Reading All Day Long

I had this fantasy in my head for many years, and it went like this: I would get a job where all I did was read all day long. Eight hours a day, a constantly changing stack of books which in turn entertain and provoke deep thoughts, just me and my La-Z-Girl recliner. That's the life.

Or is it? (Dun, dun, dunnnn!)

I've had the chance to test out my all-reading-all-the-time theory this semester, and wouldn't you know, it's not quite as fun as I expected it to be. By the end of the semester, here's what I will have read:

Writing for Mass Media: about 200 pages
American History Before 1865: about 450 pages (plus a 300 page textbook, the spine of which is perfectly intact and will remain so)
Literature of the Sacred: 1,659

Seriously, one class has over 1600 pages assigned, and that's a conservative estimate. I'm not even including the two 200 page books and many articles suggested as research for the paper due in at the end of the semester. I've done a fair amount of skimming where I could and picked up a couple of audiobook versions of novels so I could squeeze every drop of productivity out of my day. This semester is truly testing my love of reading. I may have to take up a new hobby, like bullying nerds or playing kickball or whatever it is that non-readers do for fun.

I knew when I first saw the syllabus for my lit class that it was going to be a killer, so I have no one but myself to blame for this deluge of paper and ink. No one but myself...and my professor, of course. Not only did he assign an acre's worth of dead trees to be read in 15 short weeks, but he made the class so freaking interesting that I couldn't possibly make myself drop it. This is probably my second-favorite class I've ever taken. It has a lot in common with my #1 favorite class, Ethics and Values. Both are extremely thought-provoking--I lay in bed and churn over what we discussed. Both make me examine what I believe and why. But I don't remember Ethics and Values even requiring a textbook, so it's going to stay the winner. Sometimes practicality trumps quality.

Since misery loves company, and I'm all about the misery this semester, here's a list of the books I've been reading.

History:
The Jesuit Relations: about the French Jesuit missionaries in Canada during the 1600's. They were trying to convert the Native ummm...Canadians? Wait, what do you call them in Canada? I'm going with Indians here, because the book was all about being not politically correct; the Jesuits called them savages and worse. The missionaries were required to send yearly reports back to France, telling about all their baptizing and conquests and such. I couldn't read this without being outraged at the treatment of the Indians and the arrogance and superiority exhibited by the Europeans. Outrage--it's the emotion of the semester.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, respectively: More outrage, this time over slavery. I'm not quite finished with Slave Girl, but when I'm done I'm going to write a paper about the role of Christianity in the lives of the slaveholders. The hypocrisy! It's insane. The violence and mental torture is too much for me to read sometimes.

Literature of the Sacred: The Literary History of Adam & Eve

Eve & Adam - this is our main textbook, which has a cartoon picture of a naked Eve on the front, causing much uncomfortableness for my tween-age son. The book is an anthology of documents that show how the Adam and Eve story has been interpreted for the last, oh, 2500 years or so. The fascinating thing about the story in Genesis is that it is basically a blank slate for each culture/society to write their own meaning onto. Does your society value women? Then Eve saved humanity from being stuck in a boring garden. Does your society value men? Then Eve was an evil temptress. Want to keep women subject to men? Stress the superiority of Adam. Reading how people (priests, rabbis, novelists, etc) interpreted Adam and Eve tells more about that culture than it does about Adam and Eve.

Book of Urizen by William Blake: Almost completely incomprehensible. Thank goodness for wikipedia, so I could actually understand what was going on, mostly.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelly: This book was slow to start but picked up speed further in. It's obviously a Creation story and an entertaining one at that. My professor wrote his dissertation on Frankenstein, so we spent a good bit of time talking about it. I read Dracula two years ago for a Brit Lit class, and frankly, I enjoyed Dracula more than Frankenstein. I don't know how that's relevant to this blog post, but there you go.

Cain by Lord Byron: This is a play, I think, and I skimmed it.

Autobiography of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain: The first and only (so far) book in this class that I would read again for fun. Twain writes (in two separate stories) Adam's diary and Eve's diary from the time that they are first created to when they're kicked out of the garden. It's funny and it has that great timelessness--written like 150 years ago and still nailing the stereotypes of men and women. I highly recommend reading this.

Just because I like you, here's a link to the free Kindle version of Eve's Diary and Adam's Diary. Read Adam's Diary first.

