Nauvoo Trip

Last week I had the opportunity to go on a mini church history trip.  My friend Sam decided that he wanted to go to Nauvoo and he decided to see if anyone wanted to join him on the 12 hour drive.  I hadn't been to Nauvoo since I was 14 and the temple site was just rocks in the ground.  So I really wanted to go see the re-built Nauvoo temple.  We also planned on going to Liberty Jail, and as an added bonus we had time to go to Carthage Jail as well.  It was a really great trip! We had 8 of us in 2 cars and walkie talkies.  It was one of those rare times when when perfect group comes together who are all genuine friends with each other.  We spent the car rides talking about ancestors we had at Nauvoo, and reading out loud about the important things that happened in those places.  We also played the alphabet and license plate games car vs. car which was hysterical.  Here are a few of the pictures from the trip.

Here is the other car in our group ahead of my car and the Mississippi River in the background.  I vividly remember crossing the Mississippi as a 14 year old when it was flooding, but it was no less impressive as a 32 year old!

Rebecca, Erica, and Sam in Nauvoo

This is a statue outside the visitors center.  I remember Mom having a ceramic version of this one and I always loved it.  It was kind of fun to see the big one.

Here is the temple!!  It was so gorgeous.  And it sits up high so you can see it from most places in Nauvoo.  It was so wonderful to see it.  We didn't get to go in and do any work inside but just being on the grounds was so wonderful.  I felt the spirit so strongly as I thought about what this Temple meant to the pioneers as the made thier journey across the plains.

Here is the view from the Temple looking out accross the country.  You can see the Mississippi from there.  The also have this beautiful statue of Joseph and Hyrum on horseback.

This is the view from Joseph and Emma's house.  That is the Mississippi in the back.  I just thought this was a really pretty picture.  I love the sky!

This is one of my favorites!!!  This is the view of the temple from Parly Street.  This is the street that basically dead ends at the Mississippi.  It is significant because this is the road the saints walked as the left Nauvoo.  Along the road now they have  quotes from letters and journals on plaques that you read as you make the walk.  It was an amazing experiance for me.  I have no memory of Parly street from my last trip.  And you walk and read the quotes that are filled with some saddness and uncertainty but mostly faith and testimony you can't help but be touched.  Then you turn arround to go back to Nauvoo and there is the temple up on the bluff.  It was an awesome reminder of the power and strength the saints must have gotten from the covenants they made in that temple before leaving.  No one crossed the planes with out loosing someone or paying a high price, and I know the peace and strength that must have come knowing that families had been sealed for time and all eternity in a temple. 

This is my new best friend Ethan!  I have now performed surgery on 3 of his animals, so he thinks I'm pretty cool!  Really it is just sewing up holes or putting tales back on his stuffed animals.   

The temple at night as we left the pageant.

Our group walking back to the cars after the pageant.  The Nauvoo Pageant is pretty awesome.

We went to Sacrament Meeting in Liberty MO on our way home Sunday.  And then had a chance to visit Liberty Jail.  It was really cool.  We read D&C 121-123 in our cars on our way wich was pretty special.  

We also went to Carthage, but a friend had my camera and between the two of us we still forgot to bring it in, so no pictures.  But I think Carthage jail is a special special place.  Ethan who is 8, felt the spirit so strongly he was in tears.  It was amazing to see this little boy who was quite hyper after spending so long in a car, get instantly reverent because he knew what had happened in the very place we were walking, and felt the spirit so strongly.  It was a really neat thing to see it through the eyes of a little boy. 

May Camping Trip

Back in May a few friends and I went camping at the Whichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  We had a blast!!  We rode around the park from place to place taking turns in the back of a truck.  Went on a few hikes, and even did some cliff jumping!  That sounds more dramatic than it really was, but it was a lot of fun!  Here are a few photos from the trip.

Rebecca and Christine in the back of the Truck

Erica, Sam and Lori at the start of our hike.

Some pretty wild flowers

I thought the moss on this rock was so pretty.

Some cool waterfalls.  Unfortunately those brave enough to get in discovered they are full of leeches and came out with leeches all over thier legs.  I stayed out thank heavens!

Here is our group at the top of the cliff getting ready to jump.  It technically was a cliff but it was only about 20 feet high so nothing to terrifying.  But it was still kind of a rush to actually jump off!

