all covered in white. For the past few days, we've been getting Mom and Dad's house ready to sell (they actually did all the work getting it ready already, but we were just spiffing it up for the realtor pictures). If you are in the market to buy a really, really nice house in Orem, you can check it out here--the new pictures will be posted soon. They are moving to a really, really nice condo in American Fork, so it's all quite exciting.

Yesterday evening Dad took me to a BYU baseball game--it was SO MUCH FUN!!! It was the most perfect evening for baseball, and as you can see when you click on this image of the baseball field, it is the most ideal location in which to play baseball that you can possibly imagine.

In the crowd at the game was Vern Law, former pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cy Young Award winner in 1960 when the Pirates won the World Series. He has to be one of the most famous Mormon Major League players! He is the father of Vance Law, the BYU baseball coach. I decided to be brave and ask Vern Law to sign a baseball for me. He was very nice and ended up writing a lot on my baseball. It says: "Pirates 1950-1967 Vern Law Cy Young 1960." What a keepsake!

BYU did really well and ended up beating Seattle University 13-3. BYU just kept hitting home runs! The only thing was, when a BYU player hit a homerun, they would play a tornado siren over the loud speakers--that sound kind of makes my nerves tense up. I guess you can get away with using a tornado siren at a baseball game in the West--it could cause big problems in the Midwest :-) The best part of the game was just spending time with Dad!

Tomorrow is Mother's Day!!!! Happy Mother's Day to all mothers! I know I am a bit biased, but I have the BEST mom in the whole world. I am so grateful for all that she does for our family and for the wonderful example she is of everything that is good. She and I have always been best friends :-) Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Utah: Week 1!

It has been a fun, exciting, and eventful first week here in Utah! The excitement began at the Chicago airport last Tuesday when I walked past Mike Wolfe from the TV show "American Pickers." I had some time to kill, so after buying a soda, I decided to go see if I could find him, and I passed him again! Only this time he was walking really fast. So I inconspicuously turned and followed him. He stopped for a moment at a ticket counter, and then he began sprinting through the airport. He either knew I was following him, or he was in the wrong terminal for his flight. :-)

Once in Utah, I enjoyed spending time with my family--especially going to visit Grandpa Taylor on Wednesday for his 93rd birthday! He is such a wonderful example to all of us who are lucky enough to be in his family. We had a very nice visit with him. On Thursday and Friday I spent time helping my sister Sarah with her cute kiddos Eliza and Leo. Sarah is here for the summer teaching a class at BYU, and her husband Joel is teaching a class out at SIU in Illinois--so he'll be here as soon as his spring class ends. Mom and I also spent time on Thursday and Friday gathering up a cute, professional outfit for my second interview with BYU which took place on Monday. I think it went well, but I won't hear anything until next week--so I'm anxious!

On Saturday, Camden was in a GREAT play! She is a wonderful actress. You can see here here, front-and-center, in the light green dress as one of Cinderella's stepsisters. The play was "Alice in Wonderland," but it had some other fairytale stories mixed into the main storyline. It was quite the intriguing play, and Camden was the best actress on stage!


Then on Sunday we had a fun dinner here with all of the kiddos--the Agates and the Barretts. Here is Mr. Ben, who was just a new baby the last time I saw him, all grown-up with Grandpa! I have such cute nieces and nephews.


Speaking of cute nieces and nephews, today was Leo's big #1 birthday!

Now here's a guy who is happy to be one. He loved all of his presents. Can you guess who gave him the St. Louis Cardinals clothes? :-) He had his main party before I got out here, when his dad was here before heading back to SIU, but we did have some fun celebrations tonight with pizza and cupcakes. It has been so much fun out here so far, and I am looking forward to two more weeks!

The Conspirator

Yesterday I got to go see the movie "The Conspirator" with my good friend Melissa. The sad thing was that yesterday was Melissa's last day here in the Springfield area, as she is headed off to Richmond, VA for a new job. I'm excited for her, but really sad to see her go. So we had one last hurrah yesterday and went to see the movie. It was interesting, and, as a movie it was very good--but as a history lesson it wasn't so good. Melissa and I cracked up at the end of the movie because there seemed to be a lot of people in the theater who were really shocked when Mary Surratt was hung. That's kind of like being surprised that the ship sinks at the end of "Titanic." The movie really does try very hard to make you think that Mary Surratt was innocent and treated unfairly, but it didn't change how I feel about her. The way I see it, there is no way that she didn't know what J.W. Booth and the others were meeting about at her house--in fact, she was probably in on the planning. But we could tell that pretty much everyone in the theater was falling for the movie--there were tears for Mary Surratt and angry noises for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (not my favorite person, but not THE devil as the movie makes him out to be). One thing that the movie did get right was that John Surratt, Mary's son, was a big jerk. I think that if John had turned himself in, his mom would not have been hung, but he just went into hiding until after his mom was executed and then he fled the country. While his mom was far from innocent, I think that John was more a part of the assassination conspiracy than she was. But anyway, it was just fun to see a history-based movie at the theater--especially one involving Lincoln!

