Oregon Arts Orchestra - Day 8 Venice

Sunday was a walking tour of Venice with the whole group.  Getting off the bus, Flavio told us not to turn on our Italian iPods.  Ours had been moved while we were deviating from the rest of group.  I didn't see mine and thought Flavio had meant that we didn't need it.  We headed to the square and met our tour guide for the morning, Lucy. As we grouped around her in the Piazza San Marco and everyone adjusted their earpieces, suddenly things became very hard for me and Kip to hear.  Instead of the tour guide speaking up to project over the sound of the pressing crowds, she dropped her voice to speak quietly, directly into her microphone.  We would have appreciated our iPod's then.

Lucy took us inside the Doge's palace and across the Bridge of Sighs to the prison.  I stuck close to her to hear as much of the discussion as possible.  The wealth of these places is amazing!  The walls and ceilings are covered with priceless paintings that are framed (at least in the Doge's Palace) with 24 carat gold.  Because of the location (muddy island), all the Venetian buildings are built on pilings buried in the mud.  A large Venetian building would require an entire forest beneath it just to hold it up.  And almost as much inside to make up the building itself.

That evening was our final concert.  We performed in Treviso, almost an hour away from Venice.  We left early enough to set up, eat, and rehearse before the 9pm concert.  Unfortunately, Italian restaurants don't start serving dinner before 7 and we had to rehearse at 7.  But they will serve drinks and little salty pork sandwiches and caprese.  I can't get enough caprese.

Our concert was in a covered area in the main square of the town.  There were a lot of people out enjoying their Sunday evening who were very curious to see a bunch of American's all dressed in black walking the streets of their little town.  Our rehearsal had a bit of an audience all it's own.

When 9:00 came, the chairs in the covered pavilion were almost all full and people were sitting on the stone half-wall around the outside.  We we ready to go.  We took off with the Rossini, Theiving Magpie, and it was a good beginning.  Everything was lining up nicely and we were enjoying playing together.

The second piece on the concert was the Cimerosa.  While Phyllis and I pulled our stands taller and maneuvered to the side of the orchestra, Cindy and Flavio introduced our orchestra to the crowd.  Kp and Guy, our stage hands, took our stands to the front and we followed a moment after.

When we played the Cimerosa at the first concert, I was really nervous.  It was at the church in Rome.  In fact, we played it twice that night.  We did the middle movement during the mass, during communion if I remember right.  And that went just fine, although it felt a little odd to be performing in the main part of the church while Mass was held in the chapel on the side.   Then, we performed the whole piece during the concert after the Mass.  The seats for the audience were so close to me and Phyllis that we could have given people in front of us high 5's. it was super hot in the church, and with our beaded shirts OVER our concert blacks, it was sweltering.  Add to the the general nerves that accompany solo performance (or duo in this case) and I was pretty hopeless.  It wasn't a terrible performance, but it was a little shaky and by the end my ability to count had disintegrated.  I made mistakes that really weren't worth making.

During the second concert at the Tettuccio Baths in Montecatini, we had to shorten the concert.  We cut the first movement and did 2 & 3. This performance was better.  I was less nervous, less hot, and farther from the audience by several feet.  There were mistakes, but it was a good performance.

This concert in Treviso was a good one.  The weather was nice.  The audience didn't overwhelm me.  Things were good.  We performed the first movement since we'd done the other two last time. And things just really seemed to line up right.  It was the kind of performance that goes just as well as it possibly could go.  It wasn't a perfect performance, but I did my part as well as I had done in my very best personal practices.  It was magical to play with the orchestra behind me and Phyllis and just enjoy how everything came together.  I heard later that there was a little girl dancing at the front of the audience through the performance.  That's a good sign!

Yvonne played the Vivaldi Winter after us.  It was also very well done.  Then, the dixieland group came up.  They had performed at the concert in the Tettuccio Baths and been unquestionably the highlight of the concert.  They are a ton of fun, and very different from anything else you hear at a classical concert.  Especially a European classical concert.  At this concert, they were again a definite favorite of the night. After their piece finished, Flavio came up and announced that someone had requested the Saints, so they just whipped it out, no music or anything.

We closed out with the Hansen, 2nd and 3rd movements.  We have made a lot of progress on that one.  After the appropriate applause, we played our encores.  First American Salute, then, after another round of applause, a snippet of the Rossini.

