Christmas Downtown

Though modest in its size and amenities, Petoskey has a rather popular shopping area downtown known as the gas lamp district. It consists of a few square blocks of clothing boutiques, high-end kitchen/food and home decor shops, restaurants and pubs, and (of course) fudge houses. During the summer tourist season the area is quite busy and keeps rigorous shop hours. During the winter most shops close around 4PM. But on the first Friday of December there is a tradition. The whole district gets closed off to traffic and all the shops have an open house until 9PM. Not only do they open their doors to the public, but they serve food. Our friends the C*'s offered to escort us around. Amy told me that there would be food, and I was expecting it to be like going to Costco. You know, little cups and bites of yummies. Rather, we were treated to generous serving sizes of gourmet soups and appetizers with lots of desserts and hot drinks. It was about 25 degrees outside and the whole town was out celebrating. They had a tree lighting in the park and everyone sang a Christmas hymn together. Where do they do things like this any more?

We visited Kris Kringle at the old library

There were lots of musical performances and Gracie cut straight to the front for each one.

Mitchelle Street. The roaming brass ensemble is on the right. The streets downtown are decked with real garland and wreaths. So beautiful. And check out all our snow!

Petoskey High has a really amazing music program. There is a group of 20 or so students that puts together a steel drum band to play Christmas songs for this night every year. This is where we ran into the biggest crowd and I wasn't able to get the best picture.

I should have given the camera to Grace who cut right up to the front of the stage.

It was such a fun night. It felt the way Norman Rockwell pictures feel. Who wants to come out for next year's?

The Great Outdoors

Because there are some places you can't drive to...

We were lucky enough to spend another weekend in NV. Memorial Day, Dad, Cori and I got up a little early (for a holiday anyway) and headed out for a bit o' nature. Cori wanted to find some wildflowers. We were a bit early, as evidenced by all the snow. But we got to see some of the first blooms. A blog or so ago, Jessika mentioned being homesick for her mountains. I completely get this. I've seen and loved more than a few mountain ranges. But the Sierra Nevada's will always be my mountains. Thousands of jeweled glacial lakes, palatial granite rock formations, evergreens galore, and groves of wildflowers in the spring. Have a look at what we saw.

Welcome to Gardnerville

I'd like to introduce you to my home town. Cori and I just returned from 4 1/2 wonderful days with family and friends there. Every trip home, we find ourselves dreaming up schemes that will help us move back. What could be so great about a little ranch town in Northern Nevada? What could inspire the desire to spend our lives in a place that is barely a blip on the map? Well, among its surprising amenities, Gardnerville boasts:

the home of the W* family

amazing views of the Sierra Nevada's

out door everything all year round

great proximity to Lake Tahoe (only 15-20 min. to South Lake)

3 Basque restaurants

visits to Virginia City of Mark Twain lore and the great camel races

(and the best rib eye sandwich at the Bucket o' Blood Saloon according to Cori)

smog free air

small town feel without the small town living

the piano that took the brunt of my emotional ups and downs during high school

an impressive number of Saints

accessibility to Reno (1 hour) and San Fran (3 hours)--a girl has gotta shop

millions of stars at night

seasons-- snow in the winter, green in the spring, hot in the summer, we love the changes

the Ponderosa Claim, home of the Cartwright's and the famed series Bonanza

enough memories to stuff a book shelf

Maybe I haven't convinced you. I have to admit that even I forget how great this place is. However, I completely understand what possessed my dad to move our family here. We had lived in So. California for nearly 14 years, and then within less than a year, my parents relocated dad's business, built a home atop an alfalfa field and moved us to the country. Its grown and changed so much in the 13 years my family has been there. But something that will never change about Gardnerville is that like only a few other places (London, Washington D.C., and BYU), it will always be a part of me.

The dream house my parents built together

not pictured: the barn and horses, dad's orchard, mom's daffodils

The view from our front porch

The British Museum

I spent a respectable chunk of the afternoon labeling and organizing my family's digital pix from our London trip. Check me out in front of the famous reading room at the British Museum.

