Pioneer Day!

Happy Pioneer Day! Today we celebrate the anniversary of the early members of our church entering the Salt Lake Valley for the first time. What a joyous day it is. So much those Saints sacrificed to walk in handcarts all the way across the country after being pushed out from various states. All they went through I can just NEVER imagine. Especially these days as a young mother I'm constantly thinking "I could never be a pioneer. How did they do this or that. Those poor babies bums when they had rashes. The amount of hard work it took for meal prep constantly. Their lack of medicine with sick children." And my thoughts just go on, I admire those families so much.

Today we celebrate the heritage of our families. Their faithfulness and obedience to find a land to raise their families in the church without being persecuted. Establishing a new city, a new everything. Oh how I love the pioneers!

You can see my post here when we visited Nauvoo and here when we visited Kirkland and Palmayra, both huge church history sites in the heritage of our church!

Come, Come, Ye Saints - Mormon Tabernacle ChoirLDS Videos
Posted by LDS Videos on Tuesday, July 23, 2013

(I don't think this video is embedding, but you can click on the first link to take you to the video on Facebook. It's clips of Legacy with a beautiful song by the Mormon Tabernackle Choir)


Tonight we just might be having green jello and funeral potatoes in honor of our "Mormon holiday"

trip to Nauvoo

The week after school we took a quick little trip over to Nauvoo, IL. Nauvoo is a place with lots of rich, deep church history for members of the LDS church. The church has reconstructed a bunch of buildings there and just made it really fun place for families to learn all about the history of church. We got in in the super late afternoon one day, saw a tony little music show, walked around their country fair area and then saw the Nauvoo pageant that night. They did such a wonderful job with the production of it all. Maxson did ok during it, near the end we just had to switch out with Maxson so he could run around. We really loved finally getting to go watch the pageant (I've officially now seen all the church pageant productions!)

And to my surprise we were having camera card issues!!!! We got there and it wouldn't read the card we scrounged up! (Maxson lost the main one I use days before). It was great not having to lug that behemoth thing of  camera around for this adventure, a nice break from needing to take pictures of everything. But I did miss having the end result of all the nice pictures. Luckily for us we did have our phones for pictures and that's what matters most!

Nauvoo temple

b. Casey walked with Maxson in the children's parade
c. children's parade again
d. wagon ride around old nauvoo. maxson was enamored by those huge horses

a.-c. Thanks goodness for this kids station. It was the only area where we could finally enjoy some of the activities they offered without having to stop Maxson from touching everything and running everywhere. He was at such a hard age for visiting Nauvoo, just so active and busy but you couldn't quite be in that setting. So we were ever so grateful for this kids games area.
d. He FINALLY fell asleep after the kids game stuff and we were able to enjoy a couple of the house tours without chasing after him, glories.

a.-c. Definitely a favorites of Maxson's was the blacksmith shop. The loud banging was right up his ally. The fire also got too hot and started throwing out sparks like a sparkler, which was fun.

a.-b. We finished the Nauvoo area with a visit to Wilford Woodruff's home. An original home in the area. He's my 3rd great grandpa so it was special to me!
c.-d. We then drove the 30 minutes to Carthage to visit Carthage jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith was killed. What a sacred building. It was amazing to be there and see it all. The stories of the past are so richly with the filled the spirit.

I am so grateful for all the effort time and money the church has put into this history site to remind people of the stories and sacrifices of the Saints in the early days of the church. There were SOOOOO many wonderful senior missionaries making that place function so smoothly and then the sister missionaries and summer performer missionaries were so beyond awesome too. Can't wait to take my family back when we all my kids are older!

back east part 1

to begin,

listen to how much we packed in 5 little day's time:

friday: OH. NY.  PA

saturday: NYC.  PA

sunday: PA visiting casey's mission people

monday: DC, play in DC,  VA

tuesday:  DC,  VA

wed: DC temple, drive home.

the rough estimate of drive time comes to about 40 hours.

so worth it.

we're young. we're awesome. we don't have kids. why not jam pack our time?

thursday- 

11:59: go see the midnight showing of harry potter, bc hello, it's harry potter!

i believe i've been to all the midnight showing since the 4th movie came out and was terribly excited for this one!

and the perks of living in the east: got to see it 3 hours earlier than my fellow comrades in AZ :)
ps- we watched the show friends while waiting in line for 2 hours. we're on season 6 of 10 thanks to my SIL camille .

friday 

3 am: begin our 10 hour drive to palmyra, new york.

switch off driving about every 45-60 min so the other could sleep

6:30 am: stop on the side of the road and we both sleep for 45 minutes

9:10 am: drive through kirtland , OH and decide we should stop
 and tour the area.

11:30 pm: begin driving once more

4:30 pm: arrive in palmyra, NY and tour the area

9:30 pm: palmyra pageant begins

11 pm: begin driving to PA

saturday

2 am: arrive in scranton, PA to sleep our weary heads.

***for those of you not LDS, kirtland, OH and palmyra , NY are important place in the history of the LDS church.

palmyra is were joseph smith was raised and where the first vision occurred.

and kirtland, OH is where the saints moved to at one time and built the first temple.

so, important indeed.***

details:
this was my first time back east and to any church history site so it was very special for me.

we stopped in kirtland and toured the newel k whitney store, the whitney's home, and a few other places.

we also made it over to the kirtland temple (not owned by our church)

walking through it all was so surreal and wonderful!

{we also ran into my SIL's parents at the kirtland temple! what a coincidence since they live in utah!}

once we arrived in palmyra, NY we visited joseph smith's home where he grew up in,

the sacred grove,

and the publication site of the book of mormon.

all were incredible to go through and i'm so grateful for the experience.

lastly, we were able to go to the pageant in palmyra which is all about the book of mormon and even on the grounds of the hill cumorah!
the costumes and production were incredible.
again, so happy we got the chance to go to that :)

up next: our day in NYC

and ps- happy belated birthday to my SIL blair!!
i'm a horrible person and forgot it was her birthday til night time, so officially, happy birthday darling (for the 2nd time, i called her yesterday too:)