The rest of Tuesday and Nauvoo

Neil was the first to wake up, followed by Emma and they very sweetly rubbed Isaac’s back to wake him up too.

Ken came and picked us up and we hung out at the Pioneer Pastimes while we waited for the others to finish up at the gun shop.  Neil and Isaac really loved the little climbing bears.  Neil loved the dress up closes and Isaac kept his hat on but that was it, Emma wouldn’t even leave the bonnet I got for her on long enough to take a picture.

Neil and I tried to keep the tops spinning.

Isaac was the first to find the sheep to ride on.  And he loved playing house in the little cabins.

Neil wrote names for us before they closed up.  And I just loved their stick horses.

Since the gun shop was taking so long we walked down to the bakery.  They knew where the bakery was from a single ad in the paper and started digging and found the foundation and the steps to the basement….which were amazingly steep.  This was kind of a sad one.  Brother Scoville lost his 14 year old son and soon after his wife and twins when she gave birth.  He and his four daughters left for SLC and while on the journey he was called on a mission.  Faithfully he left his daughters with family and went.  While in England he had 150 sets (each a dozen) of plates made with the Nauvoo Temple on them from a drawing he had made on his way back through going to his mission.  He was faithful his whole life and returned to the trail after his mission and settled in Springville with his daughters.  He was never a baker again he participated in government.  What an amazing person!

We met back up with the family and went to the tinsmith.  The first room they just told about pioneer life and some of their interesting inventions.  Here is the mouse trap.

In the second room they talked us through making a pan out of tin.  But they couldn’t actually use the tools since they were all antiques.  When they finished showing us the steps and asked for questions Neil raised his hand and asked, “so can you make one?”  The demonstrator was really confused, but what Neil really wanted was for her to use the tools and make one, not just explain the steps.  It was funny.

More from Mark: “We got home and had a nice dinner of porcupine meatballs. After dinner we went to the pageant. Before the pageant they had a ton of different activities that you could do. I participated in a potato sack race and I won, probably because I was 4 years older than anyone else competing.”

“Conrad and I did a cross cut saw race and we won, again because we were competing against ten year olds. Apparently, once you become a teenager, you are just too cool to do any fun activities.”  After you cut the piece off you could take it to get wood burned with the Nauvoo Temple.

Abbie loved making a rag doll and Spencer and Neil and I played with some pioneer toys.  Poor Emma wasn’t feeling well and was cutting a front tooth on the bottom so she rested with Ken.

 

Our fun surprise of the evening was seeing one of Ken’s high school friends and his family there helping direct traffic for the pageant.

“Only Grandma, Grandpa, Spencer and I stayed for the pageant. It was okay but I wouldn’t go again. Afterwards we went home and went to bed, again at close to eleven o’clock.”

And one picture I forgot for Tuesday morning was our early riser, who got to go with dad to pick up a few things at the store and went for a walk around the temple before anyone else got up.

Wednesday morning was a  blur of cleaning and repacking the cars.  The kids helped stripe the bed of sheets and then played outside looking for cool rocks. 

Then we ended up at the Wainwright first.  A family of 5 packed 1000 lbs of flour in their wagon.  Oxen were preferred to horses for the trip because they were cheaper, they ate grass and didn’t need metal bits.  They also walk at about 2 miles per hour while we walk 3.  They showed up the process for making a wheel…wow…what a process!  Just like the wagons needed strong wheels we need strong families centered on Jesus Christ to make strong communities and nations.

We wondered over to the seventies hall where I followed Emma up the stairs, but the rest of the kids got to preach from the pulpit.

It had started to rain aging and we ran back over to the bakery for a cookie and then went to check out the Family Living Center.  They had demonstrations on weaving, bread making, candle making, wool dying, pottery, barrel and rope making.  They kids spread out and found something that interested them.  The little kids found some fun balls and toys to play with.

The rain was picking up and we found some picnic tables and a pavilion at the park nearby.  The kids were freezing in the middle of July in Nauvoo!  I couldn’t believe it!

We drove to Carthage and Emma and Isaac fell asleep so I stayed in the car with them and everyone else went in to hear the presentation.  Ken said it was really nice.

Then back to Heather’s house we went in a comfortable car with the rain pouring down.  We are so blessed.

Headed to Nauvoo

We headed to Nauvoo on Monday.  Jessie, Conrad and Mark rode in Grandma and Grandpa’s car.  In Mark described their drive as follows, “To start the trip out we read from Calvin and Hobbs. I would read Calvin’s part, Jessie would read Calvin’s Mom, Mrs. Wormwood and Susie. Conrad read Hobbs and Calvin’s Dad. It was so funny. Even Grandma and Grandpa were laughing. We watched the 2^nd Star Wars movie and it was alright, not my favorite.”  Heather and her other kids rode with us.  We didn’t have quite the same fun as the big kids, but everyone was pretty happy.

