Trying to catch up

I just cannot figure out where to pick up from. So I'm not going to catch up, at least night right now, maybe later.

As for this week, we spent most of it unpacking, buying dressers and bookshelves, almost getting the toy room all set up and we even had a little fun. :)

Monday we went and checked out the city pool. It's really great. They have a little pool all by itself with a few little fountains. It's enclosed by a 2 foot wall, so it's a little harder for your kid to just run off. The kids spent most of their time in there, because there's a big bucket of toys to play with. And then there's another pool that slopes down like a beach and gets about 3 maybe 4 feet deep. That one has a floating frog slide and log boat to play on and a couple more fountains. Then they have a bigger pool with a slide and a diving board. They also have an indoor pool, but it's mainly for lap swimming and exercise classes (which I really want to check out one of these days) We had a lot of fun there, and are definitely considering getting a year pass.

On Thursday we went to Nauvoo,IL for the pageant that they put on there. On our way we realized that Carthage was really close, so we were going to head there too. Well, we got a little lost on the way and ended up in Carthage! That was great because it saved us on some extra travelling. We toured the Carthage Jail (the kids weren't very reverent, but they weren't too bad). It was a really neat experience. Seriously people, come visit us, there are so many cool things up here!

Then we headed into Nauvoo and planned to go on a covered wagon ride, but it was closed for the day by the time we got there. We walked around a little and saw a few cool buildings and then tried to find something to eat for dinner. Man, Nauvoo doesn't have much! We finally found a buffet restaurant, and although it cost a lot more than we had planned to spend, it was really tasty.

We got back to the pageant site just as the "pre-show" activities were starting up. The kids got to do some crafts, play games, watch a puppet show, and walk on stilts. It was way less crowded than I thought it would be (I was picturing the kind of crowds that are at the Mesa pageant). We were parked really close, so we went back to the van and put PJs on the kids and got our blankets and went and found a spot to watch. They had chairs set up and then they had one hill where people could sit on blankets. We got a nice spot and settled in. We borrowed some bug spray from a nearby person and got some popcorn from the snack shack. We thought the kids might go to sleep but they were too excited. They were really good though and Rae actually watched most of the play. Blaise fell asleep at about 9:30 and Rae fell asleep a little bit after that, but I woke her up towards the end because she wanted to see the "temple" be built (and I wanted her to walk back to the van instead of carrying her!). We left Nauvoo around 10:30 and the drive home was a little tricky. Blaise kept waking up and screaming and then would go back to sleep. And the rode is really curvy and there are a bunch of one car bridges, which is all a lot trickier in the pitch black darkness! We were pretty much the only car on the road. I made a mental note to never go to the temple at night when I'm driving!

Anyway, it was a really great trip and I hope we are around to do it again sometime. And I'd love to be able to volunteer to do something next year! And I'm looking forward to going to the temple sometime (we didn't even actually go up close to the temple) and seeing more things on my own. And if anyone wants to come next summer and see it all, you are welcome to! (if we are here)

Our goal tomorrow is to get all of the recent pictures (I'm sure there are hundreds of them) on Shutterfly and we'll send that out instead of trying to post them here. I'll post the link to that here. Or maybe we'll start using Photobucket, since my sister wants all of the reunion pics pooled together on there. Anyway, pictures to come soon!