July ... the first half

July has been marching right along. It is hot here in Michigan ... ick! I should be used to this as an Okie (sorta Texan), but the humidity is much higher here. It's not too bad, but still not too much fun after the 25 minute walk to work.

We mostly have just been working this month. We did take a few little trips here and there. The fourth of July weekend, we went and saw the Holocaust Memorial Musuem in Farmington Hills. We really enjoyed it. It also contained a lot of Jewish History and Culture first before the Holocaust part. But the part of the museum I enjoyed most was the very end. There were displays talking about human nature - what parts of us are good and what parts of us are bad. What makes us do good things and what makes us do bad things. It used books to talk about this - To Kill a Mockingbird, Atlas Shrugged, and others. I really enjoyed that perspective. Afterwards, we went to this "museum" according to AAA - Ha! It was called something like Marvin's Marvelous Machine Museum. It was really just a room of lots of arcade machines, including old ones. Like a spanish inquisiton one where you could see little puppets heads chopped off. Not exactly what we expected ...

We also went to the Detroit temple a couple weekends ago. In order to entice us further to go, we decided to go visit the Cranbrook Science museum afterwards. The Cranbrook complex includes some private schools from elementary through high school as well as a graduate art school (someone in our ward attends there). They also have an art museum and a sceince museum. It is like 5 minutes away from the temple, so we couldn't resist. We did an 8 am session at the temple, so we were at the museum at 10:00 just as it opened. The science museum was VERY well done ... and believe me - I have seen a lot. Funny, it was really only Katsu and I there. But we enjoyed it and even learned quite a bit. I highly recommend it.

We also have started attending an Institute class on the book of Revelations. I find it fascinating and am really enjoying reading this book. It doesn't seem very hard to understand at all now and I feel like I am getting so much out of it.

We also have been experimenting with some new recipes. I like to try a new one every week or so. Yesterday, we tried a Moroccan dish I found online called Couscous Marrakesh. Since we couldn't go to Morocco when we went to Europe last summer :-( I just had to try it out. It was very tasty and a great thanks to our friends who gave us some of their very expensive saffron! The dish wouldn't have been complete without it. I also checked a vegetarian cookbook out from the library. We enjoyed the Mexican lasagna very much! And Katsu even liked the lentil "burgers" I made at my first try with veggie burgers. Not bad, if I say so myself.

It's been a pretty fun summer and hopefully it will keep getting better!