A Tale of Two Cities

This is an aerial photo taken by my Dad of the house where I grew up in Ivins, Utah. It was taken in 1975 when we were the only house out there for miles. Sadly, it is populated now....darn it. It was nice to have all that wilderness to ourselves. It was the best of times. (Thanks, Mark, for digging up this photo!)

This is where I live now. Population: 8 million. It's also the best of times. (Charles took this from the Empire State Building.)

Gratefully, we can still find a little nature in the city. What would we do without Central Park?
Central Park is twice the size of the country of Monaco and Madi is trying to cover every inch!

For all you Top Chef fans we ran into Richard Blais from Season 4 at the Las Vegas airport. And, yes, that is Madeline having a cow because he got too close.
Then at JFK airport we ran into Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. I guess celebrities like to take red-eye flights. I can only imagine Madi's royal fit if he got too close.

On Saturday Charles took us to the Children's Museum of Manhattan. It has four floors of enticing toys to play with and Madi loved every minute of it.

She enjoyed playing with the sand along with the other kids. When she walked into the kiddie kitchen room she screamed one of her favorite words "Clock!!" and played with the arms of the over-sized clock.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Crepe Paper Dress

This photo of Aunt Wanda (my mother's aunt) was taken during The Great Depression when she was 17 years old. Because there wasn't money to buy fabric, her mother sewed blue crepe paper to an old sheet. Look at the amount of detail! She won the title of Miss Torrey, Utah in a crepe paper dress! She said she was glad that it didn't rain that day. She passed away last month at the age of 94. How we all loved Aunt Wanda!