Air and Space Museum

Yesterday I went with some of my in-laws to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  I didn't find it particularly interesting, but it was still really fun just because my nephew, who is almost 3, was so excited about the whole thing.

The whole time he was saying things like, "Come on, Mommy!  Wet's go find Wawee!"  He was absolutely convinced that we were going to find Wall-E.  And even though we never did, he loved looking at the planes and cars and watching a video loop of a space shuttle taking off.

We may not have found Wall-E, but some of us older folks got to geek out a little bit when we found this:

A USS Enterprise model that was actually used in filming!  Pretty exciting.  That museum was the only thing we went and saw that day, but that's fine.  That's the nice thing about having relatives that live so close to DC--you don't feel like you have to see everything in one or two days; you can always come back later.

Our Cross-Country Dash

So last week we had to drive from Utah to Virginia in 3 1/2 days.  We couldn't leave any earlier than Thursday afternoon because Chrisser had to finish up some things for his application for the animation program, and we had to make it by Monday because we thought Chrisser was going to be starting work that day (turns out he didn't actually start until Tuesday, but whatever).

So Thursday afternoon we left Provo and made it to Rawlins, WY, where it took us quite a while to find a hotel to stay at.  We tried about 5 of them before one said he was full but had just gotten a call from the Travelodge a few blocks away saying they had just had a couple of cancellations.  So we went there and paid the whopping $140 that it cost.  The next day we headed across Nebraska (which was very windy) and stopped at Winter Quarters.  One of the sister missionaries gave us a little tour of the visitor's center and then we walked across the street and took a few pictures of the temple.

This was the only place we actually took any pictures.  Hopefully I'll do better on the way back in August.  Anyway, after that we headed back out again and drove about 1 1/2 hours into Iowa.  By then a huge storm had rolled in and it was raining so hard I couldn't really see the roads anymore.  So we pulled off in Stuart, IA to look for somewhere to stay.  Our GPS only found two places.  One of them appeared to be closed down (no lights on, several letters missing from their sign...), and the other one said they were full and that we would have to go all the way to Des Moines to find something.  So we got back in the car and prayed that we would be able to find a place safely (it was raining even harder now), and then Chrisser headed back towards I-80.  Before we actually got on the ramp, however, he said he just couldn't see the road and that he thought we should pull into the gas station across the way and wait for the storm to let up a bit.  So we pulled in among the huge semi trucks and waited a couple minutes, but the storm just got worse.  About a minute later, Chrisser looked behind us and saw this little motel tucked back in the corner of the parking lot with it's vacancy sign lit.  We were saved!  So Chrisser went in and got us the last non-smoking room (thankfully that one was only $45) and came back out to help me get our stuff.  The rain had just kept getting worse this whole time, and by the time he got back to the car the wind was so rough it was rocking the car back and forth.  We decided not to open the trunk to get our bag of clothes out, so all we had was our toiletries, my purse, and our little cooler of food.  But we grabbed that stuff and ran/pushed our way to the motel.  It was only about 30 feet, but we were completely soaked by the time we got in.  Once we were inside I said, "That wasn't even rain; that was just...water...in the sky...."  Yeah, it was crazy.  We had hung all our clothes up and they were still soaked the next morning.  But we had a bed to sleep on, so we were happy.

Saturday we headed out again.  We passed through the rest of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, and stopped at my cousin's house in Ohio for the night.  We were very glad that she and her husband live where they do.  We didn't have to go searching for a hotel that night, we got to dry our clothes from the day before, and we got to relax, visit, and play a couple games with them.  I hadn't seen them in almost 2 years and Chrisser had never met them, so I was glad for the chance to see them.

The next morning we went to church with my cousin's family and then headed out for the last leg of our journey, arriving at Chrisser's parents' place just after 6:30pm.  Just in time for Father's Day!  It was a fun trip, especially for me.  I had never been anywhere in between Utah and Virginia, having flown every other time I had gone out east.  We also had lots of yummy snacks, we listened to a couple of Chris Heimerdinger's Tennis Shoes books on tape, and I read several chapters of Phil Vischer's Me, Myself & Bob out loud.  And of course we enjoyed getting to be together 24/7 for a couple of days, especially since Chrisser had been on campus pretty much all day every day the previous couple of weeks getting his portfolio ready and working on his final for his figure drawing class.  I'm already looking forward to our trip back!

Manti Pageant Set-up

Life has been so crazy the past couple days trying to get moved out of our apartment that I almost forgot to post about last Saturday!  My bishop's sister is the secretary to the president of the Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti, so he offered up our ward to go help set up for it.  Chrisser didn't get to go because he was feverishly working on his final project for a drawing class (he spent 12 hours on campus that day), but I went.  Such a cool experience!  We left Provo at about 5:00am.  When we got there the men began loading sheets of "rock" in the warehouse onto trailers,

and us women were given nails that were probably 8 or 9 inches long, a rough map, and a tape measure and told to go start stabbing the ground to find the holes where they put the fence posts every year.  It was interesting :)

Once we had found all the holes we got to put the posts in them.  After the fence was done we hauled out all the props.  Sadly I didn't get a picture of it, but we got to have a little mini trek (aka, they needed the handcarts taken from the warehouse around to the hill, so we each grabbed one and pulled it).  That was pretty much all I did.  One thing I was glad I wasn't doing was attaching the lights to the towers:

Yeah, they're pretty tall...  They had a few of the men harnessed to each one working on that.  It was really cool, but I probably would have died.

As we were getting lunch, one of the men from Manti said that in years past, they would normally get the main scenery set up, then have lunch, then do the fence, and maybe get around to pulling out the props around rehearsal time that night.  We had all of that done by lunchtime.  Needless to say they were pretty glad we had come to help :).

And--a couple more pictures just because I have them.

Sorry my pics aren't very good quality--I took them with my phone since I didn't want to take my camera and risk losing it.

Here are some kids rehearsing.

It's Christmas!!!

So on Saturday night Chrisser was looking for something short to watch on Netflix while he packed some clothes, and ended up watching a couple Dreamworks Christmas specials.  So of course I decided that the next day would be Christmas!  We didn't quite go all out, but we put up a few decorations, watched a couple Christmas VeggieTales, and made gingerbread cookies.

We got to the last bit of dough and Chrisser said, "Just make a bar at the bottom of the sheet with it."  The bar ended up being a little too long and had to curve, so he arranged the cookies just above it to be a smiley face...