Tomorrow's Eve by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam: The other book my professor wrote his dissertation about, but this was deeper than Frankenstein and less entertaining. It was written in the later 1800's and contains the first use of the word "android," to describe the robot a fictional Thomas Edison created to be the girlfriend of a friend of his. If you like science fiction, this might be of interest to you, as it's an early entry into that genre. My prof considers it one of the most important books no one's read. I'm just glad to be done with it.

God's Grace by Bernard Malamud: This one is on tap for Thanksgiving break. Also sci-fi, and maybe post-apocalyptic to boot. The only thing I know is that Prof. Peterson warned the class that there is a scene of human-monkey sex, and the most disturbing part of the scene is that by the time it happens, the idea of human-monkey sex is not disturbing.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: This is also on the syllabus for December. I've read it before, wasn't impressed the first time, but then I tend to read for plot first and this play has basically none. But it's one of those classic things that English majors have to read and pretend to find really, really deep and meaningful. This time I might just rent the video instead.

Women and Authority by Maxine Hanks (editor): Now this is an interesting book. It's a collection of essays written by Mormon (or soon-to-be-former-Mormons) about LDS feminist issues. When I told Prof. Peterson that I wanted to write my final paper on women in the LDS Church, he looked at me carefully and asked, "Are you a practicing Mormon?" I said that I was, and I could see him weighing whether or not to encourage me in this topic. Finally he asked me, "What are you going to do with information you find disturbing?" A good question. The problem is, when you spend ten weeks (so far) studying women's issues in a religious context, questions are going to pop up. It's fine to say, "Oh, so that's why Paul was such a jerk about women two thousand years ago," but the next thought is, "I wonder what my religion teaches about this issue." I told Prof. Peterson that it's too late--I already had disturbing information, and I think the best way to deal with it is just lay it all out on the table and accept the good with the bad. When it comes to information, I have to go all in. He relaxed a little--I think it would have bothered him to have a faithful member leave the church over what we learned in his class. He said, "The important thing is for you to stay in. The church won't change because of what people outside the church say or do--it'll only change from within." And then he gave me this link to the book Women and Authority .

He was right to warn me. Thought-provoking? Oh, yes. Disturbing? Also yes. I don't agree with a lot that the authors in the book say, and in fact several of the authors seem to contradict each other as well. But the ideas in the book--primarily about the equality/inequality of women in the church, the church hierarchy and women's place in it, and women's relationship to the priesthood--several of the ideas reinforced questions I've asked myself. For example, why aren't women ever asked to pray in General Conference? Why does so much time and money go into Cub & Boy Scouts but not Activity Days and Young Women? Why don't sister missionaries get to stay for two whole years, and why do they have to wait two years longer than the boys? I've had wonderful male leaders and I sustain all of them, but sometimes I have to ask myself why men and not women? Fundamentally, why? Women and Authority looks at that question and comes up with a lot of disturbing answers. I don't know exactly what I believe on this topic right now, but I know that the Holy Ghost will confirm the truth of all things, and that's what I'm relying on.

Well, that was a little bit of a diversion, wasn't it? Possibly I'll write more on the topic of women in the LDS church at a future time, after I've written my paper about it and, of course, when I've finally finished reading the 500 pages I've got left this semester. If I ever finish the 500 pages I've got left. In the meantime, if there's an earthquake in Utah, you can find my broken body crushed under the weight of too many books. And here I thought reading all day would be fun.

Today's Very Dumb Thing

Sometimes I do dumb things. Like not turning the wheel sharply enough when backing Ryan's car out of the garage, causing the passenger mirror to hit the wall of the garage and snap the plastic housing into pieces. That was one dumb thing I did today, but not the dumbest, not by a long shot.

I have this idea in my head that I can do anything if I try hard enough. I don't know if my mother specifically said those words to me once when I was a kid and she was trying to get me to do my 5th grade math homework, or if it was just implied in an effort to "give me wings" or whatever. Anyhow, the idea stuck, and it's served me well, for the most part. But the dark side of that theory is a little bit of hubris, that feeling like I'm invincible and there's nothing I can't do. Arrogance, I think.

