Chicago Trip 2015

Mark's job at Durham, Jones and Pinegar, keeps him in Salt Lake City most of the time.  But every so  often he has to attend a conference or retreat away from home base.  One of those "every-so's" came along in the form of an American Bar Association conference in the Windy City (which we were informed was named so because of it's resident's propensity for bragging about their home, not because of the weather).  Usually when I go on a business trip with Mark, I relish the thought of sitting in a quiet hotel room, reading a mind-candy book, but Chicago drew me out of my room and treated me to new sights and awareness.

I've been told that a sure way to spot a tourist in a big city is if she is looking up while walking instead of forward.  I must have been easy to spot.  The amount of skyscrapers in Chicago certainly put Salt Lake City to shame.  We stayed in a hotel on The Magnificent Mile, a very touristy and swanky mile on Michigan Avenue full of high end stores, museums, chocolatiers and Walgreens, two or three of them, which is fitting since Chicago is it's birthplace.

I took the opportunity, being husband and child-less for the moment, to walk to the Are Institute of Chicago.  Along the way, I stopped at Millennial Park and enjoyed the outdoor theater, in the above picture, which stands below the silver sculpted forms.

There is also the famous bean, which is officially named "Cloud Gate," which was formed and built to reflect everything around it in new perspective.  You can try to find me, I'm even wearing a striped shirt, ala Waldo, but you can't see me well.  But from the perspective you can probably figure out where I am.

I took a picture of these three statues because they reminded me of my three boys.  They are wide at this angle, but when you walk to the West, they are thin, which is where I discovered these three heads belong to girls, not boys.  Sorry, my sons.

I really love trees.  This tree is in the garden on the Art Institute, but this picture doesn't do it justice. It is a far reaching, low hanging on one side, growing to it's height on the other and must be very old.  I always wonder what things old trees like this have seen.

I spent about 5 hours in the Art Institute, trying to see everything I could, but I didn't get to everything.  The first exhibits I saw were glass paper weights, which despite it's mundane sound were quite transfixing, and also a hall full of tiny rooms with tiny furniture like the one above.

I was impressed to find a page of the Guttenburg Bible!

Spencer warned us to be careful about not falling in with gangs and thugs.  I couldn't help it in this Asian exhibit.

One of my favorite artists is Monet.  Even after humanities classes in college, I do not consider myself proficient in art and cannot speak well with artistic terms, but it seems to me that there is movement in Monet's pieces, even the haystack ones.  But the piece above really did seem to move as I walked back from it and from side to side.  I think his paintings are peaceful.

This one is a Picasso, and is not peaceful, but I can respect it all the same for what it does represent, which is a double life.  There are some pieces that I viewed that I tried to respect, if just for the sake of art, but to this home town girl, I just couldn't even squeak out reasons for some of them to be hanging in an art museum.  As it seems that some of the art is produced just to breed controversy, I hope that the artist will respect my perspective on their "art," or what I might deem at non-art, which just seems all jumbled, but then that could be artistic too, right? Right, that's about how confused I felt at seeing some of the art there!

The vase was dated at 320 B.C.!!!

The Chagall windows were very impressive!  They were among the few pieces that were featured in the high brow film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  

The real reason I went to the museum is to take a picture with these two.  American Gothic, is a painting of a farmer and his daughter, representing standing for Midwestern traditions and culture.  It looks like they are sitting on my shoulder as I give my best gothic face.  I could've been a little more down in the mouth, I guess.

The next day, Mark joined me in walking through some of the downtown area and we were interested to find pieces of other buildings built into the The New York Times building.  The pieces above include an ancient temple in China and a piece of Notre Dame.  We partook of Chicago's famous Garrett's caramel popcorn and Giordano's deep dish pizza, which kept us full for 7 hours of walking.

This trip solidified the fact that we are getting old, in three ways: 1. The weekend we were there happened to be the weekend of the NFL draft, which was held in Millennial Park, and instead of going to check it out, we decided to avoid the crowds. 2. We walked to Navy Pier, where there were shops and a ferris wheel, but we decided to avoid the shops and rides and just enjoy the water and the pier. 3. We took an architecture tour on the Chicago River and thought it very interesting.  An architecture tour.  We just felt old as we walked around in our orthodic shoes.

But really, the tour was very interesting, with out tour guide spouting history and architectural terms that enlightened us to a different form of art.

After a delicious dinner of sushi, on top of the remains of Giordano's pizza, this is as close as I could or would get to a giant chocolate bar.  That and the fact that it was $50.00.