Here are some of my friends getting ready to jump. 

Here is a view of the little canyon we were in.  It was really pretty

Some of us had to hold hands and jump. 

Girls Camp

Here are some photos from girls camp.  We were the Coppell CAT Girls.  So for our skit we made cat ears and had whiskers.  It als involved a song sung to the melody of the once famous Spice Girls song, Tell me what you want.  It was actually really entertaining!  There was a boy trying to ask girls out on a sunday or to R rated movies and then the girls would sing  I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want.  I really really want a righteous priest.  Or  I really really want eternal life.  It was pretty cute.  This is a picture of us all after the skits back in our cabin.

One of the activities one day was a competition using shaving cream to make the funniest hair do's.  Of course it didn't end there.  It turned into a huge shaving cream fight.  I watched from a safe distance, but it was quite the sight.  Here is a photo of some of my girls completely covered.

Here is a group photo that we took on the first day in our camp shirts.  Aren't my girls the cutest! 

Dallas Blooms

I went to Dallas Blooms at the Dallas Arboretum a few weeks ago, while my friend Jill was visiting. I've heard of it every year but never actually gone.  It really is pretty spectacular, there are tulips in every color by the thousands.  It was gorgeous. I got some pretty good photos. I've uploaded some of my favorites for you to see.  There are a bunch of them so I apologize in advance!!  They aren't edited or cropped or anything, I'm still working on that part.  Enjoy!!

This is Ferdenand the bull.  He was over 12 feet tall. It comes from a really cute children's story.  I thought Penny might appreciate this!

These flowers grew in Chile like crazy! I've never seen them anywhere else.  It made me really happy to see them again!

Snow Day

Thursday the 11th of February, Dallas got pounded all day long with a foot of snow!! It was the biggest snow fall in the history of the DFW metroplex. Needless to say people kind of freaked out. Even though the roads never got very bad, people for the most part stayed off them, which lets be honest is safer anyway since no one here knows how to drive in snow or ice! Being on the roads with crazy Texas drivers trying to drive on ice is pretty scary! So on Thursday we were all sent home early to get out before the storm got worse. I suspect it was mostly because everyone wanted to go play in the snow with their kids that have lived in TX all their lives and never seen snow like this before. Over night there appeared an abundance of snow men, snow houses, and any other thing you could possibly make out of snow. There was enough snow that kids where sliding down hills on plastic bags as a poor man's sled. I loved it!! Every time I looked out the windows in my apt it felt like I was in UT. And then I'd look around and realize that nope, I'm in my apt in TX. It was so surreal!!

The next morning, I woke up about 5am freezing. Some time during the night our power went out. It didn't come back on till about 9:30 am. I've never experienced no power in the cold before. All the things you think of to do to warm up require power. If I had been in Chile, i would have bundled up and gone out back and chopped some wood to start the stove in the kitchen, (which i did my entire mission) but I live in America and we have and electric stove, and no wood to be found anywhere even though I do have a fireplace. It was a good thing we all had delayed starts because getting ready that morning took longer then normal. I did feel bad for my room mate who decided to brave the cold water to take a shower, then about 5 minutes later the power came back on and with in 15 min we had hot water again. I was planning on wearing a baseball hat to work that day, instead of showering in cold water. I had to do that as well for most of my mission, and it wasn't a memory I wanted to refresh!

When I got to work this is what I walked into see.


As I came around the corner this is what was sitting in my chair. A co-worker had gotten in earlier then everyone else and brought in a cart load of snow and decided to have some fun. He wrapped the chair in plastic garbage bags and then built a snow man in it. The snow man's name was Temp, because he was the temp for our office while everyone was delayed with the snow. Temp moved around the office. As people would come in they would find him sitting at their desk, on the phone, and then he would move to another vacant desk until that person came in. He has binder clips for eyes and nose, and these fake plastic pussy willow branches ,that came from a floral arrangement some where in our office, as hair. And the random sign from somewhere in the kitchen.

He even went for a ride on the elevator all by himself! Unfortunately he didn't make it back up the elevator to our office.

It was lots of fun. I'm grateful to have such fun coworkers that I really get along with. It is such a good place to work!!