10 lbs of stuff in a 5 lb bag!

More fun stuff during the time off from school.  Hit the desert for a bit.  This photo has a certain "American Gothic" quality to it...

          Shaw got inside of a hurricane simulator- 36 MPH...

                 69 MPH...

               Top speed- 78 MPH!

Lesa and Shaw participating in a Flash Mob at the Superstition Springs Mall.  Shaw is a rebel- He's holding his sign upside down. 

 Visited the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale.  Ummm... Scott, this pic is for you. 

The Museum is really high tech and it's good that it is that way because each musical display does not interrupt another.  You wear headphones and a receiver on your belt and as you get within 10 feet or so of each exhibit, you'll hear 3 or 4 samples with a video of that instrument being played.  There is a map as to where that instrument came from in the world and some historical facts on a placard.  This was my 4th visit and I still don't think I've seen all of the exhibits. That's Lesa in the background.

Lesa just visited a 200 yr old square piano from Europe.  The videos are a mix of historic performances of famous symphonies around the world, families playing folk instruments in their living rooms or on the porch, college students perserving the art form or children learning from thier fathers and grandfathers.  I suspect that some of the histsoric videos on display from the 1920s or 1930s may represent the last time some of the more obscure instruments were played and it would be lost if not for this museum. 

A hip-hop/turntables display with the Sugarhill Gang on video.  I didn't photograph it, but the piano that John Lennon wrote "Imagine" on is here too. 

This gong makes a beautiful thunderous bass sound. 

Shaw playing a hollow log type drum from Oceania.  The Aborigine in the back ground seems to like what he's doing. 

 Here's some video of Lesa and Shaw playing some gong/bells from Thailand. 

Christmas Day

Clan Whipple took a Sabbath Day/Christmas Day stroll along the Lehi Trail out to the banks of the Salt River on the north end of Mesa. I'm a great lover of the desert and all of it's beauty and solitude, but, the banks of the Salt River around here are not representative of the beauty of the desert...  

There's a monument out there that was built on the centennial celebration of the day in 1877 that the Mormon Pioneers crossed the river to create a settlement called Lehi which is now Mesa, Arizona.  

I don't know the history but it appears that a few wards and stakes placed concrete markers with hand prints and signatures in 1977 when the little monument was built.  They are mostly strewn about randomly. 

The Salt River is empty right now.  There are two dams upstream a few miles that lift the river into the irrigation canals that feed most of the farm land and citrus orchards and create a few recreational lakes.  We are standing on the banks about 40 feet above the river bed.  In the late Winter and early Spring, when the snow is melting off off the mountains, the river is a raging torrent that would reach up to our feet at the edge there.  Here's me and Shaw throwing rocks off the edge.  (It's a man thing...)  

On closer inspection, Lesa found somebody named "Shaw W." who left a hand print in 1977 and signed their name.  Shaw's left hand is almost as big as that person's was.   

The Mormon Settlers arrived in March of 1877 and I'm sure they had no idea what they were in for that first summer with temperatures hovering at 105-110 degrees for 45 days at the peak of the summer months. There is an Indian Reservation on the other side of the river and that land is largely undeveloped and so I imagine that the crossing spot is largely they way they found it 134 years ago. I bet they would be tickled to see this brand new air-conditioned Stake Center just up the banks from where they crossed.  

Just step away from this spot and there are probably 50 meetinghouses and a Temple (Mesa) within walking distance.  There are two more temples 30 minutes away by car (Gilbert and Phoenix) and still two additional temples 2 1/2 hours away by car (Gila Valley and Snowflake).  President James E Faust visited here just before he died and confirmed that there would be still more in the coming decade.  The community of Lehi was annexed by the city of Mesa 40 years ago and Mesa has nearly a half million residents now.  There are a quarter of a million Latter-Day Saints in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and the state of Arizona has about 350,000 Latter-Day Saints!