On Sunday, we rented a car and took off for Sycamore, an hour West of Chicago, to visit Elford's grave site. For some reason that picture didn't download, but I promise you we were there and we left some flowers in his memory.  We also did some searching for other Astling family members and found them to be at the opposite end of the cemetery as Elford and his parents.

We found Elford's Uncle Donald. . 

. . and Mark's Great, Great Grandma Ann and Grandpa Joseph Astling, among other family members.

Mark was happy to find them because in his last visit he tried looking around Elford's grave site, but couldn't find anything.

It was a fun, enlightening, wonderful trip that we were happy to make together!

The Spencer Gazette

 Probably the best way to begin an update about Spencer is to show you what goes on with him and his iPod.  His iPod was removed from use for the first half of the term, but he raised his grades again so he's back to accompanying everything he does with a continual loop of his favorite songs and texting with friends with these ever-so-important messages.

Spencer and his friends have a running joke about linking everything to illuminati. I wouldn't ask him about it unless you've got some time to kill.

Favorite game.  So favorite that we've downloaded the techno music that it plays.

And here are some friends having fun with his iPod as well.

Spencer has found some fulfillment in cooking.  The dish below is called Hawaiian Haystacks.  I have never made these before, but they were tasty and Spencer was proud.

He will often come home for lunch and create some sort of fruit salad and routinely makes over-easy eggs for himself.  He discovered today the importance of choosing the right pan for the job as the eggs ended up more scrambled than over-easy.

 Pancakes with attitude.

Spencer's very big news is the removal of his braces.

He now wears a clear retainer and except for one scare today, has kept track of it quite well. He received numerous packs of gum and chewy candy after the removal.

Spencer still loves to create.  He has never moved out of the phase of "the box is more fun than the toy," and will still ask, after someone has opened a box of something, if he can have that box to make something else.  The above mask happens to be made out of a baseball hat, a milk jug, duct tape and permanent marker.

Spencer's lego creations during General Conference.

Unicorn Spencer. (at Barb and Dave Parkinson's house)

After a scout camp, Spencer and troop started making up names for themselves, but Spencer couldn't just keep it at that.  He came home and developed a game based on the names and, of course, involved his brothers in the process.

Spencer came home from the Spring Camporee very proud indeed. He hit the target six times in a row, which was the next close to the record of 11.  One of the camp leaders was so impressed he gave Spencer a knife.  I would've preferred a compass or a boondoggle kit, but Spencer thinks he's pretty cool with a knife.   Side note: the boys are looking over my shoulder and asked what boondoggle is. I looked up the definition: work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value. True.

  

The D.J. Chronicle

D.J. observed this week that it is the first week since November that he hasn't had any activity to run to after school.  November through March was full of wrestling training and competition. D.J. chose a new sport for the Astling family: track, which filled March and April. More on that later.

First, I thought this picture was fitting to start of with because D.J.'s favorite position is slouching.  Also, it is a before picture. Before Mark fulfilled his dreams of being a hairdresser.  D.J. wanted to grow his hair long, but we required it to be styled (washed and combed) if it was long.  He is against styling (not washing, just combing), so Mark tried his hand at styling.

I think he got four ponytails in all.

These two pictures are some of the last before we persuaded him to go to Sportscuts (thank you to whomever thought of showing sports while getting a hair cut). The shorter cut is in the track pictures below.  Hubba hubba!

D.J. chose two events for track: shot put and discus.  This made Grandpa Wheeler happy and interested because those are the events that he did in high school and received a college scholarship for (discus).

D.J.'s season record for shot put is 23'11".  In addition to Grandpa's words of wisdom, he had good peers helping and a variety of coaches.

There were three track meets total, which I would describe as loud teenager chaos, but miraculously accomplished all events.

D.J.'s season discus record is 62'6".  It was just fun to watch him try so hard, progress and feel good about his accomplishments.

So now that school is winding down and D.J. is not involved in sports, he has some time on his hands to do whatever he wants.  This day he wanted to build a rope ladder across the swing set.  I often watch them from the kitchen window with the phone close by in case I need to call 911.  But I didn't even stay in the kitchen this time, as I knew I would be needed on hand before the ambulance could get there.  And of course I had to take pictures for proof to show the paramedics of what he was really doing.

D.J. did not think it would be efficient to tie PVC pipe on both sides of the pipe, so I just tied them in the middle.  He must have figured stability is no fun.

He starts from one side (multiple times) and learned that crossing on your belly doesn't work.

But crossing on you back gets you farther.

Farther into what, is the question.

He finally did it and nobody was hurt in the making of this rope ladder.

D.J. said the Spring Camporee was one of the best Scout Camps he's ever been to.  Even though it was cold and raining, the mix of activities, friends and leaders proved to be a successful recipe.