Ames--Colder than Antarctica in January

Guest blogger Robby here.

Last Sunday I asked which of a long list of cities are colder than Ames (colder being defined by average January temperatures).

The answer: Two.

Here they are, listed in order from warmest to coldest:

Congrats to Marilyn for having the closest guess. Marilyn--we'll bring you the promised goodies when we swing by in June '09.

Our most faithful (read: only) Swedish reader, Victoria, suggested that the coldness of a winter might be better measured by something like how long winter lasts. She's got a good point (but my bet is that winter is just as long in Ames as it is in Stockholm).

Thanks to accuweather.com for the U.S. weather data. International data from the Washington Post Historical Weather Database. Leipzig data from weather.msn.com. McMurdo Station data from antarcticconnection.com.

Olivia adventures

The other day I took the kids to McDonald's for lunch as a treat. While we were there only one other family came into the indoor playroom, and they had a 3 year old little girl who played marvelously with Jenna. As Olivia sat in my lap and watched the girls play, she became more and more restless and wanted to go and play, too. The family who sat next to us struck up a conversation with me, and as we talked Olivia got wigglier and wigglier. I finally relented and allowed her to walk around near the entrance to the climbing tunnels (she has transitioned to only walking now).

A short bit later, Little Robby came down the slide, and I asked him to watch Olivia for me in the first little tunnel room that was on the ground level. I turned back to talk with the family next to me thinking that Little Robby would be fine with her just as long as he kept her right there in the first little room. I chatted and chatted for the next little while, until I heard Robby calling me from up above. As I turned to look up, I was surprised to see little Olivia smiling down at me from a bubble room in the play tunnels that were far above my head!

"Robby! You weren't supposed to take her up in the tunnels!"

"But Mom, she wanted to go! She started climbing all by herself!"

"Did she up there by herself?" I questioned.

"Well, no, I had to help her up the climbing tunnels. I supported her little bum as she climbed," he admitted. (Don't you just love big brothers!)

"When I asked you to watch her, I didn't think you would take her up there!"

All the while, Olivia was pounding from the inside of the plastic bubble with this huge smile that said, "Look at me! This is so fun!" (I actually wished I had had my camera to take a picture of her. She was so proud of herself!)

I thought about climbing up there to get her myself, but from prior experience climbing in these tunnels I knew that they were designed for a kid and not an adult (I may be small, but not that small!) I asked Robby how he was going to get her down, and he said, "I'll just take her down the slide!" I reluctantly permitted this idea because I thought it would be much safer than having him try to crawl down the tunnels with an extra 20lbs.

So off they climbed again to the top of the play tunnels, and Olivia got her first slide ride ever down the BIG twisty slide at McDonald's. And what did she think? Well, she was so excited she tried to go and do it again!

Unfortunately for her, Mom felt like we had had enough of McDonald's and the playplace for the day.

(Little Robby just read this post and said to me, "You make it look like it was my fault! It's not my fault she wanted to climb up there!")

Winter Wonderland

Sunday morning we woke to this beautiful scene...

Okay, first I will admit that I am not a cold weather person, but from the warmth of my house it was a pretty scene. It snowed again on Monday, and as you can imagine Robby and Jenna LOVED it!

We bundled each of them up as best we could. You know, coming from Arizona we had to improvise in a few ways.

Jenna didn't have any mittens, so we used socks with plastic sandwich bags rubber-banded over the top. Hey, they kept her hands dry and warm!

Olivia doesn't have any snow gear, so despite the fact that this picture makes it look like she is outside, she was just inside the doorway. And our other improvisation was using waterproof sport pants with pajama pants layered underneath for Robby. It works, right?!

Robby's first order of business was to begin constructing a snow fort in the corner of the yard. You know, to protect him from snowballs being lobbed at him by his sister.

They were both having a ball ... a snow ball that is!

The final order of business was to construct a snow man for Jenna. It was her dream to construct a snow Mama, a snow Daddy, a snow Robby, a snow Jenna, and a snow Olivia, but they settled on one snow man (with no mouth since they couldn't get the raisins to stick to the snow.)

Sometimes I get a warm, fuzzy, "it's great to be a parent" feeling when I watch my kids have a blast doing something. I had that feeling today as they were enjoying our winter wonderland.

One other thing is snow in the yard has brought new meaning to a lot of the Christmas songs we sing. You know, "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland" and others. I must admit that is fun, too!

So I guess a real winter isn't all bad.

Oh, and I did get Jenna a real pair of mittens, and both the kids snow bibs, so now they really won't freeze. I figure it's an investment since we will really need the stuff in Iowa!

(By the way, if you haven't posted a comment with your answer to the quiz in the next post you need to!)