The venue cleared out and we packed our things, stacked our chairs and started a hike to the bus.  The night was dark and the streets had emptied quickly.  Kip stayed at the back helping Sharon walk on the uneven cobblestones.  I tried to position myself where I could still see him, Sharon, and Susan behind and the rest of the orchestra ahead.  Eventually the main group stopped and waited for us to catch up.  The bus was still a good walk farther away and it had started to rain.  Flavio had called a taxi for Sharon.  We left him with her and hiked off.  When we reached the bus, Sharon was inside waiting for us.  Her hip has deteriorated and is it incredibly painful for her to walk.  This has been a tough trip for her.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - day 7 train to Venice

We decided to spend Saturday away from the rest of the orchestra.  Their plan for the day involved a three hour bus ride to Cremona and three hours there walking and listening to a tour guide.  The highlight was a trip to a stradivarius museum.  The string players were very excited.  The winds weren't as enthusiastic.  From there they had a three hour ride to venice.  Six hours on a bus did not sound pleasant.  Especially on our anniversary. Instead, we joined Guy Lou and Jae heading to Venice early.

The train station was a short walk from our hotel.  There was no ticket agent so we took on an automated ticket machine.  In spite of our best efforts, we took several minutes figuring out how to get tickets from the machine.  The necessity of a pin number for credit cards threw us for a loop.

The train ride from Montecatini to Florence was about 45 minutes.  We sat next to a nice German jazz pianist.  He had a good joke about drummers knocking on your door.  You know it's a drummer because the knocking slows down.

The Florence train station was crowded.  We worked our way from the train over to the ticket purchase area with live ticket salespeople.  The line was long and slow so we tried another automated machine, this time with more success.  The first two trains to Venice were full the third only had 1st class seats available.  It arrived at the time we wanted, so we opted to take the splurge.  With an hour before boarding, we left the chaos of the station to find a cafe.  Then, at the appointed time we came back and got our train.

We had bought seats on a high speed train.  Unfortunately, Kip and I were in car 1 and the others were in car two.  And Kip and I weren't officially seated together.  When we got into the train there was some sort of drama on board.  One passenger was upset because another was sitting in her seat.  The other passenger said that she had a ticket for that car but her printed seat number didn't exist.  The girl meant to be where she was sitting asked her to move out of her seat, but girl 2 refused saying that since her seat didn't exist she was taking that one.  Crazy.  A fellow passenger intervened and resolved it by finding another available seat for the cranky girl.

The train was very comfortable, with great leg room.  A Canadian family sat in front of us.  They explained that the trains were full because of a film festival in Venice and the regatta on Sunday.  That, and just because it was Saturday.

The train dropped us right on the edge of Venice. We bought a day pass for the Vaporetto and went into the city.  Lou and Jae were meeting Lou's cousin at the Piazza San Marco, so we rode the Vaporetto there. We found a nice place for lunch and got a feel for Lou's family.  Andre, the cousin, is a well-known French journalist.  He has a large personality.  His daughter Aurelie is very bright and cheerful.

Kip and I separated from them after lunch and tried to get to a less-crowded, less-touristy area.  And we tried to find a few souvenirs for the kids.  We ducked down quiet alleyways and found picturesque spots.  Then we took another turn and found ourselves back in San Marco.

At 5:30 we met Lou, Jae, and Guy and took a taxi to the hotel. We gave the front desk our names. They told us we were in the VIP room. Kip had pulled some strings and we had a solid bed, not two singles pushed together.  And there was a vase of roses on the desk.  It was a nice anniversary surprise.

We made sure that we were in the lobby with drinks when the rest of the orchestra arrived.  They all looked a little envious.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - day 6 Montecatini and Florence

Flavio, as our tour guide, has the job of amusing the bus during travel.  He has a microphone and regales us with stories about local history, interesting facts about our surroundings, and whatever other random ramblings come to his mind.  Flavio has a very interesting mind.  He often ends up singing or telling jokes.  It can be very entertaining. Unfortunately, he also often ends up bantering with the people in the front of the bus.  He says something funny and the whole bus laughs.  Then, there is the muffled sound of someone in the front saying something unamplified and laughter from the front of the bus.  Flavio says something into the mike that causes more laughter in the front but to the back of the bus, it makes no sense.

And thus we made it through the 45 minute drive from Montecatini to Firenze.

