The Da Vinci Exhibit

Behold the gleaming spires of Atlanta!





We stopped in Atlanta on our way back to Florida, to see the Da Vinci exhibit at the High Museum of Art.





We then stayed to explore the rest of the museum.











Ula pointing out the desk she wants:












We are home today, quickly unpacking, doing laundry, running errands, and repacking, because we leave again tomorrow.

Also, as a special treat tonight, I took Ula to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It had some great dialogue and was very fast paced, but Ula is a long-time fan of Sherlock Holmes and pointed out several places where the books were ignored. She said it was a good action movie, if you could pretend it was not connected to the original Sherlock Holmes, and she did enjoy the humorous banter between the characters.
When we got home tonight, Ula looked up the Baker Street Irregulars and found out that Sherlock Holmes' birthday is Jan. 6th, so we are trying to decide what we can do to honor that.

Abe Lincoln's Boyhood Home

On the way home from Illinois we made a stop at Lincoln's boyhood home near Gentryville, Indiana. It was cold and snowing, so we had the whole place to ourselves.





It didn't snow enough to start accumulating on the ground, but Ula managed to hit Blaze with a very small snowball after scraping all the snow off of a sign.

Time Traveling Over the Holidays: Part two ; )

Since we were already in Palestine, Il., we decided to travel further back in time to see what it was like when the first settlers arrived on the banks of the Wabash River. We arrived at Fort LaMotte in 1814.



The fort population consisted of 26 families and 90 rangers, under the command of Captain Pierce Andrews.



The fort was built to protect the new settlers from hostile Indians, but those seemed to be in short supply, since there was only one small battle, and that was not at the fort itself, but at nearby Africa Point. It is unknown if the Indians even intended to attack the fort. Some men from the fort had seen signs of Indians at Africa Point and had reported it to the rangers, who organized themselves into two groups and went to investigate. They found canoes. When they proceeded, they were fired upon and fought back in a disorganized fashion, that resulted in the rangers retreating back to the fort. The second group of rangers, who were to be the reinforcements, were actually the first to retreat.

Time Traveling Over the Holidays: Part one ; )

We seem to have spent the holidays traveling through time as well as distance. We arrived near Palestine, Illinois sometime in 1945.

It was a cold day with intermittent snow flurries. We walked along the railroad tracks until a slow moving locomotive passed by and we were able to jump aboard and arrive in town in style.





Ula, in particular, tried to make a grand entrance into Palestine, but since it was Christmas Day, the streets were deserted and no one was there to welcome us.



We made the most of our visit by doing some window shopping.









We found an open news stand and purchased some sweets.



We then continued on with our travels.

To be continued...

Scenes from a small town Illinois Christmas

Merry Christmas!

We were greeted by the warm glow of the Christmas tree in the front window of my mother's house in Southern Illinois, when we arrived last night. She has a new color scheme for her Christmas decorations this year, brown and gold. I admit, I was skeptical at first about using these very un-Christmasy colors for Christmas decorations, but now that I've seen them, I think they are very elegant looking.







Blaze is so excited to see his oldest sister again that he has been clinging to her and demanding her constant and undivided attention.



I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!

Happy Winter Solstice!

There are a few more little touches I want to add to the footboard of Blaze's bed, but for now it is finished. It was supposed to be a birthday gift for Blaze, but now it's his Solstice gift, because it's 15 days late. At least it's finished before we leave to go visit family for Christmas.

It was too big to keep it a secret from Blaze, so instead he got to help build it. He really likes sanding.

You can tell we've been working on this for awhile, because of the change of hair style.






AND NOW,


THE GRAND UNVEILING:











The beautiful (and shiny) airship picture is a print of a painting by Myke Amend , titled "The Rescue".