The great summer vacation of 2008

Julie started the vacation a week early. She and Sonora visited Boise and Nyssa. Here is Sonora with her cousins Isaac and Aidan.
Here are a number of cousins: Reagan, Sonora, Sailor, Eva, Casey, Britain, Jacob and Aidan. Below is Aunt Eileen, her children are Aidan and Isaac.

We went white water river rafting in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Even around the 4th of July, the water is so cold you need wet suits. Not the most flattering picture we've ever had.


This is around 9000 feet elevation - still some snow in July

The family in a rather scenic post

Allene and Brian ran a 5k on the 4th of July in Rexburg ID. I always turn purple when I engage in aerobic activity. Allene did really well. I kind of tuckered out after mile 2 - I finished, just not how I wanted to. High elevation, not working out much in the month previous and several pounds overweight didn't help any.
We had several other activities during the vacation - just no pictures.
Julie and Sonora went to visit cousins in Boise/Nyssa the week before. Levi went on a week long backpacking trip in Missouri with Uncle Matt and cousin Trent. Katie went to EFY (Especially for Youth) at BYU. Julie visited Lisa and Craig Johnson - Katie and I did too - just a week later. Julie and I met through Lisa and Craig as room mates in college. Katie and I also visited Clark and Jo Schaffer. Jo took us out to a Hare Krishna temple that was kind of cool. Katie got a cool Indian outfit. Eventually we all ended up in Rexburg Idaho for the grand reunion with about 27 of us and where most of the pictures were taken.

This was a bit of a difficult vacation in that we knew the second we got back all our activities would be around moving and Julie taking her art class. We were VERY tired by the end of the activities. Still wonderful to do so many things and see so many people.

Elvis

Julie's mother really liked Elvis, when her sisters arrived for a visit, they wanted to spend time visiting Memphis and seeing the various Elvis paraphanelia




After visiting the museum - they went to the Rendezvous - a rather famous place that serves ribs in downtown Memphis, the ambience is interesting, the waiters kind of try to be stand offish, and they serve the food on paper plates. If you want a drink of something, it comes out in a pitcher - you can pour your own. If it's not on the 1 page menu - you won't get it. They really enjoyed their food and brought home some of their special spices and sauces.

Julie's graduation

After a lot of very hard work, Julie graduated with her Masters Degree in Biology from Western Kentucky University. This happened last December, so a bit late on the posting. Her research was on hearing regeneration in zebrafish. She also worked as the lab manager for the Smith lab. She excelled in her research and greatly enjoyed interacting with the other students. She's here with her professor Michael Smith.

Julie was always very interested in brain function, particularly hearing - as she contemplated going back to school she considered whether she wanted to do further work in psychology. She hadn't taken many science classes before, but the ones she did take once we got to Kentucky she did exceptionally well in. She was also considering getting a degree in Audiology. The university had hired a new professor in the Biology department (Michael) who was specializing in neurology and hearing of fish. Julie approached him and got on doing some research. Later she agreed to pursue a masters degree. We later learned that Michael had attended BYU overlapping some of the time I was there. Julie isn't presently doing research in Biology - she's exploring art now. We still see Michael with some frequency - he's involved with the youth groups at church.

Julie's sisters - Sheila and Jennifer came to visit for the graduation. It was their first trip to Kentucky. There will be another post about their visit to Graceland.

More Julie art project

Julie is taking a 3D design class this semester. Below are two of her projects.

The first is a Cat made from baling wire.



The other was an interesting project: she was asked to make an article of clothing made entirely of cardboard. It could also include glue, tape and other fasteners. Julie, being an accomplished seamstress took this as a personal challenge. She ended up making a Papagena costume (from Mozart's Magic Flute) It's really made out of cardboard and string!

Wilkerson Cemetery Project

We did a service project at the cemetery plot for Joseph Pumphrey Wilkerson and his wife Martha Pettypool - Levi's 5th great grandparents. It was in complete disrepair. Levi, a friend and I spent a hard 4 hours working on it.

We're very pleased with how much we could get done!

