Baby Jacob

Kara's baby, Jacob Michael, arrived Wed, March 18th. I flew into Denver on Monday, the 16th. I was with Kara on Tuesday and she started to go into labor that night. We (Kara, Luke and I) arrived at the hospital at 3:20am. Jacob was born 9 hours later at 12:18pm. I was allowed to cut the cord.

Jacob weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces--just like Kara did and was 21 inches. He's healthy, cute, and doing well.

Make a Smilebox greeting

ART GALLERY

For our 'President's Day-Valentine's Day' long weekend, to combine our PATRIOTISM and LOVE of art, we went to our nation's Capital and by it's Capitol

to the National Gallery of Art. Daniel, Julia and Andrea went with Dave and I. I like being able to take pictures of the works. I felt like cropping some this time, and just collected my favorite women's portraits.

At the At the Modern Art building next door, we saw the Pompeii exhibit.
In college I studied art for a semester in London at BYU's center, and remember a Pompeii exhibit I saw then. I found it fascinating that the city of Pompeii, Italy, largely populated by the elite of the Roman empire was suddenly engulfed by the lava of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. This preserved things exactly as they were at the time.

An interesting but morbid detail is that archaeologists were able to shoot plaster into cavities in the lava where bodies had been (and have now deteriorated.) However the plaster casts accurately depict the people who were there.

Many artifacts like plaster paintings, tiles, mosaics, marble statues in courtyards and atriums, jewelry and glass bowls show the advanced civilization and love of the arts and lifestyle of the Romans as well as the culture of the Greeks who they conquered.

This is a mosaic of Plato and two closer views. The tiny pieces of colored rock are about 1/8 inch cubes!



Another reproduction depicted a mosaic that involved 1 1/2 million pieces!

Obviously the people of that place and era loved beautiful art, architecture, the Italian agriculture and temperate climate--all things that we value now as well. But it is a reminder to have our lives in order, because we don't know which day might be our last.

Wood Badge Court of Honor

Dave's Court of Honor for earning his Wood Badge was held on February 18 th, 2009.

It had to be completed in 18 months and required doing a lot of work at the District level to improve the program in our area. He completed 5 tickets in areas like increasing levels of community involvement, lleadership training, fundraising, etc. You can see the blog for June 2, 2007 when he started.



He got a new neckerchief, slide and other memorabilia.

He made his cool belt at Philmont last summer.

We're very proud of him!