Update 3: Indy Day Trip

Many of you will remember that last month I blogged about a taking a field trip gone wrong with the sixth graders I taught during practicum.  Well, the Indiana State Museum got the opportunity to redeem itself in my memory as of yesterday!

Kyle and I went to Indy with my grandparents and cousin to visit the museum and, more specifically, to see the Titanic exhibit that has been there since September.  I was pretty excited because I didn't get the opportunity to see the exhibit when I was there the first time.  It was amazing!  There were so many neat artifacts available for us to see and everyone was given a "ticket" at the entrance that gave details of a passenger that we were to become while touring.  At the end of the exhibit, we could check a list of survivors to see if we lived or not.  Since I was a first class woman, I knew I had pretty good odds and I made it, of course.  Poor Grandpa died.  He did have a heroic quote on the wall of the exhibit, though, informing his "wife" to get in the lifeboat because it was her last chance of survival.  Such a great guy :)

We couldn't take any pictures from the Titanic exhibit, but we were able to get some from the rest of the museum.  Some are of questionable quality, though, because flash wasn't allowed.  Below is the reconstructed mouth of a mastodon.  They were able to build it using information from teeth and tusks and bones found in Indiana fields.  

Indian arrows!  These aren't the real thing, either, but are reconstructed to look like them.  There weren't any real Indian artifacts in the museum after 1990 because of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that required federal agencies or institutions that receive federal funding (like, ahem, the Indiana State Museum) to return cultural items and remains to Native American tribes.  While I was sad that I didn't get to see any real artifacts from Native Americans, I'm glad they were returned.  I'm sort of a little obsessed with respecting Native American culture, so that's okay.

This is a real-life dentist chair from several decades ago.  My grandma maintained that this is why she was afraid to go to the dentist when she was young!

 This Shirley Temple doll was in the culture exhibit from the thirties and was owned by a little girl from Monroe, Indiana.  Small world...my grandpa knew the doll's owner!

And my personal favorite...everyone thinks Portland is a measly no-man's-land, but check out what Elwood Haynes did for the community!  PS--he was so awesome that we named an elementary school after him :)

All in all, a lot more fun than when I went during the field trip.  Afterwards, we went to Cracker Barrel and had some delicious food.  We came home exhausted!  It was a lot of walking, a lot of reading, a lot of driving, and a lot of eating!

Update 2: Christmas Preparation

I know it's a little bit past Christmas, but there were so many things going on that I didn't get the chance to update about our Christmas plans/happenings!  First of all, the best part about being newly married and celebrating your first Christmas together is that you get to create all of these new, fun things to do that will eventually be traditions in the family.  So, we decided to begin some traditions of our own!  

The Sunday after Thanksgiving (the first Sunday of the Christmas season!) will always be devoted to decorating the house for Christmas!

We spoil our cat--he has his own stocking!

The second Sunday of the Christmas season (which is the first Sunday in December) will be set aside for watching Christmas movies and the Christmas broadcast put on by our church.  The prophet and his counselors always give us uplifting Christmas messages to keep in mind for the whole month!

The Sunday after that is reserved for Christmas cards:

We sent out a lot!  Kyle even personalized the one to his friend Zach and added some "Christmas" drawings from a TV show they watched when they were teenagers:

The week before Christmas is time for making cookies!  Our cookies turned out to be...interesting.  They were tasty, but the process was a little too long for my liking and since I'm not really a fan of sugar cookies to begin with, we probably won't do these again.  I meant to decorate them all nice, but by that point I was too annoyed, so Kyle took it upon himself to make the icing (breaking my mixer in the process) and glob it on the cookies.  

I was so sick of cookies after that night that I didn't even eat any!  So poor Kyle took a calorie bullet for me and enjoyed them all.  Kyle did most of the wrapping this year, and Tiger helped.  He did a lot better around our Christmas tree this year than last, so we're hopeful that next year we'll see even less interaction between him and the tree.

My parents had their Christmas celebration early so that everyone was sure to come.  They got Tiger a mouse and he loved it!  It had been awhile since he'd gotten a new toy.  He even slept with this one!  Once we brought home the toy seal that Gary and Michele had gotten him and given him the mini-mice from his stocking, he didn't know what to do!

For Christmas Eve, we spent the whole evening watching epic movies (this year the extended Lord of the Rings movies), read scriptures about the birth of Christ, made some homemade pretzels, and drank some sparkling grape juice in our fancy glasses.  We had a lot of fun.  On Christmas morning, we had biscuits and bacon and videotaped the opening of stockings and presents.  We spent a lot of time with family around the holidays, and it was so much fun!

More updates and pictures to come!