Nauvoo- Beautiful City

We LOVED Nauvoo!! We got into Nauvoo right at sunset where we met my parents for a quick dinner and ran up (literally) to the outdoor stage and got to see BYU's Vocal Point. They were so fun and it was nice to have some great entertainment after a lot of driving! We enjoyed Independence and the start of our church history tour there. We worked our way through Missouri, stopping to look at Far West where the saints laid cornerstones for a temple but were not able to build one due to so much persecution. We then went to Adam-Ondi-Ahman and loved walking around there and seeing more corn and soy fields.
 

This is a rebuild of Liberty Jail. Joseph Smith was in here for four and half months and endured so much grief and struggle in there. I love the revelations he received in there, especially Doctrine and Covenants 12:7-8 which says, "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes."  We all will have adversity and for me, this day, was my adversity. Satan was really working hard on me to be grumpy and moody to ruin the spirit we all felt at these wonderful sites. I'm so thankful for prayer and thankful I didn't ruin anything by my hormones and icky feelings that I was fighting. Heavenly Father is so loving and hears my prayers. That's the only way I was able to get through it. 

These pictures are from Adam-ondi-Ahman. Such a beautiful place.

    

BYU Vocal Point #byuvocalpoint was awesome!! I especially loved their medley of songs from Newsies. We found out one of them is cousins with my Flake cousins in Snowflake.
We saw lightning bugs in Nauvoo as we were watching the concert. Then we found our campsite about a mile away from Nauvoo and slept really well.

           

The kids loved riding around Nauvoo in the back of Pappy's truck! You won't see that in California. I know I'm skipping a lot of details, but for sack of not staying up until midnight, I am giving the abbreviated versions. But I do want to say that just pulling into Nauvoo, we felt the spirit immediatly. It reminded me of being on campus at BYU. We had an appointment on Thursday morning to do baptisms for the dead at the Nauvoo temple. When I came to Nauvoo about 22 years ago, when I was 14, the temple was not there and so were most of the other things to do. The baptisms were special because they were for family names that I found on my Mother in laws side. Cozette was also able to get baptized and confirmed for Nancy's aunt. We all wept when that took place and felt that she was very happy with this work. I'm so thankful to be able to do that with our kids. Even though the boys didn't get to come in, they were outside waiting for us and looking forward for the day they are old enough to go in and help do work for the dead.

Here are some of the activities we got to do in Nauvoo after we rented some bikes. That was the best way to get around even though it was hot! We went to Lucy Mack Smith's home, the Brickyard, Mansion House and Cemetery, Pioneer living center where we got to make rope, eat bread, learn how to dip candles and make barrels.   When then went to the visitor's center and watched "The Promise."

Scotty was in the kids parade during Sunset on the Mississippi. All the shows were put on by the Young Performing Missionaries and they were soooo good! The show we loved was called The Promise. These young adults were amazing and truly carried the spirit with them. I did not have dry eyes at the end and even talking to sweet Sister Speakman afterward, I could barely talk. 

              
Our biker gang cracked me up, especially when Atalie was singing, "They see me rollin'..."

These missionaries were so fun! Even though some did not have experience doing things like being a blacksmith, they still gave of their time and love and were willing to learn how to do those things to help educate all of us.

Wyatt's "poncho" for when it poured rain on us Thursday night. There was tons of lighting and thunder, huge rain drops and we even heard the lighting hit the ground! That scared me so badly!! But it was awesome. 

Scotty gets himself in the finniest sleeping positions! Jeremy even saved him from falling off the bed one night. 

Cruise America #2- Driving days, Kansas and Independence, MO

I know I'm way behind, but these past few days we have not had internet, which has been great to focus on other things and not internet! I'm going to post a lot of pictures and probably just caption bunch of them since there are so many.
 

These were the rest of the pictures from Snowflake on the zip line and at Margaret McClecve Hancock's cabin.





A pit stop for dinner in New Mexico. We drove all the way to Amarillo that night and with the time change, we got in around 1AM. It was a long night....but nice drive. As soon as we crossed the border into Texas, it smelled like cows! We all worked out before we left Amarillo that morning. It was nice to move our bodies after sitting for so long.

Wyatt waiting for his mom at a gift store in Lawrence, KS

Jeremy fit the RV into Tom and Erin's driveway with his mad backup skills!

The new book! I'm enjoying it, but have anxiety reading it as well. Wyatt read it in about two days. 

A frog we found at night that Wyatt named "Jumper"

One of my little fish children, Scotty, out in the water of Lake Clinton. The swimming was a nice reprieve from the heat, especially since our AC wasn't working in the back of the RV. It was getting into the 90's in there! Driving through Oklahoma, we had the kids ride with my parents to get them in some AC because they were getting overheated. 