Today's Very Dumb Thing started innocently enough. Ryan and I were looking at the latest in a long line of get-thin-quick schemes, and landed on Boot Camps. I found one that was only thirty minutes a day, three days a week and had a Groupon available. Sounds great, right? Never mind that I weigh as much as I did when I was nine months pregnant with Brad. Never mind that my current exercise regimen consists of ab curls to roll myself out of my La-Z-Boy chair when I'm too La-Z to flip down the footrest. Never mind that the treadmill I bought six weeks ago serves as a 6-inch step for reaching things in my closet. I can do anything if I try hard enough!

Then yesterday, the day before my first Boot Camp session, I'm browsing UVU's website and find buried in the Student Health and Wellness section that the school offers free Zumba classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays from noon-1. I know, right?! I love Zumba! So much! And I'm already at school until 11:50 those days! And it's FREE! How lucky am I to find the class I love at the absolute most convenient time ever and for zero dollars?! I tell everyone in the house about the class and I'm so excited that I have to start right away and check it out. That means Monday, today, the same day as my first Boot Camp class.

How come the dumbness is so blatant in hindsight when the original plan seemed so realistic? I mean, Boot Camp is only thirty minutes long, so how hard can it be? How hard can it be, indeed!

I am now going to skip the details of both the Zumba class and the Boot Camp class and sum it up like this: Bad, bad idea. Pick one or the other, but not both. By the time Boot Camp was over, I had all of the normal hard-workout symptoms: shaky legs, sore muscles, headache. But it's worse. My ears are pounding. I've got this cough. My throat is like sandpaper. My back is shaky, which is wiggling all the back fat. The roof of my mouth hurts. Why would the roof of my mouth hurt? I have no idea, but it does.

I stopped at a gas station at the mouth of Provo Canyon on the way home to get some chocolate milk, which is recommended as a "recovery drink" after a workout. I'm hoping that, due to its location, the gas station employees see red-faced, shaking, sweaty, mouth-breathing post-workout victims all the time. I bet I didn't even stand out! Until, that is, my debit card slipped out of my trembling fingers and it took me a full ten seconds to bend all the way down to the ground and pick it up. And then I messed up the swiping/pin entry/button-pushing three separate times because nothing seemed to be making sense in my head. Now I should put in my pin? No, now? Green is for what?

The bottom line is this: technically, I was right. I can do anything I want if I try hard enough, even if it's dumb things like going from sloth-mode to two workouts in one day. But it's really not a good idea. Not only will it hurt really, really badly, but it will make me want to eat ice cream to soothe my exercise-induced sore throat. Or the Halloween candy that I bought a week early. Seriously, I'm on a roll with Very Dumb Things this week.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to super-glue Ryan's passenger mirror housing back together. Somehow, that seems like a much more manageable thing to do.

Growing Up

I broke down while doing the dishes tonight. There's a limit to how long you can do a thankless job without it affecting your mental health, and for me, that limit is two weeks. Two weeks is how long it's been since Shauna left and I got shunted back into the position of dishwasher. Two weeks and I end up crying in the garage when I take out the recycling.

I came up with three possible explanations for today's waterworks. 1) I feel unappreciated, 2) I am chronically dissatisfied with my role as housewife and crying about kitchen cleanup is a manifestation of that, or 3) I am acting overly emotionally because I am depressed. The solution to these possibilities is 1) Suck it up, 2) Suck it up, and 3) WHO ARE YOU CALLING OVERLY EMOTIONAL?!?!?! Honestly, though, I think 1) or 2) are the most likely scenarios, because I've felt pretty good for a while and it wasn't until I surveyed the kitchen disaster and the overflowing sink that I could feel this rage building inside, hot and clenching and explosive.

As the kids filed down to bed I said, "You know, if you're old enough to cook, you're old enough to do your own dishes." One of my children (who shall remain nameless) replied a little snarkily, "I'll do dishes when I cook." I turned my laser-eyes on this darling offspring of mine and growled, in a voice like Sigourney Weaver when she was possessed by Zuul, "You'll do dishes when you EAT!" Burned to a cinder, said child slowly backed away and closed the door to his room. Okay, so overly emotional probably isn't too far off in describing this reaction.

I tried deep breathing, I turned on some music, I distracted myself by thinking of possible topics for my next school paper, but all I could really think was "i hate doing dishes i hate doing dishes i hate doing dishes i really really hate doing dishes!!" Why am I investing so much venom into such a petty situation? It's not like I'm giving birth every day after dinner--it's dishes, it takes fifteen minutes, afterwards the kitchen looks nice. A clean kitchen always makes me happy, but apparently not happy enough to clean it without massive resentment.

