161 steps . . .

With the recent improvement of the weather in these parts, we've taken advantage of the opportunity to have some weather dependent adventures. One of the first on our list was to climb the steps (all 161 of them) to the top of the bell tower on campus to check out the view and to hear a concert played by the chimesmaster.

The concert was loud since we were directly beneath all the bells, but very fun to watch. The chimesmaster had to play with both her feet and her hands and was sometimes stretched out to reach pedals with both of her arms and one leg while balancing on the other leg!! It really was quite entertaining. At one point in the concert (thankfully, between songs), as Jack was walking past the bell ringer instrument (I don't know what it's really called) he reached out and clanked one down. Upon hearing the unexpected ring, we all looked to see what happened and saw Jack sheepishly moving away from the ringer. I think he realized that pulling on the handle would ring the bell, but I don't think he realized that the rest of us would hear the bell ringing. He was a little surprised and we were embarrassingly amused.

As expected, Jack and Olivia loved it! Jack especially loved sitting on the "bench" right next to the back of the clock face. I'm not exactly sure what he was looking at since you couldn't really see out the glass. The picture is a little bit dark, but you get the idea . . .

The view from the top was fantastic! Here are a few of the sights we saw . . .

And finally, one family shot with Jarom's "house" (as Olivia called it the other day) in the background . . .