Our next kid's name will be Vince

Nathen and I drove home together after we picked them up from the airport. On the way there, he told me that we should try to convince Jennifer and Sara to go up to Green Bay to check out Lambeau Field. You can tell by these pictures who runs the families here...da boyz!

In past posts I have tried my best to explain Packer love and how it is a major string in the tapestry of Wisconsin culture. One can never fully understand how cool the Packers really are unless he or she has made a pilgrimage to Green Bay. Lambeau field is absolutely immaculate, its like the Palace of Versailles minus The Sun King plus Favre the Great. And the tours they give are very good. They've even managed to hire guides with thick Wisconsin accents. You get to sit in the most expensive seats, walk through the players' tunnel, walk on the field and hear all about the history of the team. I'm very glad that Nathen convinced us all to go up there. It's one of those little trips that we always said we wanted to do, but had never gotten around to. The trip up there was only an hour and a half, and Green Bay itself is very pretty, although we had a really hard time finding a place to get a good picture of the water.

Playin' at the Piper

I thought these were some pretty good pictures of Annie and Zoe at the Organ Piper pizza joint. This was definitely Zoe and Annie's favorite eatin' place.

Attack of the Killer Elmo

When I was growing up, my favorite toy was a My Pet Monster critter who I named Marcus. He was terrifying in a very cute sort of way. We discovered on Zoe's birthday that Tickle Me Elmo is cute in a very terrifying sort of way. Annie and Zoe hovered around attentively as I loosened the twist tie bindings that were restraining this fuzzy beast in his cardboard cell. His beady eyes and trusting grin deceived me into releasing him onto the carpet to begin his dance of death. Once he sprung into life the area was instantly vacated by our little girls both retreating into their corners in hopes that Elmo wouldn't see them. And then the crying began. Elmo giggled and laughed because he knew he had won, and that we were forever in his servitude.

Since that fateful day we have regained the status of dominant predator in the Elmo-McArthur eco-system. He now does as we please, and only laughs when it is clearly appropriate. Zoe has warmed up to him and has even become sort of an Elmo whisperer. Once he begins slapping his knee and wobbling about, she cautiously knocks him over and runs away, before he has a chance to see her, thus gaining the advantage. It really is a pretty amazing toy, you just push his tummy and he stands up and does his little act. This is the world's first step towards robot dominance. All those sci-fi shows are wrong, if we ever get to a point where every family has a Rosie-like robot at their service, each of these animatrons will be red and fuzzy with a big orange nose, and evil browless eyes.

Zoe turns One!

Wow, a year has passed since my inflated wife waddled into the hospital and brought our precious little Zoe into the world. I sure love that little kid. I proved my love for her by showering her with far more presents than I should have on her first birthday. It was great to have Zoe's aunt and uncle and cousin out to help us celebrate. We put all three to work in an effort to capture this once in a life time experience in a well-wrapped package of Kodak gold. I was on the cell phone with one grandma while Jennifer held up the web-cam for the other. Sara was in charge of the "snappy" camara and Annie was in charge of testing out the toys when Zoe had moved on to the next one. We always put Nathen in charge of the video camara since he's tall enough to get the entire perspective.

Don't worry, I will spare you the pictures of Zoe making a Hiroshimatic mess with her homemade Elmo cake, but I can't avoid posting this picture of her yelping with disdain as we tried to remove her from her airplane car to get ready for bed. After her bath she spent the remainder of the evening relaxing in her new wagon. To this day, she can spend an hour getting in and out of that wagon, its our favorite babysitter. We're very fortunate to have a good little girl as part of our family, we're big Zoe fans. I'm surprised at how often I wonder to myself what she's gonna be like in a year from now. I thought it was a ball to watch my Sea Monkeys grow, but this is at least ten times better. Happy Birthday Zoe!

