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.

Utahalloween!

Last week I got to go home to Utah! Greg had to stay and hold down the fort here in Illinois with the animal children. I flew to Utah on Monday, October 24, which ended up being a crazy day. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and was at the Springfield airport ready to fly out on the 6:50 a.m. flight to Dallas. We boarded the plane and were headed out to the runway, when our pilots announced: "Actually we need to wait a little while before we can leave. There is fog in Dallas, and they aren't letting any planes land." Unfortunately "a little while" ended up being four hours, and I missed my flight out of Dallas (in fact I missed the next two Dallas to SLC flights). My original plan was to get to Salt Lake City at 12:05 p.m., but I didn't even leave Springfield until after 11:00 a.m. My 3:00 flight out of Dallas was delayed due to "mechanical problems," and I finally reached Salt Lake City at about 5:30 p.m. Unfortunately my flight delays caused me to miss a fun afternoon with Mom, Dad, Aunt Karalie, Lindy, and the cute Barrett kiddos at Gardner Village (but I'm glad they still had fun!), and we received news that Grandpa Dick had passed away in St. George, Utah earlier in the afternoon. As if it hadn't been a crazy enough day, when we got back to Mom and Dad's house at about 7:00 p.m., I plugged in my phone (my battery had died), and saw a text message that said, "Did you pick up the wrong bag?" Sure enough, I had picked up the wrong bag. So after dinner Mom and Dad had to take me back to the airport so I could pick up my bag and drop off the bag I had picked up. By the time we got home it was about 10:00 p.m., and we were all tired. But it was great to be with my family!

I got to stay at Mom, Dad, and Rich's cool new house! (I meant to take a picture of the house, but we were so busy that I forgot--I'll get one the next time I'm there.) Their house is in a great location, just down the hill from the Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork. The leaves at the temple were beautiful! In fact, all of the leaves in Utah were pretty--I was there at the perfect time to see the fall colors.

On Wednesday Mom and I went up to Salt Lake City so that I could meet with the director of the LDS Church History Department. I had recently applied for a job there, which I didn't get, but the director wanted to meet me, which I suppose is a good sign. So we had lunch and talked about possible future job openings. Then I met back up with Mom and we took a tour of the cool new Church History Library which is a really neat facility.

Mom and I then headed to our favorite place: Left Fork Grill (thank you for introducing us, Aunt Karalie) for some delicious pecan and blueberry slices of pie--they were divine! We then stopped to see the witches at Gardner Village since I missed out on Monday's witch outing. It was very fall-ish at Gardner Village!

On Thursday I got to have a yummy lunch with Mom and some of her friends, which was very fun. Then that evening we had a super fun movie night with the Barrett girls. Here they are anxiously waiting for their tasty El Pollo Loco dinner. We had originally planned to have a sleepover on Friday, but since we were going to be heading to St. George for Grandpa Dick's funeral over the weekend, we arranged our fun movie night instead.

Here we are ready to watch "The Little Rascals" in Mom, Dad, and Rich's AWESOME theater room! The theater room is my favorite part of their new house. It has built-in surround sound speakers, and the screen on the wall is huge. It is the perfect place for movie night. After movie night we got to watch probably the most amazing baseball game ever. It was Game #6 of the World Series, and the Cardinals were down three games to two, so if they lost, the Rangers would win the World Series. TWICE the Cardinals were one strike away from losing the World Series, but they came back both times and ended up winning the game with a home run by David Freese. It was incredible! Rich even made it home from work in time to see the winning run. It was so fun to be there with Mom, Dad, and Rich watching the game on TV--especially since the Cardinals pulled off the impossible win to force Game #7 the next evening.

On Friday Mom, Dad, Rich, and I left for St. George. We were able to stop and see Grandpa Taylor and Grandma Cathy, which was very nice. Here I am with Grandpa. I was glad to see that he is doing well! We arrived in St. George that evening and had fun watching World Series Game #7 with Grandma. She was really getting into the game. And, the Cardinals ended up winning the World Series!!!! We were SO EXCITED!