Cute kids in front of Erin and Tom's house. We loved staying with them, especially the kids since they could sleep with AC and get spoiled by her cooking of  chocolate chip pancakes, strawberries and whip cream. 

Atalie is awesome at Selfies and took this one at the lake. 

Homemade ice cream from Sylas and Maddie's in Lawrence. Good stuff!

Atalie and Grayson. He loved having his cousins come to visit and we loved being with them!
     

Endless amounts of corn fields and soy beans all through Kansas, Illinois and Indiana. 

My cute co pilot. Since he got glasses about a month ago, he was able to read in the car and not get sick! If any of you know Jeremy, you know he gets motion sickness very easily.



 
Some fun things to do at the Independence, MO visitor's center. The missionaries were so awesome there. We had Sister Moss take us on a tour of the Church History part of the Visitor's Center. It is amazing what the Saint endured while in Missouri and yet they didn't lose faith. They kept going. The Savior is the reason we do what we do. We are trying to be more like him. I know that if we all tried to be more like the Savior, we can make the world a better place.

 The missionaries have a fun tradition to tell people coming through to close their eyes and whatever language of Book of Mormon that they pick will be the language they will learn on their missions. Some of the languages like Panguaian (sp?), we haven't even heard of!

Cruise America!

Well, after a very hectic week of being at Girls Camp, Jeremy working, the boys camping with Gramma and trying to get everything ready and cleaned up (Jeremy did a lot while I was gone including getting groceries, and going to Target), we actually left home right about on time Saturday morning at 5am. We had to stop a few times to fix a vent cover that was loose but so far nothing serious has been going on. We are so thankful for that. It is now Day three and we just crossed over into Oklahoma, so in honor of being in OK, we decided to watch the movie, Oklahoma!

Saturday, our first big stop was at the Grand Canyon! Our kids have never seen it and were very impressed by the "Big Ditch." We got there right about 4:30, walked around a bit and then made some delicious gourmet tostadas and burritos. AS we were walking back to the RV to make dinner, we saw a female Elk grazing in the parking lot! It was very cool since she was only about ten feet away from us and very nonplussed about so many humans watching her as she ate. After dinner, I had the kids run up and down the parking lot row, with that same Elk watching us as she chomped away, to get some energy out and blood flowing. The weather was perfect. Not too hot, with some dark looming clouds to our south. As we left the park, we saw more Elk, even a full grown one with his big antlers and a teenage boy one with his. They are beautiful animals.

Driving towards the 40, we saw tons of lightning! What a show we got as we drove all the way to Snowflake. Rain included. The cooler weather was much appreciated since the AC in the main part of the RV isn't blowing cold air. We are hoping to get it checked in Kansas tonight.

We got Snowflake around 10PM to a warm greeting from our Flake family. They let us park in their driveway and the teenagers went out into the pasture to use their zipline with Mckay and Abe in the dark. All we could here was the zip going back and forth and the kids laughing the whole way!.

After a good night sleep, we ate a yummy breakfast casserole with Pam and Shon and got ready for church. Jeremy and were trouble shooting the AC, but to no avail. Sacrament meeting was wonderful.  I'm so grateful to be able to go to church anywhere in the world and know that I will be able to take the Sacrament. We got to hear from a sweet young woman who talked about family unity. The next speaker was a young man who is getting ready to leave on his mission soon to Colorado. He talked about the good examples of friends he had who helped him get ready for a mission. After that there was a beautiful rendition of The Lord is My Shepherd by a family. Their teenage son sang while the dad played the violin and the mom accompanied them on the piano. The spirit was strong! Another young woman spoke who just recently got back from her mission in Salt Lake City Utah. We found out she actually served with a friend of ours from Denmark!

After sacrament, Uncle Shon drove us to the temple in Snowflake. It was fun to go by there and take the kids. The girls hadn't been since they were 3 and 1. It was built in 2002 when my grandparents lived there still. We will see lots of temples on this trip and I am so grateful to know that I am sealed to my family forever thanks to the temple (For more info on temples, check out lds.org).

A cool moth on the temple that was the size of the palm of my hand. 

Snowflake also has an old log cabin where my 4th great grandmother lived with her 13 children! She was asked to move there from Utah with her husband and children to help settle that part of Arizona. She was a midwife and helped deliver over 1400 babies! Her name is Margaret McCleve Hancock. My mom and Aunt Pam told us some stories on the front porch of the cabin to share with us what a hard working, loving woman she was.