Toy Story 3

We went to see Toy Story 3 on Friday evening... We got a coupon book for local stuff here, which has really saved us a lot in admissions to different stuff... anyway, I wanted to see Toy Story 3 and we had coupons for 2-for-1 movie passes to three different theatres... Option number 1 was about 25 minutes away and started either too early for us to get there after Jack got off work or too late for Jackson. Options two and three were both good show times and were about 15 minutes away, but were in more of the downtown Akron area, which is a little sketchy. We figured we'd give it a try, so we put the address in the GPS and headed that way, stopping at McDonalds near the first theatre. It was an interesting part of town...not exactly the nicest neighborhood...but we went to take a look anyway. The area all around it was kind of sketchy---a guy with dreads was sitting at a little stand selling hot dogs and was rolling something to smoke...I'm not quite sure what it was. I didn't stop to ask. The theatre itself was decent though... We walked in to the ticket counter and the girl gave us our tickets and told us the previews were just starting, but didn't tell us which theatre or anything, so we walked through the doors and there it was; it was just one big theatre with a snack bar/restaurant and tables at the back where you could sit to eat and still watch the show. Weird. Anyway, we felt our way to our seats in the almost totally dark theatre and enjoyed the show.
We haven't taken Jackson to a movie in a theatre in a long time so I wasn't sure how he'd do, but figured this movie should keep his attention. It did indeed :) He loved it, and recognized the characters on our Corn Pops box when we got home. It really was a very cute movie; my favorite of the Toy Story movies for sure. So I'd totally recommend it to everyone!

Wow, that was a boring post, and was way too long. Sorry.

Amish Country

These pictures are taken with our new camera that we just got this past weekend. I'm not sure that I love it... these pictures are alright, but they're the best (as far as quality goes) of what we got, and they're not great. Best Buy has a dumb 15% "restocking fee" for cameras so we wouldn't get all of our money back if we returned it. Frustrating, and I'm not sure what to do.

On Saturday we took a drive to Berlin, OH, to the Amish area. It was kind of cool to see horse & buggy driving alongside (or being passed by, rather) modern cars and trucks. I loved seeing the kids' heads poking out the back window to watch the cars as we drove along.

We started our tour at Behalt, the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Berlin. We went on a tour of a 256-foot cyclorama, or mural in the round, depicting the history of the Amish & Mennonite people. That was very interesting and it was nice to be able to start our day of touring with some background on the people.

We also went on a tour of South Bunker Hill school, an Amish one-room school house that was over 150 years old (I think). While this building is no longer used, they still use the one-room schoolhouse model and have everyone up to 8th grade (which is as far as they go to school) in one room.
In front of an old Conestoga wagon...

Jackson got to try out the old shoe repair bench.

Next we went to Yoder's Amish Home. We went on a tour of two different Amish homes (not currently lived in). Our tour guide was a girl who was probably about 16; her parents used to be Amish but converted to be Mennonites

How do they look? A little too clean-shaven, I think.




Jackson wasn't very interested in the house tours, but he did find the toys and sat down right in the middle of the group to play with them.
Jackson liked seeing all the animals in the barn. He'd say their name and make their sound as he went around. We got to pet and hold most of the animals in there.
Five-day old baby bunnies. Who knew they were so small?
There were some very pretty gardens all around the home & gift shop area.


Don't tell them, but tried to take pictures of people in their buggies as we drove by.



After a long day of being contained and dragged around, Jackson had fun playing on the playground at the Yoder home.



It was a fun little trip and was one of the things on our list to see & do while we were here. Check!

Jackson Boy

I'm way overdue for a Jackson update. These pictures aren't really related to the post, but they're cute and I haven't posted them yet (going back to April) and a post needs pictures. I'm lacking recent pictures because our camera died a few weeks ago and we just barely got a new one this past weekend. So I'll do better now.

