The Tea Leaf

Iowa Trip Part #3..... Nauvoo!

We love LOVE that our families happen to live near such wonderful LDS church sites. It was wonderful to show the kids Nauvoo. We got to take a tour of Joseph Smith's house and the store etc. It really puts things in perspective when you get to see the places where things went down. I think my favorite part was seeing the Oxen, and taking a ride in a covered wagon that they pulled. We got to learn how to make our very own rope, and how to make barrels, and candles. We really have it so easy when it comes to manual labor, it's insane.

Pioneer Peeps.

Our Pioneer family

Hello Oxen friends!

Petting an Ox

In the covered wagon

Maiya spinning the rope

Q and M making rope

Daddy spinning the rope

So buff

Learning about pottery making.

Aftyn playing with our rope that we made.

Maiya on stilts!

playing pioneer games, this was a race to get the bear to the top.

Aftyn and Grandma

Q on stilts

In the pioneer house

Pioneer gals

Pioneer boy

Walking to Joseph Smith's grave stone

We got to hear a traveling band.

The First Vision Statue at the Nauvoo Visitor's Center

This sweet little moment was not staged.

Love at Home. :) (even when we are not at home).

Iowa Trip Part 2: Children's Museum

We remembered how much fun we had a couple of years ago when we went to the Childrens Museum, and decided to do it again. The kids had so much fun. We were so surprised at how fast the time went by. My mom had a hurt ankle and still managed to come along. We are glad she did, because it wouldn't have been as much fun without her, (unfortunately, I don't think we helped her ankle's healing process any.)

Aftyn loved taking all of the fruit and putting them in her basket and then putting them back on the shelf, and repeat. It kept her entertained for about 20 min, I would say. It was fun to watch her.

Quincey was serving all of the other kids ('customers') at the seafood counter.

Then we took a pizza break.

All that shopping and pizza making made us wanna play some music.

And dance

And then of course we needed to stage our own play.

Maiya had a blast 'painting' with shaving cream.

Then it was airplane time.

All in all a very nice and fun day. We had to end the day with my favorite..... bubble gum ice cream at the ice cream shop next to the museum.

Iowa Trip part #1.... CAMPING!

We have been so blessed to be able to travel and see lots of great things. This summer we left as soon as we could and braved the 20 hour trip to see my parents in Iowa. It was a long drive, but the kids did fantastico, and it was great to see my parents and lil' bro.

This is what I do when I am bored on really long trips.... make crafts out of candy ropes.

My brother Brad had the idea to go camping, so he found a place a couple of hours away in Missouri, and we had a grand time. We got to hang out eat smores, set up tents, we even went on a row boat. It was a great way to start our trip.

(In efforts to make this all sound too good to be true, I won't mention, the estimated 4 times we were woken up during the night with kids peeing their sleeping bags, or needing to go pee and not knowing what to do (and having to escort said child out to pee by a tree), or babies crying because of all of the peeing going on...... stuff like that. )

Geren, Brad, and Boogie! (p.s. I wish I could have gotten a video of when we put boogie in the water to get him to swim, his eyes got so big... he got the hang of swimming later on though.)

Relaxing on the boat.

Row, row, row your boat.....

Gently down the stream!

Setting up the tents

Quincey and Scooby

Sweet sisters

sweet siblings!

Ugghhh... are you telling me we have to sleep on the ground? I'm outta here!

Affy helping set up the tents.

Stinky socks make great entertainment for bored babies.

Pee-eew!

Utah Trip

We recently got to go up to Utah to celebrate Geren's Mom's retirement dinner. It was great as always to see family, and gave us an excuse to visit one of our most favorite places on earth, Temple Square.