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.