Firenze, or Florence as we English-speakers choose to rename it, is a lovely place with narrow streets and large churches to explore.  Our area-specific tour guide for the day was Bernie.  He was short with buzzed balding hair, a canvas hat, grey polo, and a great sense of humor.  He took us to see the David first of all.  It's in a very small museum at the Academie of Art. It is pretty much the only reason people go there.   There are just 3 rooms and no one even really looks in the other two.  We definitely didn't.  But we spent long enough in the room looking at the David to make up for not having anything else to see.  Bernie had us in front of the David for half an hour. Then we went behind for another 20 minutes to admire him from the rear.  It was a lot of standing.  I hadn't guessed you could look at one sculpture for that long and still have new things to say about it.  Bernie knew a ton and had a good style of sharing his knowledge with us. We all had our 'Italian iPods', so we could hear Bernie wherever we were.  Except Kip, who gave his willingly to someone else and stood in blissful quiet while the rest of us listened.  I shared my earpiece with him from time to time, or repeated a good tidbit here and there.

The best part of the tour was when Bernie told about some of the celebrities he had taken on tour.  The best was when he took the cast of the Jersey Shore.  'Snooky' asked the type of questions that give Americans a bad name in the rest of the civilized world.  'What did David think of his portrait?'  When Bernie explained that they lived thousands of years apart, she wanted to know how Michelangelo knew what he looked like.  Oy vey.

After the museum, we walked through Florence, taking in the important sites.  Bernie told us that really you should spend three days in Florence if you want to see the best things. We had a few hours.  Oh well.  We walked all over, until our swollen feet were throbbing.   We saw churches - a big one with tower and dome and a not-so-big one with a star of David and story about religious tolerance. We saw statues - naked people, clothed people, people killing other people, people killing other animals.  And when we finally couldn't take any more, we went to a restaurant for lunch.

Flavio had told us that we must eat some Florentine steak, tagliata.  So those of us who wanted to follow his recommendation went to a little place at the end of the tour and got our steak, red and bloody on a bed of green arugula and topped with parmesan cheese.  It was very good steak.  Flavio and the staff seemed to be on excellent terms.  In fact, he seemed to know people all over the place.  During our lunch the previous day, when we skipped out on the Sienna tour, he ran into on of his 60+ x-girlfriends when he did his shopping.  In Florence, people called greetings to him from their shops as we passed.  Another orchestra member was given a hard time by his salesperson because he was traveling with Flavio.  He makes traveling fun.

After breezing through Florence we returned to charming little Montecatini.  We refreshed at the hotel and then walked up to the station for the funicular to get a visit to Montecatini Alto, the old city on the hilltop.  The 100+ year old funicular takes about 15 minutes to climb the hill, at a grade that peaks at 38%. One car descends while the other climbs and they pass in the middle where the track separates just for that.  We took Flavio Piccolo, as we are calling the little dog we got for Becca along and took pictures of him enjoying the ride and popping up in unexpected places all over Montecatini Alto.  We even introduced him to some local cats.  They weren't entirely sure what to do with him.

The village at the top if the hill was charming, just what an ancient hilltop village should be.  The streets were narrow and steep and dotted with delightful nooks and crannies.  I wanted to spend twice as long wandering its streets than we did, but after walking Florence all day my feet hurt too much to comply.  Plus, with the descent of evening darkness the temperature dropped dramatically. I was very cold as I shared my banana split with Kip.  We caught the funicular and went back down to the new town.  Guy, Lou, and their Dixieland Band set up on the hotel balcony and regaled the guests with Jazz and Jokes.  An excellent way to end the day.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - day 5 Montecatini

Today we left Rome.  We ate breakfast in the Hotel Leonardo Di Vinci.  Our usual eggs and ham and cheese and pastries and thick hot chocolate or coffee options.  And fruit and yogurt.  Lots of good choices.  Then there was a rush on the elevators.  Only two of the three were working and with 45 people spread through 8 floors, plus an assortment of other tourists and airport personnel all seeming to need to leave at once, the elevator was tough to come by.  We were a little late getting everyone down and loaded on the bus.

We spent about three hours driving north from Rome to Sienna.  We stopped for what Flavio, our enthusiastic tour facilitator, called a 'pling-pling stop' about half way through.  I had forgotten about those European seatless toilets. Kip and I stocked up on chocolate and checked things out for the kids in the gift section of the station.  We found a wonderful new stuffed animal puppy for Becca.  He was immediately adored by the whole bus and we christened him Flavio in honor of our dear Italian tour guide.  He was not incredibly pleased for some reason.

