Visiting the Billy Goats Gruff

Some of our dear friends from TN relocated to Pennsylvania several years ago.  Since we were in the neighborhood (sort of), we stopped by.  We were suppose to meet them at their stake conference just outside of Gettysburg, but thanks to a very late start (not used to just having one shower and being on EDT) we just ended up meeting them at the battlefield. After a ranger-shortened picnic , (and after we toured the battlefield), we made the very scenic drive over to Shippensberg.

Ain't he a cutie.  Hard to imagine that just last year he was battling cancer.

Superstar is getting pretty big as well!

An intense discussion on the merits of various iPod apps.


It such a pleasure to meet up with old friends.

I'm Just A Bill

The new visitor's entrance to the US capitol.  Much nicer than the old tent they used to use.  The underground entrance was apparently the old metro station, no longer in use since 9/11.  They have moved many of the statues previously in the old House of Representatives chamber (Statuary Hall).  Also not so many guys standing around with M-16s like last time I visited in 2007.

Washington's Accession, the Inner Dome of the Capitol Building.

Some rather famous painting hang in the Rotunda.  You know you've made history if your image makes it here.  Almost as a high an honor is if you are allowed to lay in state here.

Only Mississippi would be so silly as to chose Jefferson Davis as one of their two allowed statues for the capitol.  The old House of Representative chamber is now called statuary hall.  But many of the statues have now been moved to the visitors center.

We took the secret tunnel from the Capitol to Congress's library...

...but couldn't get a library card to check out the Gutenberg Bible.

And I still don't understand the filing system...

50 Nifty United States

Whenever we went on long trips when I was a boy, we played the license plate game where you try to find a license plate on the passing cars from every state.  Going to D.C. you would think we would have a pretty good chance of bagging them all.

Here are the plates we got.  Can you name the ones we missed?  Seems like a BCS problem of representation as well.

Tennessee
New jersey 
Florida 
Texas 
Michigan
Mississippi
South Carolina
Kentucky
Minnesota
Oklahoma
Georgia 
New mexico
Maine
Missouri
Arkansas
Wisconsin
Nebraska
Illinois
Virginia
California
New York
Iowa
Louisiana
Alabama
MassachusettsIndiana
Nebraska
Ohio
Maryland
Pennsylvania
Connticut
Dc
North carolina
Louisana
West Virginia
Arizona
Oregon
New Hampshire
Washington

Baby Blessing and the Nobel Prize

So for those of you who follow these sort of things, you may know that the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Robert Edwards for developing in vitro fertilization.  
Which seems especially appropriate this year because my little sister and her husband, who have been trying to have a baby for ten years, were finally able to have a beautiful little girl thanks to their third try at IVF.
So we packed the girls up in the minivan and made a whirlwind trip up to Indy to participate in the baby blessing this Sunday.

A Sad Day

The sister in our ward who AM visiting teaches died this morning of cancer.

She was one of those women who just loved people.  Their home was the place to be for many, many ward events, with its huge fields and mountain, the large party shed, the pool, and the great food.  And everywhere Debbie smiling and chatting and making everyone feel welcome.  She was a young woman advisor for many years until she needed to be released because she just was too ill , and I am sad that JA will never get to have her as a teacher.

It hard to imagine the ward without her.

Many of her friends, sisters in the ward, young women and children in the ward, contributed squares to a quilt that AM had the opportunity to do the final assembly on, staying up late all last week to try to finish.  They got to give it to her yesterday.  So glad they did, although I am sad that she was too far gone to get to read all the words of love that were written on it.

The words of a poem by John Donne come to mind:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. 

In which Pooh Bear gets an iPod

I have finally figured out what I want to be...an Amish alpha geek! 

By which I mean being an early adopter of old technology.

The truth is, I'm pretty skeptical of bells and whistles technology and of people who don't seem to have anything better to do with their life that being a gearhead or surfing the web for the newest you-tube sensation or such.

 So it may surprise some of you that I bought a iPod Touch this week.

But really, I've been looking for a smart phone that didn't require a calling plan for a long time to replace my PDA that stopped working about 4 years ago.  And the iPod Touch pretty much seems to be that.  Sure I can't make calls unless I have wireless, but mostly the value of the smart phone is the opportunity to keep a notepad  for those flashes of inspiration, a calendar to keep track of everything that I forget I have committed to do, and and reading material handy for bus rides and waiting for buses, and long breaks at soccer games, etc....  And the iPod does all that plus let's me visually chat with my younger sister and see her new baby, and let's me listen to the few songs I have downloaded over the years.

But the really cool thing that I finally adopted, that doesn't require an iPod, but actually works really great if you have it, is Pandora.  Yes, the planet with blue people....no, the online radio station that groups similar types of music all together so that you can listen to all your old favorites without having to buy them on iTunes. JP has been using it for a long time, but I didn't really figure out how it worked until he suggested I put it on my iPod.

 Its awesome... I admit staying up wayyyyy too late last night going thru memory lane....

Labor Day-Southern BBQ

We had one of those pleasant surprises kind of days for Labor Day weekend.

We had gone to the regional waterpark Saturday, for what we figured would pretty much be our Labor Day holiday, because we really had no plans, had not even invited anyone to come to our house.


And then we went to church and some of our old friends who now live in Georgia had come up to the ward to visit.  Will give this  family the code name "Can't Get it to Move".  They had come back to visit on a whim, more or less.  So we invited them to our house, only they had already promised their kids they were going to stay in a hotel (with all the exciting things that kids love about hotels).  So we invited them to come swimming and to have a BBQ Labor Day afternoon.  They accepted.

At church, two of the wives who had been great friends, but now lived in Texas and North Carolina had also come up to visit TN for the holiday as well.  So we invited them too.  We will also give the code name "Ouch" and "Walk in Water".

Then our some of other friends code name A-A convinced our friends down in Alabama (code name: sharp teeth) that they couldn't pass up this chance for a reunion so they drove up in the morning, and suddenly we had a remarkable labor day holiday brewing.  We invited a few other families who knew the Georgia family well.

After a short swim with all the kids that seemed to trigger the ire of one of the other homeowners at the pool (But we checked the rules later, and I think we were within the rules),  we got to inaugurate the use of our grill.  For me, it was a profoundly gratifying experience to be together again with so many of the families that had spent great summer nights in our old back yard.

As it also shows you just how Southern we are now.  Friends from 'Bama, Texas, Georgia, Carolina all fixin' to get together for some 'Q.

Hopefully AM or JP will add some pictures of all the kids.