Chronic dissatisfaction with my current life's role is a hard trait to confess to, and even harder to fix. What do I do, hire someone else to wash dishes and scrub the bathtub and create an incentive chart to get a) the four-year-old to stop peeing in her panties and b) the fourteen-year-old to practice his instruments so he won't fail band? Of course not. Even if a service like that existed, it'd probably cost a fortune. 'Cause you know why? A mother's role is really hard. And now we're full circle.

Feeling unappreciated is easily solved--I can either talk to the people whose cereal I'm scraping out of plastic bowls and teach them that when someone cleans up their messes, they need to show gratitude, or I can decide that I'm not rinsing out spit-filled, sunflower-seed-shell-holding cups in order to be thanked. I'm doing it out of love. And service. Charity never faileth, unlike the garbage disposal, which faileth every so often.

I'm reading a book called Screamfree Marriage right now, and the main advice that I took from the book is "Grow up." It's a kick-in-the-pants kind of book, this one, but it's good. Grow up, Emily. Be the adult here. This is the life you want, even if it's not the daily chores you want. An adult does her job, even if her job is running after the garbage man in her bathrobe and her ten-year-old's flip flops. An adult gets satisfaction from a clean kitchen. An adult does not create a Google calendar counting down the days until her youngest child starts first grade. An adult does not sit on the garage steps, crying about how hard her life is. If you want this life, sometimes you've got to do the dishes.

I want this life. I'll do the dishes, tonight at least. Tomorrow, I'm teaching the kids how to load a dishwasher.

Girls Are Different From Boys, A Visual Explanation

Before I had Darcey, I had three boys. They were typical boys, I suppose, in that they liked cars and balls and peeing outside. Then I had a girl, who is typical also, in that she likes pink and barbies and telling on her brothers. Sometimes the kids break stereotypes, as in when my boys are melodramatic and overly emotional. Sometimes they don't.

As a visual representation of how girls are different from boys, please see Exhibit A: First Day of School Pictures.


Here's Zack, looking excited for the first day of second grade.

Noah. The enthusiasm for first day of school pictures is waning. But he's a good sport.

Zack and Noah. You can't even tell how much they whined about having to stand that close to each other.


Brad. Under extreme duress. Would rather die than have his first day of school picture taken.

Here's Darcey. She's going into preschool with flair! And jazz hands! I don't think my boys could strike a pose like that if they tried--and they would NEVER try!

Are boys and girls different? I say yes.

The Way It's Supposed To Work

For a long time, Sundays were a day to be feared in our house. The term "day of rest" would garner ironic laughter at best and glowering resentment at worst. The kids, bored by the restrictions meant to make the day special, would harass each other to a degree not seen any other day of the week. Ryan and I would alternately bark at the kids and slump on the couch in companionable misery, longing for the day we could enjoy what the Sabbath was really made for: the Sunday Afternoon Nap.

While we aren't at napping stage yet, recently we've been making great strides in that direction. It's crazy how we get so fixated on something miserable, and when the situation gradually improves, we don't even really notice. Today we had what might be considered an ideal Sunday. I won't use the "p" word (cough *perfect*) but I will say that today we were Ensign-cover-worthy. It was that good.

I was gone most of the morning at YW Presidency meetings, so I'm going to go out on a limb and assume, since the house was still standing and no one was crying when I walked in the door, that the morning went well. The kids got dressed without complaints, even when I had to send Zack back downstairs to change his pants, because the blue slacks did not match the black pinstripe suit coat. Noah discovered that he carries the recessive grilled cheese sandwich gene, which apparently skipped a generation and went from my father straight to his grandson. He toasted some perfectly golden sandwiches for everyone before AND after church. Brad got himself up, showered, dressed, and out the door by 9 to collect fast offerings. He did lay on the couch and moan a lot about how hungry he was, especially while other family members were scarfing grilled cheese, but I only throw that in there to prove that we aren't the "p" word. After church, Noah made my favorite snickerdoodles while Ryan and Shauna went to visit their grandmother in the assisted living facility and the kids watched "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," the version with Donny Osmond, which makes it practically doctrinal.