The Air Up There

Yep, we hauled Nathen, Jennifer and Annie up to the top of the Sears Tower. This is all part of the Kason and Sara tour of Chicago (admission to buildings not included). Just the other day Sara was telling me that we have far too many pictures from the observation deck on top of the Sears Tower. She's probably right. I am quite proud of myself though for having not posted all of them on my blog. Here's Nathen dancing with Annie atop the Western Hemisphere's tallest skyscraper. Just look at those building way down there, from the ground those buildings are no short chunks of steel, but from big daddy Sears, they look like toothpicks. Zoe has a strange addiction to the step that surrounds the telescope thingies in the observation deck. As soon as the elevator gets to the top floor she makes a bee-line to one of them and steps up and down the entire time, while the rest of us are pointing and picturing.

Sara recently informed me of an upcoming Chicago skyscraper scheduled to be completed in 2011, the Chicago Spire. I'm so excited about this I might wet my pants. Check out the new Chicago skyline:

The skyscraper will be 150 stories tall (compared to the Sears Tower's 110 stories) and when completed will be the Western Hemisphere's tallest building (by the way, the CN Tower in Toronto is taller than the Sears Tower, but not a skyscraper). Look how close it'll be to Navy Pier, too! The coolest thing about this joint is that it will be twisted from top to bottom, and designed by Santiago Calatrava, the same guy who did the Milwaukee Art Museum. This isn't some architect's pipe dream either, the foundation has already been poured and the plans have been set in motion. For any of you skyscraper fans, the wikipedia site is worth a read, be careful though, as you click from building to building, you will get lost in a fantastic maze of super structures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire. The world's in a skyscraper fever pitch right now, with most of the action happening in Asia, so its nice to have some fun getting built close to home as well. Oh if only I could visit the United Arab Emirates to see the completion of the Burj Dubai...ho hum.

The Pier, Pizza, and a Promenade

On the way back to Milwaukee from Nauvoo we made a touristic stop in Chicago. This was our first time to walk the length of Navy Pier, and I'm still not certain if I liked it or not. I think the view at the end of the long plank is worth the walk, but I can't say it was worth the parking fee. It was a beautiful day, and I really like this picture of us against the Chicago skyline. No matter how many times I've been to Chicago I can never get over its sheer immensity and energy. What a great town. We saddled up the strollers and took a hike up and down Michigan Avenue this time as well. When it comes down to famous streets in big cities Michigan Avenue just about fits up there with the Champs Elyses and Park Avenue. I guess the big difference is that I was hoping to see some world-famous monument or building as we marched from cross street to cross street, but I never really saw anything. Maybe I'm just not well enough versed in my Chicago lore.

One thing I do know about Chicago though is that the best pizza joint in town is Giordano's. You better believe we patronized this fine establishment and stuffed ourselves with stuffed pizza. The good people at Giordano's know how to make the perfect pizza pie, but they do so under the premise that it takes about 45 minutes to turn an order into a product. This is why the picture above features the blurry versions of Zoe and Annie. In 45 minutes the two of them had run out of new things to chew on and throw across the room and had begun to channel their energy through more wiggly pursuits. Notice that all the spillable vessels had been relocated to the less reachable ends of the table. The pizza was great and there were no left overs. Mmm Giordano's.

Zoe in the Onion

About two weeks ago we went with Sara's parents and brother to the Lakefront Brewery. Randy, Diane and Tyler were looking for a stereotypical Milwaukeean experience, so we delivered to them a fish fry, a polka band, and a brewery tour all in the same evening. During the tour, the Brewery people took pictures of Zoe and interviewed her for their ad in The Onion. The issue with her add came out today, and we couldn't be prouder of our little brew princess. I guess we are now officially an integral part of Milwaukee culture.

You can click on the picture over there and a larger view of the picture will show up so you can read her answers to the interview questions.

Sunset by the Mississippi

Utahns haven't the foggiest idea of the immensity of the Mississippi River. First time I crossed it was on the way out here back in October of 2006 as we were hunting for a hotel in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We ended up crossing the river about 9 times that night since Burger King had some sort of patty flipping seminar in town which booked every hotel in the county. Since then I've developed some sort of Mississippi river fedish that I can not get over. There was plenty of river to go around the days we were in Nauvoo, as the prior week's storms caused flooding the likes of which hadn't been seen in decades. And the mosquitos came rolling in. We had a great time with Jennifer, Nathen and Annie in Nauvoo, it was a lot of fun to go on a road trip.

