Conference Weekend

Conference this weekend was a little different than normal.  While we went up to Temple Square both days, we stayed home for the Saturday morning session.  My dad surprised us late Friday night by coming into town.  He had originally not thought that he could make it out this Conference and so we had not planned on going up to Salt Lake.

Dad went up Saturday morning with Emily and we joined them for the afternoon session.  It was a beautiful day, but I forgot my camera, so alas, no pictures!

Sunday, Dad, Shin, J, Zuri and I all piled in the car and headed up for both sessions.  When we got up, we were surprised to be greeted with lots of snow!  There were three accidents on 1-15 as we were driving up to Salt Lake.  One was so bad that they directed traffic off the freeway.  There were about seven cars that we could see involved in that accident. 

Conference went by so fast--and was so amazing.  It seemed to fly by this weekend.  It is a good thing that it is all printed in the Ensign so that we can go back and really have a chance to absorb and apply in our lives.

Sunday was cold and snowed on and off so we didn't spend much time outside.  We had lunch in the Joseph Smith Building and I got a really cute video of Zuri chasing J around a couple pillars in the room.

Eating lunch

 I told Shin that if he made the face that I would include the picture in the blog! Haha!

 

Zuri all bundled up.  Even though most of the snow had melted from the morning, it was still really cold and not too long after we got her all bundled it started snowing again.  When we left Salt Lake it was coming down so hard and fast it was like rain.  

  Reading with Uncle Shin during the last session.  She really bonded with him the last session and didn't want Josh or me at the end.  It was pretty funny.

Learning

We have been working with the alphabet and numbers 1-10 with Zuri.  She mastered saying the whole alphabet and 1-10 quite some time ago, so we are working on her recognizing them by sight.  We realized it was working when we put on a movie and 20th Century Fox appeared on the screen and she said "two, oh" several times.  Then she started pointing out letters that she recognized a day later in something else completely random.

It is so exciting to see her learning and applying what she has learned into different situations!  She is becoming so articulate and growing up so fast!

Seattle

We spent last weekend in Seattle for the PSA conference in which J presented his research paper.  One of his other classmates, Teri, came with us to present her paper.  Graduate and post-graduate students were chosen from across the nation to present their papers at the conference.

We took advantage of being in Seattle and went to the Space Needle, the Pacific Science Center, Pike's Fish Market, the University of Washington, and just wandered downtown Seattle!  We had a blast!  Although we learned that we really don't like Seattle's road sytem.  The streets split of in three or more directions without warning, the one-way streets are a nightmare to navigate (and are all over), and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the street planning.  We had ourselves some adventures through Seattle looking for our destinations.  Luckily, we spent 95% of our time on foot, which made it easier!

We stayed in the Camlin/Worldmark right in the heart of downtown Seattle.  The conference was at the Sheraton Hotel, which was just a few blocks away, and the Space Needle was also not too far from us.

Our hotel.  I had never been to Seattle so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I knew it was a big city but I was thinking more along the lines of Sacramento or Salt Lake.  My impression is that Seattle is a colder, wetter San Francisco--even to the point of coming into the city across the bridge!

 View of Seattle from our hotel room; we had a nice view of the bus depot.  A picture of downtown Seatle.

 Teri and J before their presentations

Teri just before her presentation

J during his presentation

University of Washington:

 Emily would like to attend the University of Washington so we went over and checked out the campus.  It was really cool--lots of New England/old world style architecture--buildings you would expect to see back east in Virginia.  The campus is also very big, we barely covered half of it in the short time we were there.

 The space needle can be seen from the campus

The first signs of spring approaching.

Pike's Fish Market:

 This little fruit place in the market had the most delicious fruit!  We bought quite a bit of fruit from them :-)

 Balloon guy

As we were looking for a place to eat, we spotted this Bolivian restaurant.  J was so disappointed this place was closed.  It is due to reopen in a few weeks.

 Making cheese!

 There was a parade in honor of St. Patricks Day.  We missed the parade, but this was a fun momento from the parade!

 Space Needle during the day

Pacific Science Center:

 Right next to the space needle is the Pacific Science Center, so we went in and explored.  It was a lot of fun and even had a small butterfly emporium!

 

 Teri and J were playing with this contraption--you speak into the center and the person can hear you on the other end, a good 75 feet apart!  It was really cool.

Butterflies!

 

 

 

Space Needle:

We went to the Space Needle on a mostly clear, cold night.  It wasn't too bad on the ground, but at the top of the needle it was really windy.  The battery on J's camera died so we used my camera for the pictures.  They still turned out pretty well but we were disappointed not to have the pictures from J's more sophisticated camera.

 The blue is the Pacific Science Center; below is the photo we got at the Space Needle.

Dancing

Zuri loves to dance.  She will dance to songs on the radio, songs in movies, and anytime there is anything with a beat.  Her favorite though, is a singing moose. 

For his birthday one year, my grandparents gave J a hunter moose that sings and marches in place.  Zuri loves it.  She loves dancing to it, she loves singing along with it, and she loves playing with it.  We had it put up for a while in the closet, but she caught sight of it and wanted to dance.

She had J dance with her and wouldn't let him stop.  After the third or fourth dance, I pulled out my camera to get it on video.  The video is quite long--over three minutes, but pretty funny.  You can see how J tries unsuccessfully to get put the moose away.

Zuri also has a tutu that was given to her for Christmas that she wears constantly.  You can see her in it and with her play jewelry.  She finally gets tired of J and wants me to dance, which is where the video ends.  Hope you all enjoy as much as we did!

(Not sure what happened to the video)