Mark again, “ When we got to Nauvoo around 5 and found where we were staying. It was a huge house and it was beautiful. It had five bathrooms which was awesome because Heather’s house only has one. On the main level there were two bedrooms. One with four beds and the other with just one. Grandma and Grandpa slept in the room with one bed. Jessie, Conrad and I got the four bed room. It had bunk beds and 2 full beds. I got a full bed all to myself.”  Upstairs had another 3 bedroom – one for Heather, one for Ken and Emma and me and one with 2 sets of bunk bed and another full size bed where the rest of the kids took turns picking out their bed for the night.  It was so fun to be all together in the same house but without all the extra distractions of home. 

Mark’s thoughts, “After we got settled we went over to the visitor center. We got to look at some of the cool exhibits and saw a scale model of Nauvoo. We got to go see a performance that was super awesome. It started out with a band playing. They played Pennsylvania 6500. It was so fun to hear one of my favorite songs. The band was made up of missionaries and I was really surprised how good they were. After the music a whole bunch of senior missionaries came on to the stage and they sang us a few songs. After the singing we got to watch skits.” 

The kids were so entertained that some of them wanted to go again the next night. Emma did a good job of sitting, which is getting harder and harder for for to do, and she LOVED all the music.  Here she is leading one of the songs.  Emma and eventually Isaac fell asleep while we were having all that fun.

From Mark, “When we got out it was raining super hard so we all got soaked running to the car.”  My kids couldn’t believe how much rain was coming down.  Here the fire hydrant we passed on the way to our second play of the night.  Which we sprinted to to get out of the rain.

Mark again, “We went to another play in a different building and we got soaked running the fifteen feet to the door. This play wasn’t as funny but it gave us a lot more history. My favorite part was when the woman who gossiped a lot was getting mad at her husband. She said, “George, why have you stopped painting pictured of nature and instead started painting pictures of mouthless women?””  Emma wasn’t so excited still have to sit and we had quite the job of entertaining her this time.  It’s probably a good thing we got seats in the back so she didn’t bother too many people.  Here we are afterwards when we rain had mostly stopped.

When we got home we ate dinner. When we finally got to bed it was about 11 o’clock.

On Tuesday we went to all the cool shops on Main Street. We left the house at about 10 and we went to post office first. It was in Sydney Rigdon’s kitchen. Can you imagine what his wife thought about that? Mail was delivered three times a week by stage coach or river boat.  You could pay for the letter yourself or you could make the person receiving the letter pay for it. Joseph Smith finally issued a statement that said that if you sent him a letter, you have to pay for it. If you didn’t pick up your mail they would put your name in the newspaper and then finally send the unclaimed mail to Washington DC.  To write more on a page they would write in one direction and then turn the page 90 degrees and write over top what they already wrote.  This was called cross writing.  At the end of the presentations the missionaries would relate their stories back to the gospel.  At the post office they reminded us that we can talk to our Heavenly Father without having our letter lost or having to pay for a stamp.

The dry goods store had tools to make your house.  The pottery bowls and pitchers were called Red Ware and Brown Ware.  Sugar came in hard bricks and you had to grind or shave off pieces to use in your cooking.  The kids got to try out a yoke with buckets for carrying water.

Next we went on a wagon ride. But before we got there grandpa saw a senior missionary weeding and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to pull a few weeds himself. 

We rode through the countryside and the people driving told us about some of the influential in Nauvoo. It was fun even though it was a little long. And all the kids loved petting the horses at the end.

After the wagon ride we had a little breakdown with Neil….dad just wouldn’t share his phone to play games and we decided that a nap would really help!

For lunch we had sandwiches. Mom stayed home with the little kids after lunch because they were exhausted.  And after a bit they all fell sound asleep.

Everyone else “went to the print shop and it was cool. Everything in the 1800’s took forever. One week to type up a four page newspaper, one week for every wagon wheel, four weeks to fire bricks. I’m really happy that we are able to speed things up with technology.”

 “After the print shop we went to a shoe maker. It took them about two days to make a pair of shoes. They also didn’t have right or left shoes. I feel bad for the pioneers. Having shoes on the wrong feet is bad enough, imagine shoes being on the wrong feet that whole time.”

“Following the shoe makers we went to the brick yard. The cool thing about brick makers is how they would fire the bricks. They build huge buildings out of the bricks and then they build a fire inside that raises the temperature to thousands of degrees.”

“We walked across the street into Lucy Mack Smiths house. It was really nice. Her stairs were about as steep as a ladder.”

They had an herb/drug shop with the school house in the back.

“Next we went to the Browning house. Browning was a genius when it came to guns. He was the guy that invented the harmonica rifle and it turned out to be really useful. His son was just as smart as he was and he was the guy to figure out the Colt .45. The tour was really cool but it took us an hour to go through the whole thing.”

A couple of pictures outside.  Ah…what a beautiful day.  And you know it’s us because we take as many flower pictures as we can.  ;-)

That was the first part of Tuesday and now I really need to go to bed.  More on Nauvoo soon….hopefully.  And thank you to Mark for letting me use his letter so I didn’t have to retype all that stuff.