Cemeteries, family visits, state capitol, and planetarium

July 7, 2011

Lots of things happened on this day which means there are lots of photos.

First item on our agenda for Nathan, Hannah, and I was to head to Timpanogas memorial gardens to visit a few of my deceased ancestors. I have not seen the finished headstone of my grandparents and I wanted to see it on this trip. I also have not been able to pay my last respects to my two aunts that have passed within the last few years. Lucky for me my aunts are both buried right next to my grandparents.

After visiting the cemetery we headed up to see my brother's family. They just had their 3rd child a few months ago. It was so nice to see them and catch up. I think they are such a good looking family.

And of course we had to get a cousin shot.

After meeting up with Eric and Angela we drove up to Salt Lake and met up with the rest of the Culmer family at the state capitol building.

These pictures are of the House and Senate chambers.

This is a mural painting in the Senate chamber that was painted by one of Nathan's ancestors (pretty cool huh).

This is a picture of the where the governor meets with all the people that are more important than you and me. I think our tour guide called it the "gold room" because it has lots of gold in it.

And here is David goofing around with the camera in the gold room.

Here is a picture of the rotunda. For some reason, we never took a picture of the rotunda on our camera so this picture is courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Uncle Danny and the kids. I'm noticing that they like to up on Danny's shoulders.

This picture shows one of the many earthquake supports that hold up the state capitol. They can stretch up to 2½ feet horizontally with an earthquake up to the magnitude of 7.3 and will then return to their original shape. Pretty awesome!

After the capitol building we headed down to the Clark Planetarium where the kids, along with Nathan and his brothers, played around for about an hour or so. As we were getting ready to leave Nathan said "Guess who I just met? I got to meet Jake Garn." For those of you who don't know who Jake Garn is (like me) he is a former Senator from the state of Utah and astronaut. I asked Nathan if he got a picture of him and he said "Yes but not a good one." As you can tell, the picture below verifies his statement is true.

After the planetarium we headed over to the Salt Lake Cemetery to visit a few of Nathan's deceased ancestors. I realize that there is a picture of grass, but this is where Nathan's grandma is buried. She just doesn't have a headstone yet.

It was a day packed full of excursions and it was a lot of fun.

Wheeler farm

July 6, 2011

We headed over to Wheeler Farm during our visit in Utah and we got to see all kinds of farm animals and equipment. We also got to take in the glorious smells of farm life--hay, the animals, and fresh manure (blah). The kids even got to milk a cow during our visit. I chose to opt out since I already milked a cow once during my childhood and I had no desire to do it again. Not to mention I feel like I've been milked for the past 7 months since nursing Hannah. Below are a few shots of our little excursion.

Josh and Sarah milking the cows.

Josh, Sarah, and Grandpa tractor climbing.

Crazy Horse Memorial

July 5, 2011

On our way from the Black Hills to the Salt Lake Valley we stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial (which is also in the Black Hills).

Crazy horse was a Native American leader and warrior who was fatally wounded by the U.S. military in 1877. It was Henry Standing Bear who contacted Korczak Ziolkowski and asked him to carve a memorial in honor of the red man in the Black Hills.

Crazy Horse Memorial is still under construction today and has been for the past 60+ years. When it is completed it will be taller than the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. Here is a picture of a sculpture of what the finished result will look like.

This is a picture of the sculpture and the actual memorial in the background. You can see that they still have a long way to go. And you can also get an idea of just how big it will be.

And here are a few stats on this "crazy" monument.

Mt. Rushmore

July 4, 2011

Nathan, Hannah and I left our house at 5:15 am and headed to the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota to view historic Mt. Rushmore. It was a wonderful day to be on the road because NO ONE was traveling and the drive took us about 12 hours. Hannah was an excellent traveler. She had her moments of fussiness, but our little globe trotter did fantastic!

Now onto the pictures.

Some close up shots of the guys.

We loved seeing Mt. Rushmore and wished we could have spent more time in the Black Hills. It was so beautiful. Believe it or not there is actually a lot of things to see and we hope to one day return.

Harry Potter

Nathan here.

Rachel and I are really excited about the final Harry Potter movie and we've talked from time to time about which versions of the characters we like best. This got me thinking about what others might think, so I created a survey to get others' opinions. The survey here doesn't include all the characters, only the ones I (subjectively) thought would provide a reasonable means of comparison. Also, for the movie version of Dumbledore, please consider the Michael Gambon version (movies 3 - end) as opposed to the Richard Harris version (movies 1 & 2). If you wish to comment further on any of these, please do so. Remember to click submit when you're done)!

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July!

We are on our way to Utah, with a stop at Mt. Rushmore.

Here's a shot of Hannah in our little outfit. It says "Mommy's little firecracker. Exploding with cuteness."

And she does explode with cuteness. BTW--Hannah is now rolling over.

The Holy Bible

In December of 2009, the year was coming to an end and I started to make a few goals for the upcoming 2010 year. As I was deciding on what to do I came to the realization that I have never read the Bible cover to cover. I read and studied passages or stories from it, but I have never actually sat down and read it from the beginning to end. Now I was determined. So I set a HUGE goal: I wanted to read the Bible from cover to cover. I realized that to read the Old Testament and New Testament in one year would be a pretty daunting task and so I decided to read the Old Testament in 2010, and the New Testament in 2011.

You may recall last year I accomplished my goal in reading the Old Testament. I am happy to report that I finished reading the New Testament TODAY!, which means that I have finished my ultimate goal of reading the ENTIRE Bible! And what makes me smile even more--is that I beat Nathan. :)

One may ask what my feelings are on completing such a task. First and foremost I feel a great sense of accomplishment. I also feel like I have a better knowledge and understanding of the gospel. I have always known that the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly, but now I feel like I REALLY KNOW. I feel closer to my Savior. My favorite part of reading the New Testament was reading the Gospels because it contained the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I am also grateful for John Wycliff, William Tyndale, Johannes Gutenberg, and others who pioneered the translation of these biblical writings, and that they were willing to sacrifice their time, and in some instances their lives, to bringing to pass this great book.

I was visiting lds.org the other day, and I saw this video commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

I believe Elder Jeffrey R. Holland says it best: "We love and revere the Bible. It was a divinely ordained encounter with the fifth verse of the first chapter of the book of James that led Joseph Smith to his vision of the Father and the Son, which gave birth to the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our time."

If you believe the Bible, you will come to know that the Book of Mormon is true. Of this I promise, and testify.

New Testament picture courtesy of Google images