This kid is just so much fun these days. He is talking so much---I couldn't even begin to list out the words he knows any more. He surprises me every day when he uses new words that I didn't know he knew. He's copying a lot of what we say, too. (ex. The other day I called Jack to let him know I was outside his work to pick him up and I said, "Come on dooownnnn!" to him on the phone. For the next 5 minutes Jackson repeated that over and over.) He'll string together 3 or 4 words in a phrase, though it is usually 2 or 3 words. He pronounces his l's and t's like y's but other than that (yellow and little sound the same), I think his pronunciation is pretty good. It is so much fun to be able to talk to him and to have him talk back. He's also really good at following directions...or at saying no, depending on the mood.Jackson has started repeating after us to say prayers...it's pretty cute. He's also catching on to the eyes closed/head bowed part of praying, not just the arms folded. He rarely gets it all down at once though. Last week I was peeking at him during prayer... he had his eyes closed and head bowed and was reaching & feeling around to find food on his plate to eat. We're making progress, I guess :)
Eating is still hit and miss with this kid. It just depends on the day. I had him weighed when we were in Utah a week and a half ago and he'd lost 3 ounces since his last weigh-in a month before that, but I really wasn't surprised because he didn't eat much at all for the whole week prior to that when we were at the Shirts family reunion (post on that coming soon).
He loves playing with cars and animals. He spends hours a day lining them up on the floor, trying to make the animals ride on the cars, stacking them up, and driving them around. We didn't bring many toys with us, but he's certainly gotten a lot of play time out of what we brought!Jackson loves to draw and color. He usually wants one of us to draw with him...meaning he makes requests and we draw it. The requests always include a "choo train" and he makes sure you get all the essential parts. Sometimes I'm not fast enough. ...wheels, star, train cars, the line connecting the cars, a window on the engine, a guy driving the engine, a hat on the guy driving the engine, etc. Other things we draw frequently: stars, moons, suns, cars, trucks, houses, keys, planes, clouds.We have (ok, Jack has) taken Jackson swimming a couple of times and he's loved it. I had to hide his pool floaty thing so he wouldn't keep asking to go all the time. I did think we'd go more often than we have so far, but it isn't warm enough in the mornings, Jackson naps almost all afternoon, then it is time to make dinner, then Jack gets home and we eat dinner, and then we usually end up doing something else, and then it's Jackson's bedtime. We'll have to go a couple more times at least. Maybe some day I'll work up the courage (and it'll be hot enough that I give in) and take Jackson by myself.
Jackson does pretty well with naps these days, but I'm not sure that we're on a routine that I can maintain once there is another little one in my life. Right now, Jackson goes down after lunch, usually around 1:00. We sit on the rocking chair in his room for about 10 minutes until he falls asleep, then I lay him down in his bed...he'll sleep there for anywhere from an hour to two, then when he wakes up I get him and take him to my bed where we both nap for a while longer. His total nap time is usually anywhere from 2 to 3 1/2 hours.He's showing interest in using the potty again. He'd sit on his little potty whenever he felt like it before we moved, but we didn't bring his potty with us and until this past week he'd sort of forgotten about using the potty I think. We're not really in potty-training mode yet, and I don't think we really will be for a little bit longer, but we're just kind of going with the flow (get it?) for now. He asks to sit on the potty a couple of times a day but won't actually sit on it unless daddy puts him there. And we usually have to all take turns sitting on it before he will. But he did pee in the potty for the first time the other day! I'm not really counting on it being a regular thing though. We'll most likely have two in diapers at the same time.Jackson loves books. He brings me books all day long and says, "weed sto-ee? weed book?" How can you turn that down?? So we read a lot. I need to get a library card here...I think I have memorized the 15 or so books that we brought with us.
He learned how to do somersaults and loves to do them all over the place. Only problem is that he doesn't quite get the concept of making sure he won't crash into a wall, table, toys, etc.

We sure love this little guy!

City of Joseph

We figured today is the perfect time to post about our stops in Nauvoo and Carthage on the way to Ohio. We intended to post long ago, but typing this up on the date of Joseph and Hyrum's martyrdom does seem fitting.

We only spent one day in Nauvoo--one very rainy day--and the next morning in Carthage. Of course, we didn't get to see everything, and didn't have the chance to go into the Temple, but it was great to see what we had time for. Here's a sampling:

• Nauvoo Temple--Jackson does amazingly well at identifying Temples. He says this word all the time now.