Yesterday evening we all went out and had a fun farewell dinner for Melissa. The food and the company were both great, but it was sad to say goodbye. I hope that she has a great experience in Richmond! On Tuesday I am heading out to Utah for a three week trip to help Mom and Dad get ready to move and to help Sarah take care of her kiddos while she's teaching a class at BYU. I am so excited to see everyone, but sad to leave Greg behind. Luckily he has the animal children here to keep him company. Happy Easter everyone!

Kalamazoo and Wrigley Too

Whoa, it has been a CRAZY week, and the week isn't even over yet!!! It all began on Monday when Greg and I took off for Michigan . . . to pick up a body in Detroit. Luckily we were able to make it a two-day trip, so it didn't seem quite as long as if we'd tried to fit it into one day. On Monday we drove to Kalamazoo, Michigan where we spent the night. Then on Tuesday morning we headed for Detroit. My friend Catherine (she was one of my classmates at EIU) works at The Henry Ford museum in Detroit, and she was kind enough to get us some last-minute tickets so that I could go see the chair from Ford's Theater in which Abraham Lincoln was killed! I know it's kind of morbid, but I have always wanted to see that dang chair. It was everything I had hoped it would be. Catherine told us that what appear to be blood stains are actually "hair oil" stains from all of the people who have sat in this chair over the years, but there are a few small blood stains on the chair.

The Henry Ford, founded, of course, by Henry Ford, has an amazing collection of historical artifacts. They even have the limousine in which JFK was assassinated (there seems to be a Presidential assassination theme going on here). They actually have quite a few Presidential limousines.

But they do have other things too, like this HUGE Allegheny Locomotive that weighs 600 tons and is their most-photographed object. Greg and I wondered how on earth they got that thing into the building. Catherine said there were tracks built into the floor so it could just roll in.

And here are Catherine and me in front of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. Catherine has a really cool job and it was so fun to see her! She was one of my best friends in the Historical Administration program at EIU. After visiting Catherine, Greg and I drove through the ghetto of Detroit (scary!!!) to go pick up a body at a funeral home there. The funeral home was really nice, but the surrounding area, not so much. We put the casket into the back of the van and headed for home.

As we neared Lincoln, Illinois on Tuesday afternoon, the skies started to get dark, and we started hearing severe thunderstorm warnings on the radio. I whipped out my trusty weather radio (which goes everywhere with me once tornado season hits), and we started hearing about ping pong ball sized hail near Elkhart, Illinois. We were headed right for Elkhart! Thankfully we avoided the hail, but boy was it raining! There was so much water--it was hard to see anything except for the crazy lightning all around us. It's a good thing that Greg was driving because I would have had a nervous breakdown if I had been at the wheel. We finally got to our exit at Williamsville, and right after we got off of the Interstate, it looked like someone took a knife and cut a slit in the clouds--you can kind of see it in this picture. The sun started to poke through right in front of us, but on either side of us, the sky was GREEN, and there were crazy storms raging to the north and the south of us. It was kind of spooky to be driving right between two storm cells. We got the body safely to the funeral home and then we made it safely home. Later that evening there were tornado warnings down in Carbondale where Sarah and Joel live, but thankfully they were safe!

As Greg and I were driving through the rain earlier in the evening, we kept hearing about tornado warnings near Girard, Illinois (about 20 miles south of Springfield). I forgot that my friend Chet and his family live in Girard! He is the site manager of the Dana-Thomas House, and Linda and I have been working with him a lot over the past few weeks. Here is a picture of his house which was hammered by the tornado. Luckily he and his wife were safe, but they were afraid that their puppy Patches had been killed in the storm. They looked for him all night after the tornado and couldn't find him, but then the next morning he showed up at home! Even though Chet's house was basically destroyed, he was just happy that he and his family (and Patches!) had made it through the storm. What a scary thing though! We are supposed to have more bad weather tomorrow :-(

After our Detroit and storm adventures, Greg and I went up to Chicago yesterday with his boss, Rich, to a Chicago Cubs baseball game at historic Wrigley Field! Greg and I have been wanting to go to a game in Chicago, just for the experience, and Rich is a big Cubs fan, so we had a good time going together. Unfortunately it was FREEZING, but we were bundled up. Wrigley Field is the second-oldest Major League ballpark still in use, and it was a lot of fun to see a game there.

Before the game, I kind of snuck down to the field by where the visiting San Diego Padres were warming up, and I got an autograph from Luke Gregerson, a pitcher who used to play for the St. Louis Cardinals! He was really nice, and we even got to see him play later in the game. The game went to extra innings (usually a good thing, but we were SO COLD), and it ended up being Luke Gregerson who pitched the ball that one of the Cubs players hit into the stands to win the game! We felt bad for Luke, but we were happy that the Cubs won--and also happy to be able leave and get into the warm car :-) It was a fun adventure to attend a Cubs game, but Greg and I think that one Cubs game is probably good for us. We like the Cubs, but not the Cubs fans (except for Rich). There were a lot of really obnoxious people there, and at one point someone on the upper deck spit over the railing--and it landed on my coat (which has since been washed)! But other than the annoying fans, it was a lot of fun. It made us appreciate St. Louis Cardinals fans! :-)

Today I had a job interview over the phone with BYU. Please keep your fingers crossed for me--it is a really great job!!!!