Frozen Cyclones

Guest blogger Robby here. The contract's signed, and I'll be an Iowa State Cyclone next year, joining the Management Department as an assistant professor.

Iowa State has some family connections: My uncle Wayne worked as an agronomist there until a few years ago and his wife Toni graduated with an accounting degree from ISU.

I really liked the folks out there, and we're grateful to have had such a good employment opportunity, especially in a difficult economy.

But one thing we're going to have to warm up to (so to speak) is the weather. Iowa is further north than I had ever realized. Now I've always known where Iowa belonged on a map, but I guess I never paid particular attention to the fact that it's right up next to states like Minnesota and South Dakota. Brrrrrr.

For example, how many of these ten cities are further north than Ames?

Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Hartford, CT
Laramie, WY
Logan, UT
New York, NY
Omaha, NE
Pittsburgh, PA
West Lafayette, IN

Got your answer? Okay, scroll on down.























Answer: Just one--Boston would be 12 miles up the road if it were slid over to central Iowa. All of the other cities lie south of Ames. (Guess Iowa's not quite as middle America as I thought.) As it turns out, Ames isn't just farther north than a lot of cold-weather U.S. cities, it's even farther north than some points in Ontario, Canada.

But farther north doesn't have to mean colder, right? After all Seattle is farther north than Chicago.

So here's the real question: How many of the following cities are colder than Ames (i.e., lower average January temperature)? Cities farther north than Ames are designated with a double asterisk.

**Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Hartford, CT
Laramie, WY
Logan, UT
New York, NY
Omaha, NE
Pittsburgh, PA
West Lafayette, IN
**Anchorage, AK
**Berlin, Germany
**Billings, MT
**Boise, ID
**Buffalo, NY
**Calgary, Alberta, Canada
**Detroit, MI
**Donetsk, Ukraine
**Geneva, Swizerland
**Helsinki, Finland
**Ithaca, NY
**Kodiak, AK
**Leipzig, Germany
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
**Milwaukee, WI
**Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia
**Oslo, Norway
**Rapid City, SD
**Reykjavik, Iceland
**Saint Petersburg, Russia
**Spokane, WA
**Stockholm, Sweden
**Toronto, Ontario, Canada
**Warsaw, Poland

Make your guess in the comments. Answer next Sunday night. Popsicles to the winner!

So what are you doing on Black Friday?

I don't know about you, but I've been redesigning my blog! (If you are reading this in google reader click through to see the changes.) Ta-dah! What can I say, I was getting a little envious of everybody else's cute blogs. Plus, Robby hated the background I had thrown up on our blog a few months ago. So now I have gone from him disliking my background to disliking my new title. I just keep reminding him that in reality this is my blog since I do almost all of the posting! He just posts occasionally as a guest. We tried to come up with another title together, but nothing else we could think of fit with the new design. So for now it stays.

Anyhow, many thanks to Andra for posting links to the tutorials she used to do her blog face lift back in September.

Little Robby turns 10!

As the days, weeks, and years of Little Robby's life thus far have passed, I know I have found many joys, but it is at times like his birthday, that I realize how much time is now gone. As a child, each year seems an eternity, but now that I am a mom, each year seems but a fleeting moment. I know Robby is not grown yet, but to think that his time as a child in our home is more than half way over is hard for me to imagine.

My labor of love this week was putting together a slideshow of Little Robby's life. Seeing each of these moments that I remember so vividly on the screen, makes me wonder whether I have savored these moments enough. Our children are only little for so long. Yes, I will admit that I have cried a little this past week... not because he's making me older, but because I sometimes wish I could sneak back and relive some of these moments with him.

I am so very grateful to have Robby as my son. He is a blessing and a miracle in my life. I know that there will be many moments to come in his life that I will cherish just as those in this slideshow, but now I realize that I need to slow down and savor this moment because it only lasts so long.

I hope you enjoy reflecting with me...

Reflections on Proposition 8

I’ve watched with keen interest over the past few weeks as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I am a member) has been targeted by protesters for its support of California’s Proposition 8 which preserved traditional marriage in the state. Over a dozen Church buildings have been vandalized, some Church members have walked past picketers to get to their Sunday services, and the Church’s Los Angeles temple was forced to close at one point.

Leaders of the Church—whom members revere as modern-day prophets—took an unequivocal position on Prop 8, urging members that, “Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”

In light of the Church’s strong stand on the issue, protests by segments of the gay community have been somewhat unsurprising. What has been more striking has been that a noticeable portion of Church members has also opposed Church leadership on the issue. While the absolute number of such dissenters has been relatively small, I think Prop 8 portends increased levels of conflict within the Church over social issues in the coming years.