• Nauvoo Visitor's Center
• Jonathan Browning Home and Gun Shop--really cool. Makes me want to buy some Browning guns :)
• Lyon Drug and Variety Store--we were able to Sister April Longhurst here. We've been very fortunate to have been living in her beautiful home for the past 16 months in Orem.


• Family Living Center--saw rope making, candle making, wool and flax spinning, and lots of other things.


• While Jackson and Natalie napped in the car, I spent an hour in the Land Records Office and found the approximate locations of where Peter Shirts and Edwin Rushton lived--along with a few others of my ancestors who lived in Nauvoo. The next photo is on the land very near the Temple Quarry where Peter Shirts owned a lime quarry. Family records show he sold lime to the Rushtons to build a home. It's fun to think of my parents' separate families having interactions that far back.


• Nauvoo Temple Quarry




• Community of Christ Church visitor's center--we went on a tour with them of the Smith Homestead, Smith Family Cemetery, and the Mansion House.
• quick dinner at an overpriced buffet--good, but no Chuck-a-Rama.
• Cultural Hall--where we saw RENDEZVOUS, a play put on by the senior missionaries. It was a hoot. At least, what I saw of it was good. We took turns taking Jackson outside. He was done for the day at that point.
• Old Burial Grounds--unfortunately, most of the graves are unmarked. The names of most of those buried here are known, but not the locations of the specific graves. It was dark and a little rainy when we went. This is the spot where one of Jackson's soothers now rests in peace.

We loved our morning in Carthage. This is a special and sacred place for us. We're very glad we got to go. I like to think that if Jackson had been playing like this near Brother Joseph, the Prophet would have scooped him up and thrown him in the air and caught him.

Yuck.

Our apartment is decent...it isn't fancy by any means, but it's fine...if you like bugs. We find spiders in the corners and hanging from the ceiling, and have the occasional ant scurry across the floor or wall. I can handle that. What I am less thrilled about is this:Earwigs. Gross. On the floor or wall, it's gross but I'll just squish it, whatever. But these little guys and I have had two encounters that are just about more than I care to deal with.
Episode #2: Jackson and I are sitting at the table eating breakfast when nasty earwig crawls across his highchair. Yep, nasty.
Even nastier?
Episode #1: I keep a water bottle with a straw next to my bed because I always get thirsty at night. The other night I took a drink before going to bed and then didn't drink at all during the night... Come morning time I pick up the water bottle and take a gulp and there's something in my mouth... I spit it out. Yep. An earwig. I was a little traumatized for a while after that one.

On the bright side, we've got fireflies too. Not in the house though.

Lesson Learned.

Lesson learned: Either unplug the mixer or remove the beaters from the mixer before using your finger to clean them off. At bare minimum, don't hold the mixer with your thumb over the "on" switch while using the other hand to scrape the beaters.

A small part of my Father's Day Sacrament Mtg talk

Happy Fathers' Day to our Dads and Grandpas! We love you and honor you today. And maybe tomorrow, too.

I'll spare you from my lengthy Sacrament Meeting talk today. But I did want to share one of the stories I used, as told by President George Albert Smith, who was named after his grandfather. George A. Smith was a first cousin of the Prophet Joseph, and was called as an apostle at the young age of 22.

“A number of years ago I was seriously ill. In fact, I think everyone gave me up but my wife. With my family I went to St. George, Utah, to see if it would improve my health…I became so weak as to be scarcely able to move. It was a slow and exhausting effort for me even to turn over in bed.

“One day, under these conditions, I lost consciousness of my surroundings and thought I had passed to the Other Side. I found myself standing with my back to a large and beautiful lake, facing a great forest of trees. There was no one in sight, and there was no boat upon the lake or any other visible means to indicate how I might have arrived there. I realized, or seemed to realize, that I had finished my work in mortality and had gone home. I began to look around, to see if I could not find someone. There was no evidence of anyone’s living there, just those great, beautiful trees in front of me and the wonderful lake behind me.