To your left you will see an old red brick building...

Did you know that when it came down to getting the City of Nauvoo official in the eyes of the state of Illinois (the Nauvoo Charter), one of the main Illinois legislators to support the Nauvoosians was Abraham Lincoln?

Look what a beautiful day it was when we went on our horse-drawn wagon ride through the City of Nauvoo! Last time we sat in this wagon Sara was great with child and every bump put the funniest of looks on her face. This time there were plenty of funny looks on Sara's face, most of them generated by the frustration of trying to stop Zoe from squirming right over the side of the wagon. Even Mike and Mack, our quadraped chauffers, weren't able to extend her attention span to the necessary 45 minutes of the wagon ride. This wagon ride is the best way to see all of Nauvoo without having to do all that walking. After the ride you go back into town and visit the little shops and see the river. This makes Nauvoo pretty doable in one day. Of course, you want to stay at the Nauvoo Family Inn and Suites, and perhaps stay an additional day just to lounge about in the hotel and take it easy. Zoe really liked her bonnet, probably because when something is tied to your head you get to be pretty close friends.

The Lion and The Zoe

This is Zoe on a lion that she found behind the Nauvoo temple.

The City Beautiful

Part of the reason we invited Nathen and Jennifer to come visit is so they could take pictures of us. Clearly we made it to Nauvoo. We've decided that the best road into town is the one that runs along the Mississippi from Carthage. It is so cool to make the turn into town and see the temple show up around the corner. The building itself is huge to area standards (there's a lot of nothing between Chicago and Nauvoo), but can you imagine showing up in old-days Nauvoo to see this gorgeous building...perhaps the tallest building you've ever seen? Too bad it got all burned down and tornadoed. I'll never forget the general conference session when President Hinckley announced its rebuilding.


We went through the temple this time, and had the oppourtunity to do a little bit of tourism while inside. The little old man took us down to the basement of the building to see the baptismal font, and showed us the spiral staircase that climbs from the basement to the top floor, whithout a pillar in the middle. Call me sappy if you want, but I found it very emotional to stand at the front door of the temple looking out towards the Mississippi River, wondering if Daniel D. McArthur did the same thing 160 years ago. His farm was located where the Visitors Center currently stands. Meanwhile, Sara's relative, Ira Allen, arrived in Nauvoo to find that the house he had previously bought was in the process of burning to the ground. This house was directly across the street from the temple to the South. He then returned home to earn the money for buying a new house. When he finally returned to Nauvoo, Brigham Young asked him to donate the money to the church, which he did. Ira and his family ended up spending 3 or 4 years in Winter Quarters helping other families get to Salt Lake with financial support. We appreciate the struggle our relatives went through, and we show that appreciation by camping very rarely. Nauvoo has become quite a special place to us.

Jail Break at Carthage

As we were leaving Salt Lake City to move to Milwaukee Sara pulled out a wallet-sized picture of Annie and taped it to the gear shift. This was back when Annie was a wee lass of only one month. We were pretty sad to be leaving home, and were very worried that we would never get to know our new little niece. Over the last year and a half though, we've found a lot of reasons to visit Annie and her parents, and we were very grateful that they came out to see us. Zoe and Annie were certainly not in the mood to sit through a tour, and we'd been through Carthage Jail before, so we took Annie and Zoe outside to run around and eat rocks. Hopefully Nathen and Jennifer enjoyed their brief jail break. While we were out there Sara took some of the best pictures of Zoe and Annie ever. I particularly like the one on the top up there where the little sun beams are coming in. But I don't want to go on and on about the kids all day, just let it be known that regardless of our living 1440 miles from Nathen and Jennifer, Zoe and Annie have turned out to be best friends forever.

Carthage Jail was as good as an experience as ever. From there we were off on our way, along the river road from Keokuk to Nauvoo. That's right, I said Keokuk. Only two weeks before our trip there was some very severe flooding in the area and I was amazed how high the water level was. We made it through without getting our feet wet, got settled into our hotel and went out on the town.