Getting Historical

It is a quiet Sunday night on the plains. Today was sunny and bright, with a fresh, fluffy snow on the ground. The temperature has returned to normal for this time of year (single digits) after a crazy week. At the beginning of the week, the actual temps were lower than 20 below, with the wind making it even worse. By midweek, we had one sunny and warm afternoon, in the forties. It was a fake spring day, and it couldn’t last. So now, we are back to normal January. Asher helped shovel snow this morning! I took Rosie for a nice long walk in the snow this afternoon. I managed to fall on the ice and hurt my good wrist. Rosie got away, but stopped running when she heard my exclamation when I hit the sidewalk. I fell on the ice in our driveway almost two months ago, and my other wrist hasn’t been the same since, so I have a matching set now.

Sarah had to work part of the day yesterday, so Asher and I had some boy time. We gathered a big bag of stale bread from the kitchen and headed to the duck pond. I don’t know if part of the pond is heated, or if it is just too packed with ducks to freeze, but a small part of the pond is still ice-free. In that tiny area float hundreds of ducks and geese. Asher had a wonderful time feeding them. When our bread ran out, he had only one last tortilla. I told him to throw it in, and we’d be done (our faces and hands were starting to burn from the cold). He tore it in two, and threw half to the ducks. Then he tore that in half. Then he tore that in half, and so on, until he had the tiniest crumb of stale tortilla, trying to tear it with his cold little hands. He loves the duck pond.

We also went to the carwash to get the thick crust of salt off the car, although it is back with a vengeance today (Asher loves the carwash. It’s an event). In the afternoon, we picked Sarah up and went downtown to the Iowa Historical Society Museum. It is a great museum, and a nice way to spend a cold day. They have a great exhibit that takes you through the full-immersion experience of the Iowa Caucuses, which are one of the most unique and cool things about Iowa. It uses sets, human cutouts, and sound effects to really make you feel like you are in someone’s living room or a high-school gym, arguing about who should be president. You can also experience sitting in a coffee shop watching a candidate shake hands, or even experience what it was like to stand in West Des Moines listening to Howard Dean’s famous scream! The museum has all kinds of other cool stuff: Early airplanes

Pioneer / farming displays

A coal mine

Shawn Johnson's suit on a strange headless doll

The tie JFK took off and put in his pocket when he got off the plane in Dallas

..and the gloves RFK wore to JFK's funeral

There is also a lot of Iowa wildlife that was taxidermied around 1910, and a wooly mammoth skeleton that scared Asher. Anyway, the museum was a nice surprise, and we had fun. Iowa history is more interesting then you might think, and I knew almost nothing about it before yesterday. In history class in Utah, where I grew up, Iowa is just where the Mormon pioneers got stuck in the mud.