When Ryan and Shauna came home, the whole family put on a talent show, organized by Zack. (Okay, I know it sounds like I'm just making stuff up now but I swear to you, we had an honest to goodness TALENT SHOW.) Zack played Heart and Soul on the piano, Darcey danced to Zack's piano accompaniment, Noah fed us cookies, Brad played the trumpet, Ryan drew a picture, I sang "A Hundred and Sixty Acres" by Marty Robbins, Shauna cleaned the family room, and Starbucks barked when Brad rang the doorbell (the dog is very, very good at his talent.) The family adjourned to the kitchen, where some of the kids willingly ate salad for a late dinner and played a game where they had a conversation entirely using questions. ("Do you like salad?" "Did somebody say that I didn't?")

If that wasn't enough family fun, we ended up in the living room with a board game called "Would You Rather." We skipped the board game part and just asked the questions: Would you rather have eyebrows that make a complete circle around your face OR flat eyelashes that stick out 10 inches and cannot be trimmed? Would you rather have an alarm clock that gives you a mild, yet jolting electric shock OR one that completely drenches you with ice-cold water? Would you rather live in a world where you needed a quarter to get into every bathroom (including the one in your home) OR where every bathroom only had one square of tissue? We decided that the eyebrows are a much better option than the eyelashes, we were evenly split with the alarm clock issue, and I'm going to install coin-operated locks on the bathrooms because nobody seems to have a problem with that. (Except me. I'd rather carry around a spare roll than a bag of change.)

At bedtime, we spent a solid five minutes deciding who was going to say the family prayer. In the past, this would have been five minutes of contending, cajoling, threatening, begging, bribing, and eventually praying, although with such a bad attitude that I'm shocked lightning hasn't struck us all dead many times over. Ryan came up with a brilliant system a couple months back: we play a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. This is not some wimpy elimination-round type contest, either. All of us throw at the same time and the goal is for all of us to beat one single person. (If one person beats all the rest of us, say Noah has paper and the rest of us has rock, he's out.) We keep throwing, over and over, until finally all five of us have scissors and Brad has paper and we cheer and yell because after a while we start to lose faith that it will ever end. It always does, though, and the grand loser says the prayer. There has never been a single episode of crying over losing, which in itself is a miracle. The kids went off to bed without complaining or coming up fifteen times to "get a drink" or whatever lame-o excuse they're using, and without even fighting in their room so loudly that a referee needs to interfere (this would be Noah and Zack.)

Honestly, if I read an account like this three years ago, when Sundays made me cry, I would have hated the pretentious Perfect Mother who displays her Perfect Children and who couldn't possibly understand what it was like to be me. Then I would feel a combination of jealousy, resentment, self-pity, and fear: if other people can get do Sundays right, why can't I? So the reason I'm writing this is 1) to have written proof to myself that this day wasn't a figment of my imagination, or possibly a hallucination caused by a head wound incurred when I slipped on those $#!^%$ Legos that coat my floor and 2) to shine a beacon of hope onto those of you who are a few years behind me in child-rearing. It does get easier! For reals! And we don't have to wait for those precious years after our kids are grown and before they move back in with their wives and children! Maybe someday soon we can even (gasp!) take a Sunday Afternoon Nap!

This Is Probably Not Worth Reading. Hooray!

Well, I've had some good ideas in my day, but apparently moving my blog to a professional-ish website wasn't one of them. I thought that I would take my writing more seriously if I had something a little fancier, the same way I keep promising that if we completely re-landscape the backyard, I'll actually sit outside.

Here's the truth about my attempt at a personal website. My favorite quote is by Ben Franklin: "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." So the goal with my new site was to write things worth reading; presumably, doing things worth writing would come later. Seems straight-forward, right? Problem is, it takes an awful lot of self-confidence to say, "This thing that I just wrote is worth reading." I've definitely written a few things that I love, but how can I stare at a blank blog page and tell myself to write something that people will like. That kind of pressure does not produce quality writing, I'll tell you that much. It produces months-long writer's block, is what it produces. Couple that with this lovely bit: the first strangers I told the name of my site to all thought that the site was for book reviews. Having to say, out loud, that I thought my own writing was worth reading...well, I don't have that kind of moxie. Maybe someday. But not now.

So I'm back. I brought over the 40 or so posts I made over the last year--the formatting's kind of funky, especially with photos, but whatever. I want to go back to writing about my life and my kids and my opinions on reality tv shows and my endless deliberations on what major to pick (yeah, I'm not making a compelling case for continued reading here, am I?) Most of all, I want to go back to the pressure-free environment, where everything I write does not have to be worth reading. Strangely, I produce my best stuff that way.

