Braces

Welcome to Step Two of Operation Update Blog. In this post...braces! (Disclaimer: These pictures may have been taken in an actual orthodontist's office, or they may have been taken in an alien spaceship. You can't really tell the difference.)

 They give you these sunglasses because they use very bright lights. Don't I look fabulous, darling?

 To make you feel a bit better about the incredible amount pain you are about to stagger through in the next few weeks, (note: I'm joking...mostly...) they give you a large assortment of band colors to choose from, arrayed on an attractive plastic wheel.

 After the braces.

First, the nice picture. 

Now, the not so nice one. AAGGGHHH!!!!!! What have they done to me?

Chicago

Now for step one of Operation Update Blog!
Okay. Here we go.

Skipping over a Head-to-Head meet,

a new backsplash, 

and a clown, 

   I will now proceed to tell y'all about our spring break. 

   Ahem. 

"We just got back from the Windy City, 

the Windy City is mighty pretty..."

(I hope you enjoyed that Brinli.) 

   Anyway. We went to Chicago, Illinois, also known as the Windy City. It was pretty fun and we took enough pictures to sink a ship. I will only include the best for your viewing pleasure! 

This is the trunk of the cramped, cramped car we went in. Fortunately we stayed in a hotel or we never would have survived.

   We started off with a trip to the Field Museum, which was very awesome. Unfortunately none of the exhibits came alive for us. I guess you have to visit there at night. (For the totally bemused in the audience, this is a reference to Night at the Museum.) 

Our family (minus me, the photographer) with Sue. Great face on Samuel, eh? 

We actually discovered that the head on the actual Sue is a fake (the real one is too heavy) and the real head is upstairs. Samuel seems fairly unfazed by the dinosaur head. Dad and I might have freaked out a bit...

We took some pictures in the gift shop which are, I must say, rather awesome. Behold:

Dad and Samuel in...actually, I have no clue what these are, except for the fairly certain fact that they are to be worn atop the head.

If you're a little confused right now, this is a panda hat. This is Mom's panda pose. Isn't it awesome? :)

The next day, we visited the neato Shedd Aquarium. The bulk of our pictures were taken here. Lucky for you, I will only put a few of the skillion jillion pictures we took on here.

In the entry, we noticed this cool shark. It's like a blimp you steer with a remote control. (If anybody out there is thinking of getting me a random present, I hear you can also get a dolphin version of this.) 

We took tons of pictures of the jellyfish exhibit. I never knew that jellyfish were so weird.

These little guys are called egg yolk jellyfish. Weird, huh?

These are way weird: upside-down jellyfish. They just lie on their backs with their legs in the air. They must live very boring lives.

We also visited the penguins.

Just one example of why I need a penguin! The zookeepers were petting penguins on their laps, with a long line of hopeful penguins waiting impatiently in a line. When they left, all the penguins followed. So cute!

A bunch of adorable penguins penguining around. The line in the picture is the glass.

Lunch break!

These are weird little worm thingys that live in holes in the ocean floor. Evidently their one purpose in life is to poke their heads out of their holes and amuse people. 

Look! I found Nemo! 

This is a huge snake from the Amazon River. I'm glad it was in a cage, because I think it wants to kill me. 

Now, scary giant bullet ants. Don't know why they were in an aquarium, but I think they also want to kill me. 

This is how we ended up: Dad and Samuel asleep, Mom sitting on a bench probably about to fall asleep, me trying to figure out where we are, and Andrew taking embarrassing pictures. (This is the least embarrassing, included only for accuracy.) 

After wandering for a while, we came upon the gift shop and took more goofy pictures.

 Star Wars...and otters.

 Harry Potter...and otters. It doesn't get much better (read: nerdier) than that.

I love how Samuel is holding the snake by the throat (the only safe way to hold a snake.)

At the Museum of Science and Industry, they had a Mythbusters exhibit in which you could try some of the safer exhibits, those not involving explosions. 