Read below for a whole play by play of the activity

If you cannot read what it says in the animated object, click on the image it is showing to open a link to a bigger picture of it. Or click here for before, and here for after.

The Wilkerson homestead is located very near Falls of Rough KY just over the county border in Breckinridge County KY. That's about 80 miles from Glasgow on lots of curvy back country roads. We recruited Levi's friend Jonathon Evans to come help.

We couldn't quite remember exactly where the cemetery was. Cousin Bill Wilson had shown us it a year ago - but we saw so many places that it was all a blur. We drove around a lot and nothing looked quite right. Finally we ended up on Old Railroad Bed Rd. That looked familiar - so we stopped at the first cornfield - parked and hauled tons of stuff way up the hill to where we thought the cemetery would be - only - it wasn't there.

So - we looked and we looked and we looked and we looked. Below is roughly everywhere I walked looking for it (see the red arrows). Levi and Jonathon wandered around all over the place too. We were getting pretty discouraged because we had a time we had to leave by - and it would have been unfortunate to drive all that way (80 miles) for nothing.

Finally after trying the first cornfield and the second cornfield - we decided to move the car and see if there was another corn field - lo a behold there was - and when we saw it - we knew it was the right place - because it had a lone tree in the middle.

We found the cemetery after only 3 minutes of looking this time - it was only 25 feet into the forest. As you can see above it was really in bad shape.


Someone obviously really thought well of the Wilkerson's because they have a very nice plot - with 2 foot+ high walls and a wrought iron fence and beautiful head stones.

Time had not been kind to the plot though. Trees had actually grown through the wrought iron, all the support blocks had been knocked over - probably by trees - it was hard to tell what was even in the plot - it was so littered with dead trees and what not.

See below a montage of pictures of the event.

Jonathon on the south side of the plot
North side of the plot looking south - you can see the head stones and all the trees
looking at the south and west sides of the plot
This is an after picture of wood grown into the wrought iron. It's amazing to me that wood to just grow into the fence like that. We were able to remove all the rest of the wood out of the fence from the 2 or 3 other trees that grew into it. We decided to leave this small piece though.
Looking at the plot after a lot of work to get it back into shape - raking and what not.

Note that the wrought iron fence has posts that go into the blocks. In most cases the posts had split the rock. We fit the heavy heavy rocks back together like jigsaw pieces. Sometimes we couldn't find the missing broken slabs
Sometimes getting things level was a challenge
The slabs were extremely heavy. We had to pry and push a wedge them to get them to slide and move. We couldn't have done it without Jon's help.
We weren't able to remove all the trees
A marvelously preserved headstone! Levi's 5th great grandfather
Martha's is a bit harder to read - but still well preserved



Three tired but happy workers

Levi - Intro to Tech - 1st place

Levi won 1st place for Region again for Intro to Tech with Future Business Leaders of America. This category is for Freshmen and Sophomores. He'll go on to the State competition later this year.

Levi deeply enjoys all things technical

Julie's sculpture project

Julie was charged with making a plaster sculpture - using clay to create a negative image


Julie was ambitious and decided to make a bonzai tree with some other things in the scene


Here is the sculpture - upside down - the plaster hasn't been poured in yet.

The finished project looks great (after some super glue). The teacher could hardly believe she's done it in the negative. One of the other students said "you don't just one up us - you seven up us!" I hadn't heard that saying before. We'll need to get a picture of the final project.

Mammoth Cave - Green River

Sonora and Katie enjoying the view
The Green River - the main river running through Mammoth Cave National Park - it's at a very high level here


Howdy is rather anxious to continue the walk
Sonora enjoying the scenery



Howdy - a bit worn out - but happy!

Julie enjoying looking out over a bridge

The River Styx - it exits out of the caves at this point - the water source actually comes from 30 miles away and runs underground until this point

Julie's 3D art class

Julie has been having a lot of fun in her three dimensional art class. This particular project made from foam board actually got displayed in the art building

Sonora's costume

Sonora decided to make a costume. She really wouldn't tell us what it was going to be until it was done. She pretty much taught herself to sew and made the thing. She's working on another costume now - I'm not sure what it will look like