Bahr Gathering and Crandall Printing Museum

Today was a busy day. It started with me driving down town to drop off a package to send to Joseph, from a lady who lives in Miami, who is from Guatemala, and who goes to Guatemala every 2 weeks, so she takes things down for missionaries. She happened to be in Salt Lake so she posted it on on the Guatmeala Mom's facebook page that this pick up would be delivered on Jan 8th. Well what do you know, that would be just in time for Joseph's birthday!! So I didn't tell Joseph, but I got a birthday package ready for him with some help from "The Birthday Lady" (aka my mom) and we got it ready last night. I dropped it off and I'm excited, I didn't tell him it's coming so I don't think he's expecting anything so I hope it is really a great surprise that brightens his day!

So, after that, I got back home and loaded up a van full of kids and we hurried down to Orem for a lunch gathering with my mom's side of the family. The annual Bahr get together used to be a New Years' Day/January 1st thing, so we usually haven't gone cause we are always at Brighton with friends over New Years. But last year they moved this family get together to the Saturday before New Years, so we went last year and were there again this year! Yay, we're participating in the one time the Bahrs get together, so I'm happy to make the effort, even if I am 9 months pregnant and it makes me miss my nap today. I've got 60+ cousins on my mom's side (and just 2 on my dad's side!) so this Bahr gathering is usually a huge group even though most of the relatives are not in attendance. My mom has 5 brothers, and 4 of them were there with their wives and it was also a good turn out of their kids and grandkids, over a hundred came. My mom is the baby, and there was a solid showing of her posterity - 3 out of 7 and all 3 with spouses, and that's good cause 3 of the 4 that didn't make it are out of state or else we might have had 100%. It is a potluck lunch, where my mom and her brothers each bring two main dishes and everyone else brings a side dish or dessert to feed 10. I brought a big salad that I knew I could eat all of if necessary, to keep me full of my Daily Dozen and away from the tempting treats. Lily gave into the temptation (a few times over...)

Lily! You're usually more health conscious than this! But I guess she felt like binging today. I gave Daniel a few treats to occupy him until the line died down. Wes kept him company.

He didn't eat much of them, he mostly just stared at Aunt Beka and Uncle Matt across the table from him. So we ate, talked, visited, the kids ran around with people that they didn't know... all the grandkids had similar complaints... "I don't know any of these people!" "THAT is why we are here!" Look at all these people you are related to! Pretty cool, isn't it? Natalie and Daniel rolled a ball with my brother's little girl Eliza (or is that Lucy? I can't tell from the back..."

And so we had fun there until 3:30. At 3:30 we loaded up - Corey headed home with Hyrum, Wesley and Owen, and I took the girls and Daniel to a museum I just found out about in Provo, the Crandall Printing Museum. And it was so cool. So, on Christmas, Corey's dad gave him a little booklet about the miracles involved in printing the Book of Mormon (a lot of which is mentioned in this article by John Pratt). I finished reading it yesterday and it was really interesting, so I was sad that we nenver made it to the Grandin Press in Palmyra when we visited New York years ago in 2006 (before the blog, so no link to that one) but I was googling around a bit and lo and behold - there is a little printing museum right here in Utah! I texted them about a tour, and was able to schedule one for today at 4. So, since we were in the neighborhood in Orem, I figured we might as well head down to Provo to check it out. Plus I wanted to do it before the baby came, so this might be my one shot. It was great - they had a replica of the Gutenberg Press -

The typeset case and a stack of printed pages for a Latin Bible...

He showed us how they make the typeset letters, with some liquid metal that was 600 degrees but cools down almost instantly on the cold stone top of furnace. The little girls found that part really fascinating...

Daniel didn't care and was starting to be handful. Unfortunately at a museum, I can't just let him run loose, so it was a bit tricky. I tried to turn on pbs kids app on my phone.

That worked for a little bit to distract him as we tried to keep listening...

The nice tour guide. He's the only one doing tours right now, which is why it's for appointment only. He showed us how they inked the press...

Darn it, the phone wasn't working for Daniel anymore...

Abi got to pull the press lever.

Looking at replicas of the Latin Bible.

The girls were so good, I was so proud of them. I know it's not easy to go on a 90 min tour, but they paid really good attention and actually seemed to be understanding some of it! Here we are in the Benjamin Franklin room where they had a replica of his press and the Declaration of Independence, which said replica's typeset was made from the original molds used for the original publications of the Declaration, pretty neat!

Then another room wtih a replica of the Grandin Press, like the one that was used to print the Book of Mormon.

That huge stack of paper there is 2500 sheets - enough for one "signature" for the Book of Mormon. And it took 37 signatures to print all the pages of the Book of Mormon. A picture of how the typeset pages were layed out below...

It was all just so fascinating! And I loved it, Abi and Lily really liked it too, and Natalie and Sophi did great following along. Thankfully Daniel fell asleep over my shoulder when we were looking at Benjamin Franklin's press replica. (Oh yeah, he missed his nap today!) So he was killing my arm and my pregnant tummy as I held him over my shoulder, but he was quiet, so I kept holding him. A historical replica of what the Golden Plates may have looked like. Amazing stuff.

The face masks of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum.

Again, it was really great. I told Corey all about it after I got home and he was recently assigned to work with the young Men of our church ward, so I think they're going to go down there for a youth activity sometime, the kids will all love it.