Happy Thanksgiving

We hope that all of you had a happy Thanksgiving holiday. It was great for Ryan to have time off so that we could play hard. We went to the Durham Train Museum and let Helen run wild climbing all over the trains, but drew the line when she tried to jump out the window. Here is Helen working on her stacking skills. Who knew that food storage could also double as a toy? It's a beautiful thing.

My visiting "teachee" and I made this gingerbread house. The best feature of this house was obviously the window treatment. :)

This week I went down to the 15th Annual Latin American Nutrition Society Congress, in Santiago, Chile, while Ryan took care of Helen. I figure that if you have to get continuing education hours, it might as well be about something you are interested in. It is even better if those hours can be procured outside of the country. I had a great time learning cutting-edge nutrition and made lots of friends from all over the world.

Here is one of the typical fast foods that I tested out while I was down there. This 6" hamburger bun is filled with shaved beef, tomato, mayonnaise (of the bright yellow variety) and avocado. It is very similar to a "completo," which is a hot dog slathered in avocado, mayonnaise and tomato. I have never eaten so much meat as I did this last week in Santiago. Vegetables and fruit were in scarce to say the least.

Now we come to the most exciting part of my trip. On Wednewday, I went to the metro station as usual when I saw a bunch of people milling around and all sorts of police officers. I asked someone what was going on and they said that there was a bomb threat in the metro. Luckily for me, the police were just taking the bomb-finder robot down and I got this great picture. Ryan seems to think that I add instability to the countries I visit . . . The last time I was in Colombia, Venezuela almost attacked. I am sure that it has nothing to do with me. Perhaps some butterfly had beat its' wings somewhere. Click on any of the pictures to see more in Picasa.

Leaves & Gingerbread

Yesterday, our friend took our family picture for our Christmas card. She also caught Helen doing what she really wanted to do the whole time we were trying to keep her sitting still - play with the leaves. Here she is in action - -

Every Christmas the church congregation makes hundreds of gingerbread creations to display at the Kanesville Tabernacle and Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters. The theme this year is "A Christmas to Remember". Ryan and I had different interpretations of this theme. His brilliant idea was to make a gingerbread brain. As he put it, "That is where memories are made." He never actually told me 'how' were could create such a concept in gingerbread, but he still acts like I didn't take his idea seriously. My favorite idea was to make a "blizzard", because what is more memorable than spending your Christmas frozen at home under 8 feet of snow? It would have been really easy to make, too: nothing but royal frosting on a flat board and a rooftop peaking through. In the end, we compromised and created an old-fashioned gingerbread sleigh full of presents. Simple, yet elegant, is what the reviews are going to say. Ryan's favorite part of the project was buying (and sampling) many different candies and chocolates as we tried to find appropriate 'presents'. And if you look closely, you'll see that actually, none of the 3lbs of chocolate we bought made it into the sleigh. Very sneaky, Ryan.

Happy Veteran's Day Parade

Yesterday we enjoyed ~70* weather and a lovely parade down town. They threw a ton of candy out for us. I took it upon myself to teach the kids around me that to get candy you have to wave and then how to dodge out into the street to scoop it all up. Some things are best learned by example. Helen liked the dogs, horses and people dressed up as animals best.Here are some obvious differences to the parades I used to enjoy in Iowa. 1. Although there were John Deere tractors, they weren't the main event. 2. There were a whole slew of soldiers in uniform who got to march the route. (They even had the JROTC kids out, their formations weren't the tightest, but they sure took their part seriously.) 3. We got to see the St. Bernard Rescue society with their rescuees - one of which practically adopted me, or at least slobbered all over me. 4. The most exciting group was the Remote Control Car Club which also brought a remote control jump ramp for said cars and trucks to do tricks off of for the crowds viewing pleasure. 5. There was not a semi truck included at all!

Happy Halloween!

This year Helen was a princess. Her favorite part was the crown, which she tried to talk me into letting her wear to church today. During trick or treating, she caught on really fast to the concept of taking shiny hand-size objects from strangers and putting them into her own bag. I am not sure if I should be worried or not.Here we are at the church Halloween party. She had a great time!