England-Wednesday

I've hit my limit of days-in-a-row that I can travel without taking a rest day.  I'm totally wiped out.  No matter, I'm on vacation and I'm not going to stop until I physically injure myself or fall asleep in a cathedral.  (It's a possibility.  I'm that tired.)

So on Wednesday, Dan and Mom and I started our morning with an episode of Jeopardy.  I used to be much better at Jeopardy than I am now, but it also doesn't help to watch it at 9:30 in the morning when my brain cells aren't all firing yet.  Mom was babysitting Anna.  Dan asked if I wanted to go for a jog with him and I said no, and he said please? and I said, okay but I'm going to be slow.  We ended up walking/jogging for almost 2.5 miles.  It was fun, and I was slow.

Kim came to pick up Anna but instead they came with us sightseeing.  We went to Ripon Cathedral, which is a gorgeous old building.  It has a crypt that was built in 627 - it's the original foundation of the church building.  It wasn't the type of crypt that I imagined, with skeletons and coffins and rats and stuff.  I guess I shouldn't get all of my archeological knowledge from Indiana Jones.  It was a tiny, cramped stairway down to a small room, maybe 8 feet by 6 feet or so, with niches carved into the walls.  The niches were empty but in the olden days (like 1300 years ago) the niches would have held relics.  The crypt itself was meant to be a place of meditation.  It was lit by candlelight back then, but even with the electric lights today it was dim.  Regardless of the lack of dead bodies, it was still creepy down there.  Dan and I stood there for a couple of minutes, then looked at each other with an all-righty-then expression and went back up the stairs to fresh air and daylight.

Speaking of fresh air, there is a downside to all this green farmland and it's called slurry.  Slurry is this toxic-waste-smelling product that farmers spray on their fields.  I guess it's liquefied manure; all I know is that I'm trying hard to remember a smell worse that this one and it's a challenge.  Most bad smells are random, temporary things - a fellow passenger's b.o., the smell of vomit on a bus, skunks, finding that cup of milk under the car's seat.  This is constant and icky and I don't think I could get used to it.  If I could put a scratch-n-sniff on my photos so you could smell it, I wouldn't do it, because I like you too much to subject you to this smell.

While we were walking out of Ripon and through the town, Dan remembered a place that we had to go to: an ice cream farm that sells a flavor called Black Cherry Whim Wham.  Oh my gosh I have never heard a more gorgeous set of words - an ice cream farm, black cherry whim wham.  I can't stand it, it's too great.  Dan's the only one that understood my outrageous excitement just hearing the words 'black cherry whim wham.'  that's why I wanted to come here and see my family, because they are the few people in the whole world who speak my language.  And my language, apparently, now includes the phrases "ice cream farm" and "black cherry whim wham."

After our ice cream endeavour, we stopped by an old abbey, called Jervaulx, and looked at the ruins there.  There just isn't anything old like this in America.  Okay, maybe there's some native American stuff that's this old--anyone know of anything?

I'm writing this on Thursday morning, as I lounge on the couch, Mom is making a welcome home sign for Tim, Dad and Dan are on the base buying balloons.  When Mom and Dad go to the airport to pick up Tim, Dan and I are going to York.  I'd really rather take a nap, but I'm on vacation in a country that has thousand-year-old buildings.  Maybe I'll sleep on the train.

Pictures.

From England-Wednesday, posted by Emily Simmons on 6/08/2011 (43 items)

This is Ripon Cathedral.

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Dan told me about a place we needed to go to: an ice cream farm. AN ICE CREAM FARM. ...

I have four words for you: Black Cherry Whim Wham. Say it out loud. Again. It's t...

Eating waffle cones. I had a scoop of lemon twist and one of black cherry whim wham....

I bet you know what flavor Dan got.

And for my second cone, I had mandarin and--you guessed it--black cherry whim wham.

This is Jervaulx Abbey, a Cisterian 12th century monastery. It was in use from 1150 ...

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It was surprisingly difficult to get up there.

Look at my mom, isn't she pretty?

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You know what these look like? Coffins. There were also coffin-shaped stones laid i...

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We saw a scale model of the abbey and it was enormous. I wish I could have seen it. ...

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This is the view of the rest of the grounds. It's a huge field full of grazing sheep...

Sheep. Lots and lots of them.

That's my niece!

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