family road trip day three

On Wednesday, our first stop was the Western Historic Trails Center in Council Bluffs, Nebraska. It documented a lot of the main movements from the Missouri river out west, including the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Mormon migration.




This is a crazy freeway overpass. Probably meant to discourage parachuting over that area.

We also stopped to see the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs. It’s a significant place because that is where Brigham Young was sustained as the second prophet . It is also an area where some of Josh’s ancestors lived before they came out to Utah, so he was pretty excited to see it. The tabernacle replica itself was really cool, it had space around the timbers to allow for expansion in the humidity, and a system to see if the building is still level.

Our next break was in Des Moines, Iowa at the botanical gardens. It was really lovely and refreshing. We took loads of pictures because it was so pretty.

See Evie enjoying her lunch in the picture below? There is also a banana tree with fruit, and a color wheel made out of flowers!

The last break was in Iowa City at the Museum of Art of Iowa University in the state of, you guessed it, Iowa. It seemed like a really nice town. Their actual museum had flooded awhile ago, so they had the highlights from their collection on display in a different building on campus. This was perfect for us, since we made it there about 45 minutes before they closed. (this happened to us a RISD art museum in Providence too) Considering I get sidetracked and mesmerized pretty quickly, it was nice to have the condensed version.

I spent most of my time watching a video of people dancing using the African masks on display, hoping to see moms carrying their babies on their back – this has been somewhat of an obsession for me lately. I watch lots of videos on youtube about how to tie your baby on your back with a piece of cloth. I recently forked out over $100 to get an Ergo carrier though, because I found out it’s pretty hard to tie a wiggly baby on your own back with 5.5 yards of fabric. We tried it with a sarong too but it didn’t feel that secure; works in a pinch though. The Ergo is pretty sweet, although I think it will work better when Evie’s a little bit taller and can have her arms come out the top.

I apologize for having 3 different fonts in this post. I'm still getting the hang of blogging.

I loved this nursing sculpture. There were several like this. (Turns out I'm not the only one with breasts long enough to bend way down into the baby's mouth:) This morose little guy caught my attention too, esp looking like he just walked out of that empty conference room. Maybe his meeting didn't go as well as he would have liked.

Ooh, ceramics by Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso! I love Picasso's ceramics, you don't see them all that often either.


The campus was right by the river so we went down to see. I nursed Evie in the shade while we watched people play frisbee. Don't worry mom, I am always very discreet.



Evie was pretty crazy about the ducks, she got very excited and flapped her own little wings too.