I went to this Museum practically on a weekly basis while I was a student in London. So I wasn't expecting to see anything particularly surprising during this visit. I was happy to be wrong. Just off the American exhibit, there was a little room filled with Mayan antiquities. I actually did a little dance, you know, the kind where you hop up and down and clap your hands and say "oooh! ooooh!" Below is a picture I took of Lintel 24. In one of my last semesters at the Y, I took Mayan Art and Culture 425 with Dr. Allen Christensen. Dr. Christensen is one of the foremost authorities in the field of Mayan everything. (I would love to hear what he has to say about Gibson's Apocalypto...) Imagine, a huge culture, rich in theology and steeped in tradition and art, that mysteriously disappears so suddenly that the language system is almost lost. For years, anything that was known about the Mayan was due either to remnants of theology that swim under the surface of contemporary religious rituals, or to interpretations made of discovered artifacts and temple murals. Without access to the language, all that could be read was their art. It is fascinating to me. Thanks to the work of Dr. Christensen and others, the language is fluently spoken again by more of the Mayan, and more correct interpretations are being made of what little text has been discovered. Consequently this is a field of study that is continually in flux. As part of the class we studied and memorized so many artifacts. Sometimes, we didn't even have photo's of the artifacts, just sketched pictures. Hence my delight in coming face to face with this amazing piece of history.

Lintel 24 portrays a royal blood letting ceremony. Kinda gross. The kneeling queen is pulling a thorn-laced chord through her tongue. (The kings let their blood from a different place that is better left unmentioned.) Mayan theology is saturated in doctrine of rebirth. This was a ceremony regularly performed by the royal heads of the society to insure the perpetuation of their way of life. It was incredible to see it along with the other lintels and artifacts the museum had on display.

Of course, it was amazing revisiting all the regular wonders; the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo treasure, and the Elgin Marbles. Gracie's reaction was pretty predictable. She was either in vocal opposition to being buckled into the stroller (like in the photo below), asleep, or happy in her dad's arms.

We rounded off the visit with a pricey trip to the bookstore. We got a coffee table book with illustrations of the BM's collections, a book regarding the history of idioms (very interesting), and a Jane Austen Cookbook (very cool).

Christmas in London

I don't think we could have asked for a more perfect Christmas this year~ 7 ideal days in and around London with family. I feel like I got the biggest gift of all being able to share my favorite places with everyone. The trip was not with out its little set backs, international travel rarely is, but everyone weathered it well and we did so much. I'll just give some highlights here, with more to follow in future blogs.

The day we flew out ended up being a really lousy day to travel, both in the US and in the UK. A massive storm over Denver had caused the cancellation of thousands of flights in the US and severe fog had caused the cancellation of all domestic flights in the UK. Cori, Grace and I made our flight without a problem, but the rest of my family got held up and missed several connecting flight options and ended up flying standby. My sibs got into London just 3 hours after we did, but my parents didn't get there until the next afternoon. And even once we were all there, only Cori and Grace had luggage. Fortunately, our hotel was conveniently located just a block and a half off of Oxford Street- one of the major shopping strips of London.




So we made a little shopping trip our first night there. As nice as it sounds, I had a hard time buying much. The dollar is so weak against the pound right now ($2.11 to the pound), so if it looks like I'm wearing the same thing in a lot of the pictures, I am. Fortunately, Thea had an extra pair of levi's I could borrow. Otherwise, I would have spent our first weekend there in yoga pants! We didn't get our luggage for another 3 days. And poor Sara had to wait until the day before we left to get her bag. Even missing luggage couldn't keep us from having an amazing week.

Here is a list of the places we got to visit over the course of the week:

Trafalgar Square, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abby, Harrods, Portabello Road, Hyde Park Ward on Christmas Eve Day ( a very special service), Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Bath, Warwick Castle, Stratford, Anne Hathaway Cottage, Oxford, The British Museum, Covent Gardens, The National Gallery, Mme.Tussuad's, The Sherlock Holmes Museum (on 221 b Baker St.), Green Park, and Hyde Park. We went to a Christmas Eve performance at the Royal Albert Hall titled, Carols by Candlelight. The tidy orchestra was dressed in knickers and white wigs. The conductor sat at a harpsichord. They performed every carol imaginable, and we got to sing along with many of them. There were readings from the KJV gospels and Dickens. It was perfect. We also saw Wicked with the original Broadway casted Elphaba performing.

At the Tower Bridge

This is how Gracie spent her nap times.

At Stonehenge

At Warwick Castle

How many Whitakers can we fit in here?

The family infront of the British Museum

At Trafalgar Square

Of course, the best part of the vacation was being together. Thanks, Dad, for such a great trip!