Church leader Harold B. Lee said:

“We have some tight places to go before the Lord is through with this church. The power of Satan will increase; we see it in evidence on every hand. There will be inroads within the Church.... We will see those who profess membership but... [are] trying to lead people not to follow the leadership that the Lord has set up to preside in this church.

Now the only safety we have as members of this church is... to give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through his prophet.... There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life.

But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord himself, ... the promise is that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name's glory."

The gay marriage issue will be just one of many polarizing issues that will sift the Church. Sooner or later, each one of us will be tested. The key to our protection will be a willingness to follow the Lord’s prophets.

Robby

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More...

• For a ground-zero perspective on Prop 8 from old family friend Chelsea Combs, see here or here.
• A first-hand experience by my sister Andra with Arizona's similarly worded Prop 102 is here (registration required).
• Also, Elder Neal A. Maxwell weighs in on the subject here.

This post is worth the wait!

I know I have been out of my blogging routine, but we haven't had a lot of blog-worthy material... until now! Check this out!

And I promise that I will have another blog-worthy post this week-end... especially since something very big is happening this weekend for our boy. If you're wondering what, it invovles me crying because my baby #1 is getting older than I can believe. Check back Sunday night.

Happy Halloween... take two!

If at first you don't succeed, try again using Firefox (see the previous post.) I don't know what it is, but if I can't load things using Explorer, Firefox usually comes through for me. So you don't have to wait on my Halloween pics after all!

One thing I have learned is that the more kids you have the harder it gets to have them all looking at the camera at the same time...

First Jenna looks away...

then Olivia blinks her eyes...

and then Olivia looks away. Oh well, you get the point.

And for our Halloween characters we have Sleeping Beauty,

a jedi knight,

and a bumble bee!

And the prize for the best "treat" in the candy bucket goes to...

Our dentist for giving all the kids toothbrushes AND a bag of candy. And as my childhood dentist had posted in his office "Brush only those teeth you wish to keep!" (especially after Halloween!)

Sweet dreams everyone!

Happy Halloween!!

Okay, so after 15 or so frustrating attempts to load my halloween pictures to blogger, all I have to show is one picture. I guess everybody else is trying to load their equally cute halloween pics tonight. Well, I can't wait on a server to catch up to the demand because I have a very early morning tomorrow, so my teaser picture is Jenna...

demonstrating what our kids looked like this evening after eating a healthy portion of their Halloween candy.

(More Halloween pictures to follow.)

Blog catch-up

I guess I am busier here than I was in AZ, either that or not as motivated lately. Anyway, I have caught up with my blog and have a bunch of new posts to catch you up on our lives. The only thing these posts lack is details about the latest change in our house. We pulled Robby out of the public school to homeschool. This is not necessarily a permanent change, but for now it will remain this way for the duration of this school year. We have been homeschooling for two weeks and things have been going great! It was a much needed change. There were some significant reasons that we made this change, but I am not going to detail them on the blog. If you are curious, please feel free to ask me.

Our sleeping princess

Or rather, one of our sleeping princesses...

Kids are pretty sweet when they're asleep, aren't they?

A trip to Indy to visit the museum

On the last day of my parent's visit we decided to go to Indy to check out the really cool Children's Museum there. Some people say it is the best children's museum in the nation (there you go, yet another reason to come visit us!) Well... I still haven't seen it! Yup, we got there and it was closed! Just our luck to arrive on a Monday when they have it closed for construction.

We were a little bummed, but we decided to check out the Indiana State Museum as our alternate. It was nice, and had some fun features, but I must admit that it was a bit of a let down after anticipating the fun were going to have at the children's museum.

First random fact, they Indiana has a totem pole. Or at least that's what they call this large Indiana sculpture.

Chap really liked the pre-historic Indiana exhibit complete with a giant lobster thing overhead.
And here are my two, not-so-happy indians and their wigwam.

On the way out of the exhibit, there was this very nice grandmotherly lady who had a small stand of "Grandma's toys" for the children to try out. It had old-fashioned toys like a 3-D picture viewer that was a precursor to the View Master toys we have today.

Even Olivia got to try out a wooden chain toy!

Chap discovered he is great at the cup and ball game.

Jenna figured, if Chap can do this so can I!

About the best thing that was at the museum was the exhibit on Chocolate! They did have chocolate there to eat ... for a price. It was interesting to read about the history of Chocolate. Interestingly, cacao beans were once used as currency by the Aztecs. Since I can be a chocoholic, I can see why!

One of my pretty cute girls!

Some days your kids are just especially cute and you can't help but want to take a picture of them. You know what I mean. Jenna was having one of those days...

