The Leonardo Museum

I'm married to a museum enthusiast. Not only does she work at a museum she loves to go to museums. This past Friday for our weekly date she chose to go to a museum called The Leonardo.  She was excited; I was less so. Just the name gave me worries. I like museums; but artsy modern art museums not so much. Wendy however had a hook, the museum was hosting a NASA moon rock. I agreed that if there was a moonwalk it couldn't be all too terrible. Remember the moon rock..I'll get to it later.

The museum ended up being a lot of fun. It resembled a science museum more than an art museum in its activities. One of the first things that we did upon entering was to play Dance, Dance, Google maps. Yep. They had Google maps projected through the floor and you controlled where the map scrolled and zoomed by jumping on arrows. It was surprisingly fun. Unfortunately it didn't transfer very well to either pictures or video.

Wendy Dance Dance Googling

Close to the Dance Dance Google display were several touch screens with a large display of Utah in front. You controlled the large screens with the touch panels. This display was capable of showing vital statistics for most of the cities in the state including: crimes, single-mothers, population and other things. The most important thing I learned? For all you West Valley City haters; Ogden was far worse than West Valley City in every crime category that was tracked.

Ben reviewing crime statistics for Utah

I'm assuming because the name of the museum was patterned after the inventor/artist there was a small area dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci including a display describing his habit of writing all of his notes in mirror image. The display then challenged its readers to attempt to write something in mirror image as well. I failed miserably. I couldn't even write the simple three letter word that is my name. Wendy had slightly more success than I did. I just took her ten minutes to do it.

Wendy writing backwards

Another one of the displays focused on "Who am I?" The displays talked about genetics and so forth. It also talked about the importance of knowing who you are and accepting that. To help achieve this goal the museum provided a station in which you could draw a self portrait. Here's the process and results.

Ben drawing his portrait

Ben's Self-portrait

Wendy's portrait. She gave up.

The museum has a rotating display/art show. The rotating display and art show for this point in time spotlighted a group of highly talented, dedicated, and motivated women: Rollerderby girls. Wendy was so inspired by the display that she went out and became one. She liked this portrait more than the last.

Don't Mess with Madame Museum

We also found a motion capture studio where a animated character would imitate your movements. We did run into a small problem with Wendy's first try. The motion capture got confused with her maternity shirt flapping around. The animated character was doing some pretty impressive hip contortions as a result. Tucking in the shirt did result in a better copy of movements; but not nearly as entertaining. As my life was threatened if I posted a video of a pregnant woman dancing I'll post a video of myself.

Wendy and I had a profession change. For one day only we became weather forecasters. I can only tell you this. Watch out for the heat on Friday; it's going to get hot.

Our final activity involved little animated characters and moving them incrementally across a sheet of paper to tell a story. We also took pictures of this characters moving incrementally across the sheet of paper.

Stop motion animation

Results:

With that, our evening at the museum ended. We had only spent three hours inside the building reading, watching, and playing with the displays. We didn't realized that we had forgotten something until we walked outside and saw the NASA staff cleaning up. Remember that moon rock Wendy got me excited about? Yea, completely forgot about it and completely missed it.

Katie's Wedding

My cousin got married this past weekend. I'm afraid that I wasn't able to get any pictures of the actual wedding ceremony. Mainly because I didn't think that cameras would be allowed during the ceremony.  All of the weddings that I've attended in the past have all been LDS temple ceremonies; I haven't seen an LDS civil marriage ceremony before.  I assumed that cameras wouldn't be allowed. It wasn't until the wedding party started their stately march in and everyone's cameras started flashing that I discovered my error. Because of this the only pictures I managed to get are of the reception afterwards.

Beautiful Bride

The important women in my life: my wife and mother

Mom, Debbie, and Tammy

What would a reception be without dancing? Well, to me it isn't nearly as exciting. My father and cousin managed to get the music going and for rest of the night I danced with everyone who was willing to dance. Unfortunately that only included my wife once. For some reason she didn't want to dance fast while pregnant. Something about balance being different. Fortunately there were plenty of other willing victims for me.

Dancing with my wife

Dancing with Tammy

Dancing with Debbie

Dancing with the bride

Dancing with my mother

Dancing with Tammy's
 daughter

Cleaning out the shed

At the beginning of this year we moved into the basement of Wendy's Aunt's house. While the rent has been perfect the amount of storage has been slightly non-existent. We received permission to clean out an unused storage shed. When I say unused it means that I don't think the place has been used in over a decade. I think there was at least a 1/2 inch of dust on the shelves and floors. We spent a couple of evenings cleaning everything out for storage. Let's just say the dust was flying.

Ben using a shop vacuum

Wendy cleaning the shed

Wendy sweeping all the dust off of one of the shelves.

Bear Lake Trip

I can't remember where we discovered the notion but from early on in Wendy's pregnancy we decided that sometime during the later end of the pregnancy we were going to take a "babymoon." Basically the idea is you are taking a last vacation before your first baby comes.

At various times we had grand plans to go to California, Washington D.C., southern Utah, New Mexico, or even just Crystal Hot Springs. Something always came up to prevent us from actually planning out the trip. Eventually it came down to the fact that we basically we're running out of time before Wendy became a little bit too pregnant to go places. Out of desperation more than planning we ended up going on a short day trip to Bear Lake. We enjoyed ourselves.