Sienna is a lovely little Tuscan town. The streets are narrow and the buildings tall. There are wonderful nooks and alleyways to admire and little shops encouraging you to spend money.  We stopped at a restaurant in the Piazza del Campo for lunch and ordered the special, bruschetta, pasta and a drink.  It was my gluten splurge.  I've had a few more of those lately than I should.  Several of us chose to skip the organized tour of the day. Instead of heading to the Duomo of Seinna, we stayed at the restaurant taking.  The allotted 90 minutes passed extremely quickly.  Flavio (the human) joined us at the end, having skipped the tour also and luckily told us when it was time to head out to meet the rest of the group.

Our next destination was Montecatini.  It is another smaller Tuscan town. We're staying in a hotel in what they call the newer part of the city, though certainly not new by American standards.  

Our concert tonight was in a gorgeous location - the Tettuccio Baths.  We spent the afternoon rehearsing there.  We were at the back of the courtyard of the baths, with seats set up to fill the courtyard in front of us.  There were fountains all around and the public bathrooms were a bit of a walk, but there were enough for a hundred people at once.  There was also a set of mineral-water-dispensing ornate stone sinks in the main courtyard to the side of where we played.  The sound was not as reverberating as at the Basilica last night, but it was still nice.  And better suited for the Hansen than the church had been.

After rehearsal we had an hour to eat and change and be ready to perform.  The hotel restaurant provided dinner.  And Italian dinner at a proper restaurant is not a quick affair.  There was pasta or soup for starter.  Then meat or caprese, potatoes and ice cream.  I ate my pork as fast as I could then charged up to the room to change.  I made it back with 2 minutes to eat my ice cream.

Cindy changed the concert order slightly from last night.  We started with the Rossini as usual.  Then, Phyllis and I ran off stage, sent Kip and Guy up with the stands, and put on our sparkly shirts while Cindy announced our solo.  We only played movements 2 and 3 of the cimerosa.  I had a few finger mess-ups, but felt like we ended strong.  We were followed by Yvonne on the Vivaldi (winter). Then we were treated to a piece by the dixieland group.  And finally we did the Hanson, Mvts 2-3,  and the American Salute.  It was a lot of fun and we did a lot better than we had the previous night.  People really seemed to enjoy it.  Walking home after the concert we passed many audience members at cafes or on benches.  They congratulated us and we thanked them.  It was  lot of fun.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - day 4 Rome Concert

We spent the morning Wednesday on a tour of the Vatican.  This would have been a good place to be during the thunderstorm and downpour of the previous day.  It was almost entirely an indoor tour.  For all of our guided tours we wore what Flavio, our Italian trip tour guide, called the Italian iPod.  It was a radio on a lanyard with headphone jack and multiple channels so the tour guide could speak into a microphone and transmit it directly to our ears.  It was a nice contraption, allowing us to wander a certain amount without losing track of the lecture. It tended to start crackling when you got too far so you knew to look for the group and rejoin them before you were entirely lost.  In the Vatacan, we had to use their iPod, so we each got a second one to wear with it's own bright green ear bud.

OAO members: Lou (clarinet), Mihail (flute), Ann (cello), and Jae (Lou's wife). Outside the entrance to the Vatican.

The Vatican is an amazing place.  There is so much wealth there.  I couldn't help thinking of all the suffering in the world and how it seemed odd that a church would put so much effort into amassing wealth and impressing visiting politicians and dignitaries.  It didn't quite seem fitting for a religious institution.  And the tour guide told us stories of the Pope who commissioned  Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. He was well known for his misuse of power.  The only person he couldn't completely control through money or threat was Michelangelo himself.  And this was the spiritual leader for the Christian world?

St Peter's Basilica

That afternoon we all headed to the second largest church in Rome after St Peter's Basilica on the Vatican.  San Andréa della Valle was dedicated to Saint Andrew and couldn't be the largest because he just wasn't as important as Saint Peter. But it still had to be large and showy because he was pretty important.  So, in his honor, the ceiling was covered with priceless frescoes by famous artists framed by fancy stonework covered in 24 carat gold.  Actually, I'm not sure about that.  It may have been 18 carat. It was very beautiful.