On Saturday we had Grandpa Dick's funeral which was very nice. Grandpa Dick was my step-grandpa (Grandpa Farnsworth passed away when I was three years old), but he had been a part of the family for 20 years. It was a sad occasion, but it was nice that we could be there with Grandma. We got to spend Sunday with Grandma also, and then we headed back up to American Fork on Monday. (Grandma will be moving up to American Fork this coming weekend, which will be great because now she will be much closer to the rest of the family.)

On Monday (Halloween) evening, we got to have a fun Halloween party at the Barrett's house--complete with cheddar sweet potato soup in pumpkin-shaped bread bowls! The Barrett girls looked great in their costumes--we have 80s girl Riley, Frankie Stein Camden, and Flairy (not to be confused with fairy) Sidney! (A flairy is a fairy with FLAIR instead of wings.)

And here is Mom (aka Grandma) with Adam's Family baby Ben! He was so funny with his little mustache. He wasn't quite sure about the mustache at first, but he decided it was kind of fun after a little while.

And here is the trick-or-treating crew ready to head out. Jack Sparrow there is one of their neighborhood friends.

As you can see, it was the most perfect evening for trick-or-treating. The weather was beautiful, and the mountains looked so pretty as the sun was setting (I miss mountains in Illinois!!!). After trick-or-treating we frosted some yummy Halloween cookies--it was such a fun evening. Somebody flipped the weather switch that night because it started snowing as Mom, Dad, and I headed up to the airport on Tuesday morning. I was sad to leave Utah, but I'm glad that we had such a nice time together and that I was able to be there for Grandpa Dick's funeral. Fortunately my travel day on Tuesday was much less eventful than my trip out to Utah.

While we were having fun Halloween celebrations in Utah, the Illinois contingents of the family were having fun as well. Here are the CUTE Agate kiddos in Carbondale. Eliza looked great as Hermoine Granger from "Harry Potter," and don't you think Leo, with his cute little face, makes the perfect garden gnome?


And in Springfield Greg got the animal children all dressed up for HOWLoween. Here is Lily in her Howloween tie. Big Spike got to be a squirrel again, and Little Spike can be nothing else but a football--he makes such a perfect football.


I enjoyed celebrating Halloween in Utah and seeing pictures from the Illinois festivities. I am glad that I was able to go to Utah before things get crazy at work this coming week with our Veteran's Day World War I Encampment and school visits. I have also been having some car adventures lately. My car keeps breaking down, stranding me at work or wherever, so we have it towed to the car place. But when it is at the car repair place, it works perfectly, and the mechanics can find nothing wrong with it! This has literally happened three times already. It had been at the car place while I was out in Utah, and Greg just picked it up right before I got back, but it broke down again on me as I tried to leave work on Wednesday. I picked it up from the car place again today (even though the car worked perfectly for them again, the mechanics switched out some filters), so hopefully the car will be good to go for a while. It has been an eventful last couple of weeks, and I'm glad for the time I was able to spend with my family in Utah!

Return of the Rally Squirrel

On Tuesday I returned from a trip to Utah--it was so wonderful to see my family! Unfortunately Grandpa Dick passed away while I was on my way out there on Oct. 24, but it was nice that I was able to see Grandma and be there for his funeral. Things have been so crazy since I returned (work and car troubles--more to come on these topics) that I haven't had a chance to do a blog post with my Utah pictures yet, but I will do a post a.s.a.p. within the next couple of days. One of the exciting things that happened while I was in Utah was that the Cardinals won the World Series! I still can't believe it. In honor of their great win I wanted to post this funny rally squirrel video that makes me laugh every time I see it:



The rally squirrel video is a spoof of the cool post season commercials they showed on TV. Here is the real commercial they showed featuring the Cardinals. It is awesome!