A Weekend Away

This past weekend Tyson and I had an extended date. It's so nice living close to family, and even nicer that they are willing to watch our kids for us so we can get a break once in a while. We started off our date by playing a pretty pathetic version of Racquetball. I hadn't played since I was quite pregnant with Lexi and now she's six. Tyson played with his right hand though and that way we were pretty evenly matched.

Then we left the kids with Bill and Susan (Tyson's parents) and went to Salt Lake. We met up with a few of Tyson's old high school buddies for a surprise birthday party for one of them. We ate at Famous Dave's which serves pretty good Barbeque. It wasn't quite as good as Memphis but still a very good alternative. That night we stayed with Tyson's brother Shay and talked (argued?) about politics for 4 hours!

The next day we went to the Body Worlds - The Story of the Heart exhibit in Salt Lake. Shay and Tyson's uncle Shaun also went with us. For anyone who hasn't heard of Body Worlds it is an exhibit using real human bodies. Some of the bodies are left whole and are posed in somewhat artistic ways. Like there's a lady doing the splits and shooting a bow, there's a figure skating couple, and a skier, and a man jumping a hurdle. Some of them were a wee bit odd though like the guy balancing on three wooden balls and his hand is up in the air and he is holding all his internal organs in his hand. Actually his hand is holding his bladder -- adds new meaning to the term "just hold it." Lots of the exhibit though is display cases with various organs in them and you can see the difference between a healthy pair or lungs and smokers lungs, or see what a hole in the heart looks like, or what an ulcer looks like etc. I thought it was going to be really gross looking at dead bodies (normal people don't go look at dead bodies and call it a date do they?) but I ended up really enjoying it. The bodies didn't look all that real to me. It was very educational. It was great having an Anatomy Professor with us to help explain a lot of things. I guess all that education is paying off!

Here are a few fun facts I learned:
1) You really can die from a broken heart. It has to do with an overload of stress hormones that causes stress cardiomyopathy.
2) The brain is only 2% of our body weight but uses 20% or our blood supply.
3) All the blood vessels in our body if stretched out would go 60,000 miles, more than twice around the earth.
4) Each cigarette decreases your life by 1 minute.
5) Our hearts pump 1,800 gallons of blood a day.
6) Your liver gets smaller as you age.
7) Tyson has no difficulty spending lots of money in the book store that you have to pass through to exit the exhibit!



Thanks to my in-laws for watching the kids too! They sure left in a hurry when we got home Saturday night though so I'm not sure they'll ever want to do it again!