Playing in a super huge church is an interesting experience.  There is a large amount of reverb, 3-5 seconds of sound continuing after we finished playing.  We did a mini rehearsal and then broke for snacks and changing our clothes.

Before our concert, we got to play as part of the evening Mass.  We played the Gabrielli (no flute), some of Yvonne's Vivaldi (no flute), and part of the Cimerosa (flute duo). Everyone in the orchestra was struggling to stay awake as jet lag and a day of walking in the hot sun took it's toll.

After the Mass we had a little time to set up.  The seats in the main part of the church filled up steadily.  We ended up with an excellent audience.  That was nice, but intimidating.  For the flute duo concerto, Phyllis and I stood at the front of the orchestra.  We slipped into a little side chapel after the opening piece, the Rossini, and put on our sequined shirts while and Kip and Guy took our stands to the front and Cindy welcomed the audience and introduced the orchestra.  Then, we went up to the front.  We were directly in front of the first pew, separated from the front row of the audience only by our music stands and the wooden border at the front of the pew.  The heat and proximity of the people in front of me combined to make me more nervous than usual.  It wasn't my best performance.

After our bows, we slipped into the side chapel to pull off our sparkles, then got to sit and relax behind scenes while Yvonne played the Vivaldi.  We went back onstage for the Hansen. It didn't go so well.  The reverb was hard.  Reverberating dissonance and borderline pitch issues wasn't a good combination.  But we made it through and the audience was very kind.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - day 3 Rome

Tuesday morning we had breakfast in the hotel and then took to the bus for a walking tour of the colosseum and surrounding areas.  The weather conspired against us.  As we entered the colosseum, rain started to fall.  Serious rain.  The kind that means business.  The middle-eastern men selling postcards and scarves switched gear and brought out umbrellas and brightly colored ponchos with images of the colosseum on the front.  The rain was accompanied by lightning and thunder.  The rumblings reverberated around the colosseum, sounding like the gods were angry and wanted us to know. Some of the lightning flashes struck very close, shaking the colosseum as they thundered around us.  Those of us who were foolhardy left the comfort of the covered areas to look down on the colosseum floor.  We were soaked through in seconds.  Most of the tourists took shelter inside the arches, even retreating past ropes to cluster out of the reach of the drenching rain.  We waited and waited, but the pouring rain didn't stop, so we worked our way to the exit.  I broke down and bought an umbrella from a vendor reaching in through the iron bars surrounding the colosseum. That way, I could hold it over the camera and take pictures of me and Kip in the rain.

The orchestra voted to scrap the rest of our walking tour.  Everyone was cold and drenched and just didn't want to spend two more hours walking around.  Most of the group headed back to the hotel on the bus and some even chose to dry off and have an extra rehearse.  Guy, Lou and Jae invited us to visit the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Chains to see the statue of Moses by Michelangelo.  The church was not open at that point, so we went to pass the time at the Moses Bar.  They served us thick rich hot chocolate, pizzas, and caprese.  It was a nice way to pass the time.  When we had eaten our fill and warmed up a little, the rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through.  We headed to see the Moses, walked around a little then took a cab back to the hotel.

On the schedule that night was the fancy dinner of the trip, at the Restaurant Tanagra, where you enjoy live opera music while you dine. Kip and I sat with Guy at a table in the back.  We placed our food allergy labels on the table, 'no glutine' for me and 'no arachidi' (peanuts) for Guy.  They served us pasta (gluten free for me) and risotto, meat and spinach, and fruit for dessert.  Or Tiramisu for the gluten-eaters.  And between the courses there were four opera singers who performed, two women and two men.  Some of the numbers were serious, some more fun.  The Barber of Seville took Jim up for a shave, face and bald head.  Lou and a man from another party were pulled up to sing along.  'Carmen' sang on the laps of several of the men.  People had a lot of fun.

Oregon Arts Orchestra - Italy Trip day 1 and 2 - Travel and Arrival inRome

We decided that we would drive the kids to Utah to be with their grandparents instead of asking the grandparents  to all come up to Oregon.  Because of that, Kip and I didn't fly with the rest of the orchestra.  We took off from Salt Lake and went through DC, with a quick visit in the airport from Wendy and Willem and their little guy.  Our flight from DC to Rome was scheduled to arrive 30 minutes after the main part of the orchestra, but it was delayed, putting us almost 3 hours behind them.  I hoped they would save us some room on the back of the tour bus for when we caught up.