The lake itself was super high; about as high as I can ever remember seeing it. So high in fact that a bunch of trees were buried fairly deeply into the water. Little to no shoreline was present.

Drowning Trees

It did make taking pictures of each other with the shoreline behind us relatively easy. We didn't have to go too far from the road. Unlike in years past when you had to hike five minutes to the water.

The short shoreline also made the time honored tradition of skipping or throwing rocks easier. I taught Wendy the theory behind rock skipping. I think she even succeeded once or twice.

Wendy skipping rocks

Ben skipping rocks

The summer I was fifteen years old I worked at the Bear Lake Aquatics camp on the eastern shore. I decided to show Wendy the place. The high shoreline significantly changed the geography of the scout camp. When I was there I taught the nature merit badge. Even though it's a required merit badge it is not a glamorous one such as the waterfront, archery, or shooting merit badges. As such my teaching area was basically the area that was in middle of nowhere. Fast forward a "couple" of years and suddenly my middle of nowhere nature merit badge site is only a couple dozen yards away from the shoreline and part of the waterfront.

Nature merit badge teaching site

The scout tent frame that I shared with another staff member for a summer

Even though it was early May we packed out swimsuits. As it turned out his was slightly ambitious. It appears that Bear Lake is rather chilly that early in the year. Not that great for swimming activities. Wendy didn't even try to get into the water. I, being the tough man that I am, made it to wading before giving up. I tell myself that it was really cold and not that I'm turning into a wimp in my old age.

This is as far as I made it into the water

While I was attempting to wade in the lake Wendy took advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with her family members. We wouldn't want them to lose track of her on our long vacation now would we?

Wendy at Bear Lake and on the phone

No trip to Bear Lake is complete without a trip to the local burger joints for a hamburger, fries, and a Bear Lake raspberry shake. This early in the year we weren't sure if any of the places would be open or not. Fortunately when we arrived at the location we found that not only was it open it was fairly busy.  I expressed my surprise at the amount of people to the kid taking orders. His response, "Yea, this is more than we expected. This is our first day open." Guess we timed our trip fairly close. One day earlier and no raspberry shakes and that would be tragic.

Outside the burger joint

Yea for burgers

Wendy eating

Wendy's Nest

It appears that being pregnant can be somewhat uncomfortable. I can't imagine why, something about a person growing inside your belly. What this means is that bedtime can at times be wiggly. After experimenting with several different options we found the best way to help Wendy to be comfortable is to make her a nest, out of pillows.  A lot of pillows!

Buried in pillows

Wendy's nest

Ben's pillows left, Wendy's pillows right

Practice Run?

I remember in junior high and high school our health classes required usto carry around a flour baby for a week. The idea was that by having to carry around a baby we might realize how much work and how big of a "bother" a baby can be. I don't know how anyone else felt but I always felt like it was useless exercise. A flour baby is so much easier than a real baby...at least so I hear. Fortunately there are ways in which we can practice.

Wendy's sister and her husband are in middle of a gigantic remodel of their apartment.  This, as can be imagined, has been somewhat complicated by the arrival of their baby. They've had to undergo some contortions in order to manage both the remodel and the baby. Sometimes it's harder than others. Today the parents were installing flooring and needed to both of them to finish the job. So they needed a baby sitter. Wendy volunteered us.

Wendy's sister has joined in the baby wrap carrier craze so I also got to try that out.  An interesting experience it was. Balance is wonky, I'm bigger in the front, I look gigantic in mirrors...it felt like I was pregnant!

Samuel was ours for an hour and a half. (Hey! Baby steps right!) From Wendy's sister's expertise we found out that Samuel like being outside, likes walking, and evidently likes areas with a lot of people. Coincidentally and outdoor walking mall just recently opened in downtown Salt Lake City.  Of course, even with a baby we had to shop for something right?

What did we shop for? Why what else would anyone shop for carrying around a two month old baby? Clearly...maternity clothes. I kept waiting for someone to comment on the fact that we had a clearly newborn baby...along with a clearly pregnant women. No one did; very disappointing.  Although we did have several people comment on high cute the baby was. I even had one passerby comment on how he looked so much like me. That was slightly awkward. 

We may not be related but it appears that Samuel does have some similar ideas on certain things.  Any longer than five minutes in a store; and it was time to leave.  Sounds about perfect to me. Wendy felt she needed longer however. I was able to delay leaving once; because I bribed him with food. Every other store; five minutes and out.

All in all. We were a good mommy and daddy for an hour and a half.  I sure learned more in that hour and a half than a week with flour baby.  Not that any of us are surprised by that.

Ultrasound Pictures.

We went to our official ultrasound appointment on March 8th. The technician was very excited and animated throughout the entire process. One mannerism that we both found interesting was that once she discovered the physiological indication of "boyhood" she proceeded to use the most widely varied range of euphemisms to refer to it.

More importantly we got to really see our baby for the first time.  It appears that ultrasound have come a long way in the past decade or so. We get to have ultrasound pictures of our baby in 3D now. All I can say is COOL!

He's looking at us.

Yep. He's a boy.

Growing is hard work.

Really hard work.

He has an arm. 3D imaging cut off at that point.