Nauvoo!!!

The same day that school started for Braden; myself, Brenner and Berk got up at 4 am to head to the airport to fly to St. Louis.  (Braden went to all but 30 minutes of class and he and Rusty got a flight into Peoria, IL to meet us) We all headed to the great state of Illinois for Rusty's cousin Cliff's wedding.

Slap happy at 5 am

The flight over was good. Mostly because Brenner sat on Pops lap the whole time, and Berkley watched a movie. After we landed we had about a three hour drive to Nauvoo. We stopped along the way in Mark Twain's hometown to have lunch. Then we detoured over to Carthage to see the Carthage jail. (Here's a link to the importance of this place in our religion).

 Photos of us from in the Martyrdom room.

It was a very cool experience. The walk in the same rooms where our Prophet walked and ultimately was martyred was surreal.

Then it was just a short jaunt to Nauvoo. Let me pause at the point and mention that there was ZERO cell signal in the Nauvoo area. Thankfully the hotel had wifi, but it was spotty. So trying to communicate between 5 different rooms was uber fun. We ate dinner at the hotel and then while I put Brenner to bed the rest of the gang went to see the Temple at sunset. Rusty and Braden got to the hotel about 10:15pm and we were all ready for a good nights rest!

 The next morning we headed to historic Nauvoo to experience life the way the Saints did.

 We learned about pottery making, candle making. The kids made a rope and we ate homemade bread. We visited a Blacksmith shop. We got the cutest nail rings, They even let me take one for the baby.

We also stopped at Pioneer Pastimes.  We played all kinds of games. The marching band came by and the kids had a fun time leading them around.

That afternoon most of the adults went to the bride Katie's endowment session at the Temple and that night we went to Nauvoo State Park for a BBQ and 'meeting of the families.'  The food was yummy, the park proved to be more fun for the adults than it did for the kids and we enjoyed a very nice evening.

I love this collage- first is a picture of the groom to be Cliff practicing his pose for all the pictures the next day. Then Kelcie proves that she is the MASTER of self portraits, Everyone chasing everyone and a near miss on the swing.  Then we went to the Temple to see it and the Mississippi at sunset.

 The actual wedding was Friday morning. It was a little more humid and rained a little on us as we were finishing taking pictures. The wedding was beautiful. Th Temple was amazing. There is so much church history inside it, literally, like on the walls.  Cool stuff. 

 After we went to another Inn and had a yummy lunch. Brenner got a dollar from Uncle Todd that kept him pretty busy. All you had to do was ask him "Where's your money?" I decided he (and I) needed a nap so we skipped out early and Rusty said we could just walk to the hotel. Yeh, it was so not as close as we thought, but we still made it there.

 Later in the afternoon we had time to go back to Historic Nauvoo and saw the Brickyard, Brigham Young's home and what Rusty and I thought was coolest, the Gunsmith. That night we drove around and across the Mississippi River to see the Temple from the other side. It was a pretty drive. We stopped in Keukuk, Iowa for dinner. Long story short, we left Brenner's new shoes there and didn't realize till the next day when we were packing to leave. (After I got home I FBed the restaurant and they said that they found them, and they drove to 4 local hotels to try to return them to us! So nice huh? I am going to mail them something and have them ship the shoes home)

Saturday morning we packed and headed back to catch our flight. We detoured at Carthage again so Rusty and Braden could see it. Just the three of us did the tour while everyone else waited in the cars or on the grounds. It was an even cooler experience the second time.

Thanks to the Solomon gang, we had a great time at the wedding! Congrats Cliff and Katie!