When we got to the Rome Airport, we ended up choosing a shuttle to deliver us to the Piazza Navona where the main part of the orchestra was then eating lunch.  Once the driver had filled all the seats, he headed off into the city.  He was a crazy Italian driver, texting and talking on his cell phone while driving haphazardly through crowded narrow streets.  We had to periodically inform him that the light he was stopped at had changed to green.  He dropped the other two sets of passengers off first and finally pulled up to the Piazza Navona to drop us.  We hauled our luggage out of the back of his van and headed into the plaza, scanning the crowds of tourists for a familiar face.  We re relieved when we found them at a restaurant at the opposite side from where we had entered.  We pulled a table up and ordered our first meal in Italy.  It involved pizza.

After lunch we found the bus and went to the hotel, NH Leonardo di Vinci. We stashed our things in our rooms and went down to a conference room for rehearsal.  It wasn't a very pleasant rehearsal.  In spite of our efforts to sleep on the flights over, I don't think any of us were feeling rested.  We were exhausted and it showed clearly in our playing.  Cindy admitted defeat, sending us to dinner in the hotel with instructions to go to bed afterwards instead of coming back for another rehearsal.

Family reunion - July 2013

The Killpack Family Reunion was at a cabin near Manti, Utah from July 22-26. We had a ton of fun with everyone.

The cabin was way up in the mountains up a long dusty road.  We had a paper airplane contest and enjoyed launching planes from the balcony.

Everyone did a really good job.

We did a toy exchange and then got to play with some of them.

We also built and launched our own rockets.

We went to the Pioneer Day Parade in Fairview.

We got a ton of saltwater taffies.

We also visited the Manti Temple for a family photo shoot.

And went to the cemetery to see the graves of our ancestors.

It was fun spending time together and we learned a little about family history while doing it.

Travelin' in Utah July 13-17

We drove down to Idaho on Saturday July 13th. It was a good drive with stops at some nice rest areas. We joined Robin and her kids for dinner that evening. She made us yummy tator tot casserole.  We had a good time hanging put with Robin, Zach, Elizabeth and Quinn.  They have infectious laughs and find lots of things to laugh about.  Dinner was a lot of fun.

We had a yummy breakfast at Robin's in the morning and loaded the car for the drive to Kaysville.  On the way down we had a need for a potty stop.  Our only option at the time was a gas station with a label in the window welcoming us to the middle of nowhere.  It was posted pretty clearly inside that restroom were for paying guests only, so I treated the kids to ice creams that we ate sitting in the dusty parking lot.

We made it to Grammy's without any problems but not quite in time to join her for church.  Instead, we settled in and fell asleep on her sofas while the kids broke out the toys she had brought out for them.

Sunday evening I had some of my favorite high school people over for a mini reunion. Our official 20 year reunion is next month but none of us really wanted to go.  So we emailed each other and set up a reunion with some of the people we did want to see.  I made some gluten free chocolate brownies with extra chocolate chips and fresh raspberries. They were delicious.  We had me, Erin Ford Findlay, Lori Hollist Auger, and Ann Baker Romero.  It was great to just sit and talk.  I could see why these were the friends I chose to spend my time with all through high school.  I definitely think we should do more of these mini reunions!

We stayed at Grammy's until Thursday evening.  We went swimming in the swim spa pretty much every day.  We also visited a few museums.  I took the kids to the Natural History Museum at the University of Utah on Tuesday the 16th.  It was a really nice museum.  We started by climbing all the way to the fifth floor. There, you can go out on the roof and learn about weather and water conservation.  There is also a room about Native American history and current relationship with American society.  We worked our way down through geological information and archeology and then to the dinosaur exhibit.  There were a lot of kid-friendly activities and the displays were all really well done.  It was a great museum.

On Wednesday we took a hike into the mountains behind the parents' house.  We had decided it was time to spread the ashes of the dog the parents had that died just after my mission. Yes, that was 14 years ago.  Her ashes have been in a box on the fireplace since then.  On Sunday when we were waiting for the parents to return from church, Becca picked up the wooden box of dog ashes and, shaking it, asked why Grammy kept a box of rice with the kid toys on the fireplace.  We decided it was time to move the dog on.  The plan had always been to scatter the ashes on the Vita Course, or nature trail. But the boys who frequently went up there never managed to remember to take the boxed dog. So, Wednesday morning the 5 Killpacks and Grandad put on their socks and shoes and headed up the mountain.  We walked to the creek and found a shady spot by the bridge.  That was where we put Cricket's remains. Then, Kip and the kids played in the creek, building up a little dam to increase the depth of the water they were playing in.  Anna and I got mosquito bites on our legs that bugged us the rest of the trip.  And eventually we headed back down the mountainside.

