Unbelievably, still no fried chicken.

We did not eat any fried chicken this week.

 

We have been in Kentucky for a little while and we have seen a lot of places. Mostly the pool. But of all the places we have found in Kentucky, this week we found my favorite place. We found this temple on our Sunday drive and I made DJ pull over so that we could take pictures and walk around. 

 

For those readers who do not belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a temple is a sacred place where work is done and covenants are made. I believe that temples are truly houses of the Lord - a little heaven on earth, if you will. 

 

There is an undeniable spirit of peace and love and goodness on those grounds.

 

Right before we left, DJ loaded most of our kids in the car and I told him to wait for a bit so that I could take a picture of the temple from the front, like so:

Tess followed me to take the picture and I held her hand as we walked back to the car. She swung our hands between us as we walked through the grass, just Tess and me. It was one of those rare quiet moments you have as a parent. You know, the moments when you trick your husband into staying in the car with the loud kids.

I felt peace.

After the swimming pools, the zoo, the museums, the freeways, the shopping, all of it - the peaceful feeling of being in a holy place was a striking contrast. That feeling has a way of putting your priorities right into place.

But I probably still spent way too much time at the pool this week.

Lastly, here are a couple of funny gems from this week:

(And here is what I wrote for St. George News about Miss Utah in the Miss USA pageant. I am officially out of things to write about and am taking suggestions. Please e-mail your humorous ideas and I'll see that I can do with them. I am unable to compensate you in any way, but you might be able to talk me into sending you a postcard with my autograph on it.)

Giraffes. The same at every zoo.

I feel guilty about not putting anything new on this blog lately. Not guilty enough to do anything about it, but still. Guilty. It is similar to the guilt that compels me to pay my power bill once every three months.

 

We have been enjoying Louisville and Cincinnati immensely. Prepare yourselves for a massive photo-dump.

 

We have been swimming.

And visiting the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, which was far more entertaining than one might think.

 

"Don't they just run a slab of wood through a lathe and that's that?" you are thinking.

 

Yes, that is what they do, but there is also a life-sized figure Babe Ruth, as well as a model of Wrigley Field fashioned entirely out of Legos. And at the end of the tour everyone receives a mini Louisville Slugger, which at first I thought was awesome. Now I think that all of my children are equipped with weapons.

And then we swam some more, this time in Ohio:

And then we hit the Louisville Zoo, which was basically the same as every other zoo in America, except that they have a very unexcitable albino-looking alligator or something. There is no time for the reading of educational plaques when you are herding five children through a hot zoo. They also had this sweet VW van. My dream ride.

And some giraffes, which looked strangely similar to every other giraffe I've ever seen. I am boycotting zoos. Let's mix things up, zookeepers.

We swam some more. Chancho loves these torpedo diving toys.

Today we spent the day in Cincinnati with my sister. We went to a church picnic slash circus and our children got to ride this elephant:

There has also been rollerskating. Did you know that the culture of strapping four wheels under your shoes and skating around to pop music is still alive and well in Cincinnati? My sister Lisa (the uncontested party aunt) and I have been taking turns having cousin sleepovers and this is what she did with our girls last night:

I am sad that I missed it; it would've been fun to reminisce. It has been a while since I've had a concussion.

Busy weeks. So far we love Kentucky, but have eaten a shockingly small amount of fried chicken. This must be remedied. Tune in next time for a fried chicken story and the most bizarre touristy thing we've done yet.