Ow-ow-owoooooooo

At the end of our first day with Grandma and Grandpa we took them to howl with the wolves near our house. No, they aren't wild. As you can see from the picture they are behind a fence. There is a park near our house where they study wolves, and every Friday and Saturday night they do a presentation called Howl Night. These wolves are used to humans, and the people who work with them actually go in the enclosure. In fact the trainers are treated almost like one of the pack right down to wolfy kisses on the lips! (Yuck!) During the presentation the trainers invite the spectators to howl and when we all start howling the wolves start howling with us. Hence this blurry picture of one howling...

Since they were on the other side of a fence all I really got were great pictures of a fence, although this one above was the best shot I got.

So, if you come to visit during the right season you might be lucky enough to take a trip with us over to howl with the wolves!

The Colors

In the afternoon of our first day with Grandma and Grandpa we went over to a local botanical garden to take a walk on one of the trails and enjoy the beauty of the first colors of fall. I must admit that I am enjoying the chance to see the fall colors transform the landscape around here. My favorite are the very red leaves, especially when the tree is still mostly green and one side is lit up with red. It makes the trees look like they are on fire. Very cool!

Photographer Chap took this one for us.

I just love the burst of color in the upper canopy.

Beautiful!

We had a very enjoyable stroll.

This is all very different from where we were living (isn't it Andra?!)

Little Jenna leads the way!

The brilliant colors have made the oncoming colder weather a little more bearable.

Grandpa and Grandma Visit

Two weeks ago, my parents came for a short visit, and we had a fun few days showing them around our new home town. The first day they were here we took them over to the University to check out an interesting paper airplane exhibit. At first when Robby told me about the paper airplane exhibit I thought that he meant ones that could really fly, but apparently not. Instead they were different artist creations, and they were all suspended from the ceiling with little strings. This was the one we all liked best... Robby and my mom called it the grasshopper.

Since Robby had a picture with Grandma and Grandpa, Jenna decided that she had to have one, too!

Then we went to another exhibit at the university that was about faces. Jenna added her own rendering of her face to the wall.

Pumpkin Patch

Earlier this month Jenna, Olivia, and I took a trip to a local pumpkin patch with our weekly playgroup pals. It was a cool fall day (I've been getting a real taste of what I am in for this winter, let's just say that it doesn't look good when I'm already freezing and we're only in October! Can't we just skip to spring?)

Jenna really liked the hay ride that we got from the parking lot over to the pumpkin patch.

This place was a genuine pumpkin patch, where you go out and cut your pumpkin straight from the vine. Because there were so many in our group we couldn't pick pumpkins bigger than the pie pumpkins. They were free, so we didn't complain!

But, we did admire the big ones.

As a bonus, Jenna got a funny looking gourd that she proudly pointed out was shaped like a "J" when turned upside down!

This my "proof that Olivia and I were really there" picture.

Jenna Today

As I was getting in the car after strapping her in she exclaimed, "An ostrich just flew off their roof!" (Refering to the roof next door.)

"Oh really!" I replied.

"Yeah!"

Feast of the Hunter's Moon

A week ago Saturday, we had a chance to experience Indiana History in real life. Not to far from where we live, there is a yearly festival called "Feast of the Hunter's Moon." It is a "re-creation of the annual fall gathering of the French and Native Americans which took place at Fort Ouiatenon, a fur-trading outpost in the mid - 1700s." The Feast kind of reminded me of the Renaissance Festival I used to go to as a kid, just a different time period. Here's what we saw when we arrived...

"Thousands of participants re-enact this event creating a feast for your senses. Smell the wood smoke, hear the report of the rifles, savor authentic food and more." (quoted from the website) The field was covered in tents and people dressed in 1700s attire.

Olivia's not sure what to think!

Jenna was thrilled to feed the goats that day. (I just had a flash back to one of her earlier experiences with farm animals. We took her to Dugan's Dairy and she freaked out when the pig tried to greet her. See post here.)

We thought this was a pretty cute sight!

I like the part about "Children Chastised."

And here's our own little Davie Crocket, complete with his own bottle of authentic root beer.

We stopped to rest in the shade and Dad thought he would close his eyes, but Jenna insisted he couldn't sleep!

While I was watching Jenna attack Dad, Olivia tried to make a getaway!

One demonstration that Little Robby was fascinated by was the blacksmith, so we let him watch while we walked around the corner and bought...

bonnets!

For both our girls!

What sweet prairie girls we have!

This was the way to travel in style in the 1700s.

Little Robby was riveted to spot where he sat watching the blacksmith. We finally had to insist it was time to go before he conceded, but before we left we did buy a large dinner triangle made by this blacksmith to remember him by. Now I have a great way to call my chillins to supper!