“I began to explore, and soon I found a trail through the woods which seemed to have been used very little, and which was almost obscured by grass. I followed this trail, and after I had walked for some time and had traveled a considerable distance through the forest, I saw a man coming towards me. I became aware that he was a very large man, and I hurried my steps to reach him, because I recognized him as my grandfather. In mortality he weighed over three hundred pounds, so you may know he was a large man. I remember how happy I was to see him coming. I had been given his name and had always been proud of it.

“When Grandfather came within a few feet of me, he stopped. His stopping was an invitation for me to stop. Then—and this I would like the boys and girls and young people never to forget—he looked at me very earnestly and said:

“ ‘I would like to know what you have done with my name.’

“Everything I had ever done passed before me as though it were a flying picture on a screen—everything I had done. Quickly this vivid retrospect came down to the very time I was standing there. My whole life had passed before me. I smiled and looked at my grandfather and said:

“ ‘I have never done anything with your name of which you need be ashamed.’

“He stepped forward and took me in his arms, and as he did so, I became conscious again of my earthly surroundings. My pillow was wet as though water had been poured on it—wet with tears of gratitude that I could answer unashamed” (George Albert Smith, “Your Good Name,” Improvement Era, Mar. 1947, p. 139).

This story has always had great personal significance for me. Even though I am the fifth and youngest son of my parents, I was named after my Dad. This is because I was born on my Dad's 35th birthday (having the same name and the same birthday has proven to cause great confusion for the folks at health insurance companies and the credit bureau). I am honored to have my Dad's name. I've thought of this story many times when faced with tough choices, and pictured my own father asking me what I have done with his name.

I hope I will always be able to answer truthfully that I have honored the names of my earthly and spiritual Fathers.

Happy Fathers' Day!

Are you sure this isn't Seattle?

We've now been in Ohio for three weeks. In that time, there have only been four days that we didn't see rain. No wonder it's so green here. Someone at Church told us they usually get about two weeks of perfect weather each year. Other than the one time I was caught in a hailstorm without an umbrella (wishing I had a hat...nickle-to-quarter-sized hail and a bald head don't go well together), we haven't minded the rain. It doesn't usually rain all day, so it's still quite nice, even though things are a little wet. We like Ohio. Time will only tell if we love Ohio.

In addition to the rain, here are a few of our first impressions of life here:

• There is no food sales tax--Yay! Perhaps in conjunction with this is that the roads are not kept up very well. There are potholes all over the roads, especially in Akron. The roads aren't as bad as Detroit, but they are something else.
• No food sales tax, but food is definitely more expensive here. We spent quite the load of cash just getting the basics when we arrived.
• It's far from the Bible Belt, but by the number of churches, you wouldn't even know it. I don't know how full they are each week, but the sheer number of churches here is just staggering.
• People are friendly and nice. Natalie mentioned before, but it's worth telling again: Before we were able to move into our apartment, my manager invited us into her home for five days--that's five days we didn't have to pay for a hotel and five days we didn't have to eat out. My manager Rhonda and her husband Curt and family had a planned vacation for three of those days, so it was just us and the dog. On top of allowing us to stay in their home, they've helped a ton with lending us furniture and items to use while we're here. My colleague Jennifer and her husband Shane also lent us a couch, TV, and plan to bring us a table and chairs from their storage in Buffalo. Thanks guys!
  Jackson loved riding this bike so much, they sent it with us. Now the trick is to keep him on the sidewalk and out of the parking lot.
  
He had loads of fun playing with the Dozer the doggie. See the video below.


• Of course, there aren't mountains here, but there are more trees than you can shake a stick at...whatever that means. Lots of hills, and we're not that far from the Allegheny mountains--which I glimpsed the other day when I ventured into West Virginia.
Looking across the Ohio River at West Virginia from East Liverpool, OH.


• There is rich history here related to the early days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as the early years of the United States. Ohio became a state in 1803. Washington explored and surveyed here. Many important battles and other events are related to Ohio. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion? I found out the other day that one of my Irish ancestors participated after settling in Ohio. There is a lot to see and do regarding historical sites--which for me is a pretty good time.
• Our ward has welcomed us warmly. The members are great. Our membership records are now in the Tallmadge Ward.

We don't know what the future will bring for us--whether or not we'll live in Ohio again--but we're enjoying it while we're here and trying to take advantage of all it has to offer.