Shakespear Shuffle

Nauvoo the Beautiful

Since we are moving soon we have been thinking about our favorite places to go & things to do here & trying to make sure we do them all that one last time.  Then we realized we haven't been to Nauvoo since we've lived here.  Last time we went it was with our friends the Hall family & Hyrum was 2 & Hunter was 4 months old.  So we decided we'd better go now if we're going to go anytime in the next 12 years.

We drove through torrential rain almost the whole way there.  One plus side to that were the gorgeous rainbows we saw.  Believe me they were amazing!  I have never seen such perfect rainbows - they were so bright & you could see each color so well.  Jeremy convinced me we should ignore a 'road closed' blockade & work our way around it.  Well when we saw a fish swimming across the road we decided maybe we should turn back & find another way to Nauvoo.  We were a little late getting there that first night!

Visitor's center

I discovered that young people can go on a 3-4 month service mission to Nauvoo to sing, dance & perform all the plays in town.  How fun!  If any of our kids are into that sort of thing that would be a great way to use those talents.  We saw the cutest play & puppet show.

The kids helping a missionary make some rope.

Pioneer style toys

We drove the 30 minutes to Carthage to see the jail where Joseph, his brother Hyrum & some of the other leaders of the church were killed.  They still have the original door - the hole in the door was from the bullet that killed Hyrum.  Below is the top window where Joseph fell after being shot.  So sad.  Those men were so young yet had accomplished amazing things in their lifetimes.  I am so grateful for the early members of our church.

 

Emma enjoying our tour of the school house

They had the cutest little parade one night.  The kids all got paper hats to decorate & there was a brass band playing & all sorts of songs & little comedy acts.  So fun.

We all slept pretty well in the hotel.  

The blacksmith shop is always a favorite stop.  We each got a prairie diamond (a  ring shaped from a horseshoe nail) & a little horse shoe.  This missionary is from Canada & he & his son actually own a farrier shop back home.  This is what he has done for a living his whole life.  Pretty cool.  My favorite places I think were the tin shop & the shoe maker.  

We had an hour long wagon ride touring most of the town.

My favorite were the views of the temple.  I went to Nauvoo a few times before I was married & the temple had not been rebuilt yet.  Boy it makes a huge difference to have it there now.  I can imagine the comfort the temple would have been for the early members of the church to look up the hill & see it there.  And how hard it would have been to leave it behind.

Of course I always have to do some car shots.

These two were so silly & giggly all the way home.  It was really funny to listen to.

 

One of our favorite things is to go down to Branson.  So on Memorial Day we spent the morning there playing at the park, seeing the water/fire show, taking the trolley ride & getting Orange Leaf.

 

I love this picture

Dancing in the kitchen.  Dallen likes to shake his booty like the rest of us.

First time coloring.  The fun stopped when he started chomping down on the crayons.

We met two of Hyrum's favorite friends from school at the park with their Mom's & siblings.  They gave him a bag full of stationary stuff so they can all be pen pals.  It was so sweet & it made me a little sad that we're leaving.

 

It absolutely poured one afternoon & the kids loved it!  They played in it for like 45 minutes & I made them come in & take baths & warm up.  Well it's good practice for where we're headed.  Dallen loves to be outside so much.  Doesn't matter if it's freezing, blistering hot, raining etc. he just wants to be out in it.  So cute.