Weekend in the "Windy City"

Cylynn's sister (Chelsy) and her family made a trip out to Chicago one weekend in July. They asked us to come out and join them and since Chicago is only four hours drive from Coralville we decided to make the trip. The drive was quite boring; we saw mostly corn. We met our brother-in-law and nephew at the Midway airport around dinner time. Then the traveling problems began.

Chelsy's plane from Las Vegas could not pressurize after taking off. They were forced to fly in circles for a half-hour to use up fuel in order to lose some weight for landing. When the plane landed the brakes were damaged and they were forced to switch planes. Meanwhile, we, the group in Chicago, went to dinner and ate some real Chicago style pizza. If you haven't had any real Chicago style pizza you are truly missing out. It is not very similar to regular pizza but I really liked it.

As we finished dinner we received a call from Chelsy that her plane would be delayed even more due to the weather in Chicago. We decided to head to the hotel and come back to pick her up. We made the mistake of not taking the freeway to the hotel. We drove the entire way to downtown on Archer Avenue, an experience we will never forget. When we finally reached downtown we received three different sets of directions from three different cab drivers to find our hotel. We finally found the place and had our car parked.

As we were unpacking our luggage our brother-in-law (Wags) found a surprise. He grabbed the wrong bag at the airport. The bag was exactly the same except it was missing the pink string Chelsy had tied to the handle. Well, needless to say we had our car returned and we drove back to the airport. We took the freeway this time and were able to find the correct bag and return the wrong bag to the airport. We then waited and picked up Chelsy and returned to the hotel around 1:30 am to finally get some sleep.

The next day, Friday, was the Cubs game. We were able to purchase tickets to the game for an obscene amount of money. This was my first time to attend a major league baseball game. I must admit that baseball is not my favorite sport to play or watch. I tend to become bored by the end of the game. I did enjoy the experience of Wrigley field though. I loved the live organ playing during the breaks and before the game. Here are a couple of pictures from the game (one of Cylynn and I and the other a hilarious picture of our nephew Landon):

Part of the experience of Chicago was riding on the subway and elevated train system they have there. Now many of you may be thinking that this is either an insignificant or undesired part of Chicago. I, on the other hand, realized how much I had missed riding on trains and buses since I was in Germany. I enjoy observing and listening to all of the interesting people around you. It is much more entertaining than driving in a car.

Back to the story. The next day we visited the Shed Aquarium and Field Museum in Chicago. The Shed aquarium was one of the best organized aquariums we have ever been too. They organized it in rivers or areas of the ocean specifically instead of by continents. We saw many interesting fish and watched a dolphin show to cap it all off. The dolphin show wasn't very impressive for those of you who ever visit the aquarium. Here are some pictures:

Note: the top three pictures were taken in an artificial egg at a barnyard zoo we went too with Landon. I bet you would not believe I could fit in something that small. Cylynn and I had to get in first in order to convince Landon that it was not too dangerous or scary.

Following the Shed Aquarium we visited the Field Museum there. It is famous for the lions of Tsavo (which you have heard of if you have seen the movie The Ghost and the Darkness). These were two killer lions who killed for the joy and the blood rather than food and had somehow become addicted to human blood. Anyway, we looked at the lions and got a couple of pictures with Sue the T-Rex. She is the most complete T-Rex skeleton in the U.S. found in South Dakota in the 1990's. You can see in the pictures that Cylynn and I have arms pretty comparable to the length of a T-Rex arm.

The last night of our trip was spent on Navy Pier on the shore of Lake Michigan near our hotel. Anyone who knows much about Chicago has probably heard of Navy Pier. Many of the cruise ship and tour boats take off from this sight. There are a number of restaurants as well, as some carnival rides to enjoy. Chelsy, Wags and Landon took a ride on the Ferris wheel and Cylynn took Landon on a ride on the Carousel. We had some dinner and ice cream and watched a human chandelier show to top it off. The chandelier had a number of people playing instruments and completing acrobatic stunts while a hundred feet in the air held up by a crane. Here are some final pictures and a video of the chandelier show. The sound turned out much better than I would have expected.

We were so happy to spend a weekend with family. That last picture of Landon has got to be one of the best pictures ever taken. Backing up to the title. Cylynn and I both loved Chicago so much we decided we would not mind living there. It was beautiful, but ironically not very windy.

Eternal Blessings

Cylynn was blessed with the opportunity to attend her sister Josie's sealing to Shane in Phoenix Arizona in the Mesa Temple over the July 4 weekend. They were sealed on Saturday, July, 5. Cylynn should probably be making a post detailing all that happened there but I wanted to put in a few comments about what happened here and my thoughts.

I was blessed, or cursed whichever you prefer, to stay home while Cylynn made this trip. She was able to see her parents, brother and his kids, and two of her sisters including Josie. She reported that she had a great time and I was sad to miss it.

I was able to finally organize our house as Cylynn was in Arizona leaving me bored out of my mind. I also attended the Coralville fireworks show on the night of the fourth. I must report, and some of you may have experienced this and I sympathize if you have and pray that those who haven't never endure the experience, that watching fireworks is miserably boring alone. I received no joy from the experience and almost regret having gone at all. On the other hand, it did help me to feel what I was missing. This weekend without Cylynn was miserable. It was the second time that we have been separated since marriage, the first being a year previous and for approximately the same duration.