Dad tried to pull a tablecloth from under some (plastic) dishes, leaving them standing there. 

I tried to get dressed in a "superhero" outfit as fast as they can in movies. I failed miserably. But don't I look great? ;)

Mom tried to dodge a bullet. She didn't do so well.

Gift shop pictures...I think Dad should have bought that beret, don't you?

We also went to the Chicago Art Institute, which was way cool.

They had these nifty lions out front. I really like this picture.

The little round things are not, as Andrew believes, primitive yo-yos. Although they look a lot like them. They are teeny tiny boxes. 

My favorite part of the museum was the Thorne rooms, a collection of itty bitty rooms. They are so realistic it's almost scary. I could have stayed there all day. 

 Me and Samuel, appreciating art...we were getting a little tired at this point (probably like you are right now, reading all of this-I'll wrap it up soon) which is why we were sitting on the floor. 

Mom, Dad, and American Gothic...

We had lunch at a little Italian restaurant before heading home. 

Here I am in front of the restaurant.

We had a great time and will hopefully be coming back to Chicago sometime!

I'm BAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness. I have been a very bad girl and have not posted for...let me see...pretty much three months. I have missed A LOT. However, here I am! So as not to be completely confusing, I'm going to post stuff in sort of separate posts, with an overview at the beginning of things which happened in between and weren't significant enough to deserve their own post. Please don't be too confused. Or angry. Here we go!!!

General Conference

     This is going to be just a quick post about General Conference. We had Conference Breakfast as usual with yummy cinnamon rolls and sausage and fruit and eggs and all that good stuff. Cinnamon rolls...om nom nom :) So our friends the Ostergaards and the Larsens came over and had breakfast and talked about Conference with us. The general consensus was that all the speakers were fabulous! I liked Jeffery R. Holland's and President Eyring's a lot. I'm going to refrain from telling about all of my favorites so that this post won't drag on into infinity and bore you to death...but I am going to mention one more thing that was pretty funny.

     All of you who have watched Conference may remember one speaker's reference to something President Kimball said when he was asked what to do in a boring Sacrament Meeting; President Kimball replied, "I don't know; I've never been in one."

     At this point, Samuel looked up from his Conference Bingo and emphatically stated, "I have!" (Oh well, at least he was paying attention...*sigh*)

Butterflies

Today, since we didn't have school, we went with our buddies the Larsens to the Butterfly House, which is a very fun place to explore in Dow Gardens here in Midland. They have about fifteen hundred thousand bajillion types (okay, I have no idea how many, but it's a lot) of butterflies. They are brought in from all over the world and if you haven't ever been to see them, it's pretty awesome.

Here's Samuel with a little bright yellow butterfly.

Samuel had two butterflies here-a little tiny one on his shoulder (more on that one later) and one on his hand.

This is me and my butterfly BFF. Allow me to explain. Andrew handed me this Queen butterfly, (which, by the way, kept walking all over me) and it adopted me. It would not go away. I would give it to someone else to hold, and after a few minutes, it would stubbornly flutter back to me. So naturally, we have a lot of pictures of me holding this butterfly.

Samuel and his butterfly BFF. This was a really, really cute little one with black wings and a big, bright orange body. I still have NO idea what type of butterfly it is, so if anybody figures it out, please let me know!

Andrew and a Julia butterfly, which are INCREDIBLY hard to catch-wow! :)

I don't know what kind of butterfly this is either, but it looks really cool, and it was really big (for a butterfly.)

The Butterfly that would not leave...

And here it is again...

Andrew and some type of butterfly

Andrew showing a butterfly to Kate Larsen

Andrew was SO lucky to get this: two Blue Morpho  butterflies at once! He immediately drew a large crowd.

Samuel, me, and Beth Larsen (and various butterflies)

Andrew and Samuel and their butterflies

   We had a great time visiting the butterflies!