My mother was in town this weekend. She came back from her summer classes in England. She is getting a master's degree in Education Technology. Or more specifically integrating technology into to her teaching methods. I was able to help her with her Web site (though not as much as we wanted. Sorry Mom.) and see the sites of Boston.

Our first stop was Plymouth Plantation, which was highly recommended by my friends. We were able to visit the Mayflower replica while we were there too. Both were very interesting sites. The ship was smaller than we had expected with a larger hold than we expected. Something of a contradiction. We were told that over 100 people were housed on a ship that would probably fit inside a chapel (with overflow). The pilgrims were amazing people to have endured so much so they could achieve religious freedom. I am thankful that our country today is accepting of different religions and doesn't persecute as in times past.
The plantation was also well done. There were actors dressed and living as though they were pioneers in a new land. They spoke about the things that were important to them: farming, fishing, cooking, sewing, carpentry, religion. It was certainly a difficult time to be alive.
My mother as a history teacher was very interested in everything going on. I have been more reluctant to embrace history but even I found it very interesting. Mia and I think of everything these days in terms of bringing our kids back. This is definately on the list.

While my wife stayed home the next day, mom and I went into the city of Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. The trail is about 2 miles long, though we only traveled about 1 mile of it. That tour is packed with so much historical information it is ridiculous. We learned about the founders, the patriots, the myths that surround Paul Revere (he didn't shout as he rode) and myriad other facts about one of the oldest cities in our country.
Some great things happened in Boston and I am proud to live in the city were freedom was so highly regarded.

Before she left, my mother and father gave us the best gift. I want to thank them so much. We know that it is for the baby, but we hope you don't mind us breaking it in first :)

Today was David's wedding to Chris. It was held in Utah at the top of the Snowbird ski resort. The wedding was very nice, it went (mostly) smoothly and there were quite a number of people in attendance.
This was something of a shock because they gave everyone about 1 month's notice about the whole affair. I do not mean to say that we were suprised to hear they were getting married, quite the contrary. However, we were suprised that it was happening so suddenly.

When we were told, David offered to fly us out to Utah from JFK airport in New York city at midnight. That meant a 3-hour drive, driving through the entire city, and then catching a red-eye flight out to Utah. Fortunately, we were able to work out a deal that let us leave from our hometown at about 9:00AM. That worked out much better for us.

Coming back to the topic at hand, the wedding was very nicely done. Chris has more family in Utah so they made quite a showing. We enjoyed meeting them and getting to know her boys better as well. They will be moving to New York in September so the boys can begin school and get settled in.

We drove out to Albany this weekend to visit the Mia's family. We have been doing that quite a bit recently. They just have too much going on in their lives for us to keep up with.

As we were driving we decided to come up with names that we like for a . We are getting more confident in the idea that our baby will be a little inday (the Filipino word for a baby ). We had a couple of names written down from some baby books. None of them felt quite right, they seemed to be trying too hard. After much debate we decided that we liked the name Kimberly Jane Johansen.

Jane comes from Mia's maternal grandmother and will be the name that we call her. She can certainly decide for herself to switch that later, but for the first while we are the parents and get to make aribtrary, caprious decisions.

Kimberly doesn't have roots in either family. We both think that it is a cute name and we hope that our daughter will like it as well. I might just have to steal a nickname from my uncle though and call her Kimmers. I suppose it depends on what she will respond to.