Ironically, as Cylynn was taking part in a sealing of a family for time and all eternity I was contemplating the blessing of eternal families. This weekend I had a small taste of what eternity would be without my family, wife, parents and siblings. I can attest that for me that eternity like that would be the essence of hell. On the other hand, I also contemplated eternity with my family and all its constituents. That for me would be the ultimate joy. Therefore, I would like to thank my Heavenly Father for the blessing of eternal families and the knowledge I have of this doctrine. It is truly a blessing. I have included some family pictures from Arizona (and other) below.

Home at Last

I must apologize as we are behind on our blogging. I have no excuses worth mentioning, but I am going to strive to catch us back up today as I have little else to do.

On June 28th (notice that is before our last post) we were able to move back into our apartment. All in all we were only out of our apartment for 15 days. We were very blessed by the Lord as the damage our apartment sustained was minimal. In fact, our apartment was only flooded with one inch of ground water. Try and remember back to all your geology classes in high school and college to remember what ground water is (that means you Swaag and Tote). In other words, we had no bacteria nor fecal matter that filled the water most of the people dealt with in the flooding; therefore, rather than smelling like the rest of the street which induced severe vomiting for many, our apartment smelled as sweet as honey. Furthermore, since we only had ONE inch of ground water the sheet rock in the apartment was placed high enough that it was not touched. Hence, no molding occurred in the apartment and all that needed to be replaced was the carpet. The first of the Lord's blessings.

Lest you think that the Lord's goodness ended there I will relate more of the flood story to you. The owner of our building just happens to own a carpet business. As you can imagine after severe flooding like Iowa sustained here in the last month the carpet businesses that were not under water were kept relatively busy. However, the Lord provided us with carpet from the owner of the building and it was laid within four days of the water exiting our apartment. All in all we were able to move back in within two weeks after we moved out and within five days of the water receding out of our apartment.

We also did not have to pay a cent for our lodgings while we were away due to the kindness of those around us. It was incredible to me to see the love and sacrifice those around us were willing to show us in our time of need. The night we moved out we received multiple phone calls from the ward members, my friends at school, and Cylynn's friends at work offering places to stay and help to move. I may be repeating some of the remarks Cylynn made in previous posts but I want to show my gratitude.

I am grateful for the Lord's blessings in our lives. Unfortunately, even though we were able to move into our apartment so quickly I cannot claim that we arranged our apartment back to the way it was nearly as quickly. It remained in the state you can see below for far too long. I did enjoy my new computer though, as you can see.

Shyla's Accusations

For those of you that do not read the comments at the end of each post let me display Shyla's comment for you. The following is a direct quote.

“I sure am sorry to hear about all the problems you have had. I'm glad you are okay though. Nonetheless, I have an extremely serious concern. I couldn't help but immediately notice that in the picture of the belongings you left in the apt to possibly be flooded, was your plant. Was that Jade? Wasn't she your practice child? I mean, what I'm seeing here is that when your life was in danger you left anything that was holding you back and apparently that is the category Jade fell into. She was right next to the trash can! I now have even more misgivings than I did before about you being responsible for a real child. Please explain yourself--if you can.”

A few words on our behalf. Yes it is in fact Jade in the picture. However what you don't know is that we took the picture the night before we moved all of our stuff and therefore it only appears that Jade is going to remain behind. We took her from household to household and though we were worried about her going into shock because of the many different environments in which we lived, she survived.

She was a real trooper and we are so proud of her. I have to say that even after all of the moving she is standing a little taller, growing a little bigger and loving her new family more and more every day.

So Shyla, please do not worry about our ability to parent we are doing a wonderful job. We feed her once a week, talk to her at least twice a week and the best part is that we never have to clean up after her. If this is what parenting is like I say...BRING ON THE CHILDREN!

If you are having misgivings about our ability to raise a practice child just reminisce a little about our time together in Arizona and how well I took care of you. Don't make me list the ways in which I raised you to be a contributing citizen to society.

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

Here are a few photographs from our flood experience. First we have a picture of our home when we decided to evacuate. The unfortunate fact that Sterling does not possess any ark building skills forced us to stack things on our counter top or pack them up and move them out.

Next we have an illustration of what happens if you don't move your car before the road is closed. We were lucky enough to get the car to safety literally minutes before the road closed. Had we not moved the car we might have been forced to swim to school and work.

Here we have a picture of a man trying to save his refrigerator. I think his efforts were in vain and by the way who would want to save a refrigerator that is floating in poo infested waters? Not me! Anyway, this was taken right in front of our house the day we decided to move. Imagine going to bed when the water is level with the top of the curb and waking up to waist deep water in the street.

In this picture we tried to show just how close the water was to our apartment when we finally finished moving everything. To Sterling's right what used to be our street but is now a river and to his left is the front of our apartment building. Luckily we live in the back of the building and the it is built on a slight incline. The front two apartments sustained a majority of the damage for which we are saddened and a little grateful. We are sad because some of our neighbors lost quite a few of their belongings and yet we are grateful because our home was spared and we don't have to be homeless any longer. We moved home today (6/28/08)!

And finally at least these little guys enjoyed the water levels. This is the apartment two days after we moved. As you can see the water is only being held back by the sandbags that some kind citizens stacked around the building. The sandbags were not able to stop the flood waters from reaching our complex entirely but they sure helped to minimize the damage that could have occurred.