On Thursday Grammy and Grandad treated us with a trip to the Treehouse children's museum in Ogden.  It's another great museum option.  There were enough things to do that we weren't able to get it all done in the two hours of free parking we had available.  The highlight was when the staff hosted play staring the kids.  It was a version of Blanca Flore.  William got to be the prince.  He did an excellent job projecting his lines just like Elizabeth Moreno taught him for the school talent show.  Anna got to be one of the 7 bandits and also did well.  Becca really wanted to be a Bandit but enjoyed the play anyway.

After the museum, Grandad took us to the union station Grill.  We had a yummy lunch and then got to look at the trains on display outside.  They had a train car that had carried the olympic torch for the winter olympics in Salt Lake in 2002.

Plumper Pumpkin Patch, Oct 10, 2012

Becca had her preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch on Wednesday. It was at Plumper Pumpkin Patch, which is the same farm we've been going to since William was in preschool at Young Learner's. I have pictures of him helping push the manual pumpkin seed planter and checking out the milking area from when the farm used to have dairy cows.

Becca and I got to the farm a little after 9:00 am. The weather was uncharacteristically perfect. I think I've been to that farm on at least 4 other field trips and I don't believe we've had good weather on any of them. This Tuesday morning the sun was shining, the weather was cool but not super cold, and everyone was ready for fun. There were a lot of people there. We found a teacher from Becca's class and learned that today's field trip was the free-range kind. We could wander wherever we liked, do a hay maze, slide on the various slides, ride the hay ride, and pick a pumpkin. Becca was strangely unenthusiastic about all of it except the part where she got to pick a pumpkin.

We met a few of her friends, but she refused to go into the hay maze with them, or smile for a picture. All she wanted was her pumpkin. I decided that maybe we should just take off and go to a card-making party I had accidentally signed up for at the same time, but before we left, I asked if she wanted to do the hay ride. This was the first thing other than the pumpkin she got excited about. She definitely wanted a hay ride.

The hay ride consisted of a tractor attached to a covered trailer with hay seats around the outside and a row along the middle. There were two tractors running. One was attached to a trailer all made of wood with a peaked wooden roof. The other had a trailer that looked like a covered wagon with similar seating arrangement but much more decoration. It had bright yellow and orange ribbons and bouquets of dried flowers. Both were doing a circuit of the farm so that each one stopped and loaded,or unloaded about every 5 minutes. The line to get one was very long. We got in with Jenny Gennings and Angelise and started our wait. Becca was a trooper! We must have stood there for at least 30 minutes but she didn't complain at all. We watched each wagon unload and load and the line shrink a little bit until finally we got our turn.

The less-decorated wagon took us on our loop. We went around the barn and stopped by the Christmas trees. The driver told us about the three kinds--Douglas firs with their needles growing all around the branches, Grand firs with needles on opposite sides of the branch, and Noble firs with needles pointing up. He told us about the train hundreds of feet below the farm in an underground tunnel and how the farm got electricity before anyone else in the area because the train had it in the tunnel and gave it to the farm for the right to go under their land. I've heard it enough times, I could almost give the speech. Then we went up to the pumpkin shooters. They showed us the trebuchets and the air cannons and the slingshots for people to shoot little pumpkins at UofO and OSU signs. Then we went down the hill, past the field where we could get our free pumpkin (not really free because we paid $6 each to come), and back to the drop-off. We hopped off the wagon and headed to pick out our pumpkins. There were a lot of nice looking pumpkins of varying sizes. None were huge, of course, because this was the lot of complimentary pumpkins, but there were some that Becca couldn't pick up easily. We found a few that I liked a lot, two bigger ones, and I thought we were done. But Becca changed her mind. She decided she wanted something different. Instead of the plump, round, medium-sized, regular-looking pumpkin, she wanted something unique. She chose a small, oddly shaped little one with a lot of character. I thought it was pretty cool. She drew a face on with her markers. We'll go over it with sharpies and I think it will be perfect!