Easter! Better late than never.....

Easter.  Yeah.  That was what, the last Sunday in March?  And it's May?  Ouch.

So Easter was the Sunday after we came back from our trip to Nauvoo and the Mark Twain Caves.  Since we were feeling lonely after leaving our good friends, the Heslops, we decided to invite some of our local Avon/ward friends, the Crooks and Daleys, over to celebrate the holiday with us!

We had lots of yummy food, good conversations, and an Easter Egg Hunt!

We might have picked a favorite child to take pictures of during the hunt. :)  They are so fun to watch when they are little! 

And a side note....Meg has been really into changing her clothes like 3 times a day.  And most of the time, if not all, she's changing into her dance leotards and tights.  So please, don't judge me on her outfit in these pictures.  hahaa.  I love that she does this and think it's great.  She's only going to be like this for so long.

 

The Mark Twain Caves

So I have been trying to post this blog for like two weeks, but for some reason Blogger and my computer were just not having it.  So even though this blog is like 2 months late, the last two weeks weren't my fault. hahaa.\

So after leaving Nauvoo, we drove with the Heslops about an hour south to Hannibal, MO to visit the Mark Twain Caves. 

The caves were fun to explore, and our guide did a great job storytelling and got lots of laughs out of us.  We are now hooked on cave exploring, and have made plans to go to the Mammoth Caves next as a group! 

ps... Syd and I found headlamps at Target and got them for the kids to use in the caves.  Cool, eh?

 

 Swimming at the hotels!  Probably the kids' favorite part of the whole Nauvoo/Cave trip.

 All though the cave are signatures and date stamps from people who explored the caves in the past.  This is the oldest one I could find.  If you can read it, it says 1893!

 Yep, there were bats in the cave.  Tiny ones.  I think we saw 3.

Fun times!

Loving the Childrens Museum!

Nauvoo!



Warning!  Big time picture overload.

 

So we are over half way done with our residency here in Indiana, and with our time here getting shorter and shorter, I realized there were tons of things that I wanted to do here that we hadn't even come close to doing!  So I created a bucket list, and promptly got to work on crossing some of the to-do's off!

One of the huge things I wanted to do while here was go visit Nauvoo.  Around 11 years ago I had made the trip with my good friends Sydney Marlatt, David Heslop, and Melissa Redford (along with Mel's family).  We went for the Nauvoo Temple Open House.   It was a way fun experience, but also a very quick one.  I think we were there for one day total. 

Bo and the kids have never been, and since we live a little under 6 hours away from Nauvoo, I felt like we had to take advantage of living so close to such an important part of our religion's history!

Bo's mom had been planning on visiting us for Spring Break, but with Annie's funeral back in February, things changed, and we were left with a whole week of no school and no work and no plans.  My light bulb went on, I convinced Bo that this was the time to go, called up the now Sydney and David Heslop (yes, that trip, and ME played a huge role in those two getting married. hahaha) who live about 8 hrs from Nauvoo, and an awesome trip/reunion was born!

We stayed for 2 nights in adjoining rooms in hotel nearby. We swam, ate yummy food, had adult only card games at night, and most importantly, crammed in tons of church history.

The kids learned how to make rope, bricks, wagons, barrels, along with going on a horse cart ride.  They participated in a mock school class, walked the temple grounds, visited Carthage and it's jail, visited Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum Smith's graves, threw rocks into the Mississippi, and even had the chance to have snow ball fights.

Most importantly, they had lots of funs. 

It was a very fun trip and we loved sharing it with our friends/cousins, the Heslops. 

Next trip: Kirtland! 

 

Carthage Jail

Bullet Hole in door.  This is the one that killed Hyrum Smith.

 picture of us through the bullet hole.

 Carthage Jail, both above and below.

 Ferry, much like the one that took the Saints across the river back in Old Nauvoo when the Saints were driven from Illinois.

What the kids did when they had free time.  Tried to make the other guess if they were really picking their nose or not.  Awesome.