Several years ago, on the occasion of the dedication of the Nauvoo,Illinois Temple, which our family watched on satellite, President Gordon B Hinckley invited the local attendees to go walk along the banks of the Mississippi River beside the temple before they headed for home and think about the people who walked away from their homes and businesses and farms under duress 170 years ago and sacrificed so much.  They fled the United States because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.  They gathered in the Salt Lake Valley which was part of Mexico at the time.  Brigham Young then sent people to settle in southern Utah, Idaho,  Arizona, California, Wyoming and other places to build communities and plant trees and make farmland.

On our walk today, I thought about those people from Nauvoo and also the next generation of those people who then left Salt Lake on assignment to come to this inhospitable place and try to make a go of it. It seems to  have worked and I was filled with gratitude for them.

Lego Mania!

Please welcome special guest blogger Mr Shaw Whipple!

These look like small legos containers, but there are actually more than you think.  It's an optical illusion.  Let's go look at some of the pictures real quick. 

This is one of the newest creations I made.  It's the newest A-25 boat.  The latest Police weapon.

This is a forest station. It's very small and doesn't have anything but it keeps all the vehicles in one place and makes sure there is no disorder.

This is the lunar limo changed into a Police 857. That is the code number.  There are special meanings to it.  You can see a little light bulb in the front to catch the criminals attention. Then we can fire a missile that is very long and can knock out anything.  We used it to catch the most wanted criminal in the world within 5 minutes. 

Christmas season adventures

Paid a visit to the Phoenix Temple site after Brady's Missionary Homecoming address in Cindy's ward.  It's still hard to detect what the footprint of the building proper will be.  I'm aware that local homeowners fought the Church at every turn to have a temple in any case and the compromise required a shorter wider building and I think I heard that there will be a parking structure to accommodate the parking. 

The Gilbert Temple site is huge and this one seems really small by comparison.  There is a regular meetinghouse on the site already and it appears that the temple will be very close to it.

 Here's the artist rendition posted on the side of one of the construction trailers.  I hear this one will be opening in 2014 sometime. 

Next subject- We went out for breakfast at a local restaurant and they had hired a balloon artist to stroll about the booths all morning.  This was a pretty elaborate hat creation and he assembled it in such as way that it was very hard to detect what it was until the last couple of minutes.  When he handed to Shaw, we and several adjacent tables erupted into cheers.  He got a tip from us AND from another family who enjoyed watching.  Several people wanted to take pictures.

I didn't have my camera so these pictures waited until we got home.  Lesa had a phone call to take care of but she got a balloon Santa hat WITH a white beard and moustache.  She wore it well and it just cries out CHRISTMAS! 

Thanksgiving 2011

We did something a bit out of the ordinary this year.  Not that we haven't ever done anything like it in our 18 year history, but we went and had a Thanksgiving buffet at one of the local high-end resorts not far from here.  I anticipated some traffic and there wasn't any and I anticipated a few minutes to walk from the parking structure to the interior of the property but we walked right up.  So our table wasn't ready yet.  There was a jazz combo playing and they asked if I had a request.  Since they were a jazz combo, I asked for an obvious song that a jazz combo might play.  Dave Brubeck's "Take Five"  They fired it up without hesitation and did a great job with it.  That song is so well crafted and accessible that most people don't even know that they are having their melon tweaked with the 5/4 time signature.  We all applauded afterwards and I shouted facetiously to "Play some 'Skynrd'!  Without missing a beat, they played Sweet Home Alabama!   Being a DJ, I could feel the energy  level of the room change immediately with lots of bobbing heads, tapping feet and a few couples dancing.  

Sensing that I was a bit of a rabble-rouser, they went right into Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" with a Soca beat.  Lesa asked me to dance!  I barely got my arm around her and they called our table.   

 

Lesa and Shaw played a round of that hand slapping game that apparently doesn't have a name. 

Lesa looking beautiful out by one of the fountains on the property.

Here we are seated at our table. 

We drove to South Mountain to watch the sunset over the city.  It was a hazy day with some rain on the way.  You can make out Downtown Phoenix on the left of the shot. 

Somebody was nice enough to take a pic of us on the ledge.   You'd have to turn the camera to the right to find Mesa in the distance. Even by Arizona standards, it was rather chilly and Lesa was wearing my jacket. It was a great ending to a great day!