Chicago!

Thursday Phil and I went to the Chicago Cultural Center.

I think this is the world's largest Tiffany dome.








We also went to the Art Institute. This time I saw American Gothic, The Child's Bath, several paintings by Winslow Homer, etc. that I hadn't seen previously. I revisited the Manets, Monets, Van Goghs, and Toulouse-Lautrecs.

On Friday, we went to the Field Museum, which was really full of kids. In retrospect, we should have done this on Saturday. There we saw Sue, the world's largest and most complete T-rex.

Then we went to the Glessner House, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the historic Prairie Avenue district. The docent wasn't so great on this tour, but the house was interesting.

We also went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, one of the nation's oldest and free to the public 365 days a year.


Saturday we took the El to Oak Park where we visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Very interesting. Just walking around Oak Park we spotted six other FLW homes and the Unity Temple.

We came back to Chicago and took in the Shedd Aquarium. I think the highlight there is the baby beluga whale!

As we were walking back to the loop, we fortuitously passed the Berghoff and stopped in for a homemade brew. We finally ended up at Daley plaza to see the local Halloween celebrations, which included jugglers and acrobatic jump-ropers, and sliding down the Picasso statue on your coat.

On the way home, I had a moment to visit with the Blues Brothers.

In preparation for the great carving contest of 2008.

Hi gang! The Minnesota McGuire/Rohlfsen clan would like to start an annual pumpkin carving contest/challenge starting next October 2008. A grand prize winner will be determined by votes on the blog.

The competition looks steep...

Can't wait to see what next years pumpkins will look like.

Pumpkin Carvings - Day 1

Well, that time of year has come to put knife to orangy flesh. It has been a few years since my last pumpkin carving, but I think I did alright. The first one is a penguin family. The second one is a cornucopia. I made a small mistake on that one, but it still looks ok. Sometime this week, I am going to carve an image of Indy into a large pumpkin. It will be interesting to see how that turns out. Rosie has plans to carve a cat and moon image as well. The last image is of the Linux penguin, Tux, that I did a few years back. Post your pumpkins!

Autumn Happenings

Ryan and I have been extremely busy this Autumn. I put away all of our Summer decorations and pulled out our Autumn ones. Its always nice to have Autumn-type things in your house, especially since the leaves don't change here. Ryan bought me a sewing machine, which I am still trying to figure out. I was able to use it to sew a "button hole" which I was pretty impressed with. I am excited to make more projects in the near future.
I have also been very busy with work. I FINALLY finished decorating the library, which is something I love to do. I will have to post some pictures of my library when I get a chance. I am also getting the hang of everything much better now. I am excited because I just got a new computer and printer and will hopefully have internet sometime this week. It will definately make my work a lot easier! The kids are great (mostly), but its hard to keep track of 200 students. It is getting better, though.
Now that Autumn is here, we are also getting ready for Halloween time. This means, of course, that I bought a new bandana for Indy and make him wear it around the house. Here is what he looks like:


Here is Indy wearing my cat costume ears- it took 50 pictures to get this one shot. But he looks sooo cute!
Tomorrow we are going to a pumpkin patch with our friends the Hagens. We are looking forward to picking out pumpkins and carving them. We will have to put up pictures of that later this week.
Hopefully everyone's Autumn is going as well as ours!