More Nauvoo and Nebraska

We went to Grandpa John's Cafe again for breakfast and everybody ate a good breakfast. Our plan was to drive to Kearney, Nebraska that day, which wasn't as long of a drive, so we had some time to see a little more of Nauvoo. We decided to drive down Parley Street and see the Mississippi River.

There is a monument there listing pioneers who died before reaching Salt Lake. We have many ancestors who were Mormon pioneers and some of them were listed here.

On the way across the Mississippi River we crossed this rotating drawbridge and we got to see it open to let a barge through! (I'm sure it wasn't fun for the people that had to get someplace on time, but for us it was exciting since we had time to wait.)

Carthage Jail

We drove to Carthage Jail in the evening. The kids were looking forward to it and I think they had a nice experience.

We stopped at Hardee's for dinner. Never again. The grease was dripping from the bag as they handed it out the window and we all felt sick the next day.

Nauvoo

In the morning it was a huge relief for Ryan and I to be able to take showers and wash off all the grime from moving and camping. The kids got baths as well and then enjoyed exploring the yard behind the cottage.

We took the time to go through the things in the car and get it packed better. We found the styrofoam cooler with the hot dogs and other food and threw it all away. :( We were staying one more night in Nauvoo, but we had to move from the cottage to a different room for the second night because that was what they had available, so we got everything packed into the van again.

Motel Nauvoo gave a discount for a diner called Grandpa John's Cafe, so we decided to give it a try for breakfast. Ann Marie got four items for free because she was under three, Kevin and Heidi got the kids' buffet, and Ryan and I chose the four items option. It was a good arrangement because they had lots of wholesome food that the kids would actually eat, so they got to start off the day with a good meal, which we appreciated. Ann Marie in particular hadn't been eating much. The food was quite good.

After that we went to see the temple.

This was one of those times when it was clear to us that we have sensory kids. After spending the entire previous day in a car, Kevin and Heidi were pretty off. It wasn't that surprising that Kevin's engine was high and he was running all over the place and doing that yell that hurts our ears--we're used to him acting like that when he doesn't get much physical activity. It's his way of getting more proprioceptive input. What was really interesting was that Heidi kept falling down. We've suspected recently that she struggles with sensory processing as well, and one of her challenges is her vestibular system. She's always "tripping on air" and falling down. But she tripped five times just walking from the van to the gate at the temple, which is a lot even for her. So it was interesting that sitting in a car all day had the effect of making her balance even more "off" than usual. We let the kids run on the lawn across the street for a while and there was plenty of walking that day, and that did a lot to help Kevin and Heidi get back to normal.

Next we went to the visitor's center. We got tickets for the wagon ride and looked around the visitor's center and women's garden while we waited.

There was a photographer from the state of Illinois there taking pictures for some tourist brochures, and he asked to take some pictures of our kids (we had to sign a form). So they might end up inside some brochure.

Finally it was time for the wagon ride. In retrospect I don't know if it was the best choice with squirmy kids and only one day to see Nauvoo because it was actually rather long (like an hour long). Kevin and Heidi did pretty well and seemed to enjoy it, but Ann Marie was bored and tired and wanted to run around. Eventually she fell asleep in Ryan's lap. But it is a cool experience to see most of historic Nauvoo, and of course the kids thought it was great to ride in a wagon pulled by horses.

After the wagon ride was over we got some snacks from the van and went to visit some of the historic sites.

We went to the school. The entrance goes into the house where you learn about the man who lived there with his family, and then you move to the other room that is set up like a school. The sister in the living part of the house noticed Kevin's freckles and said, "If anyone ever asks you how many freckles you have, I'll tell you the perfect answer: Enough!" It was funny because later in our hotel room Ryan was trying to get Kevin to calm down and he told Kevin to sit down and count how many mosquito bites he had. Kevin rolled his eyes, threw himself backward on the bed, and said, "Enough!"

The sister missionary in the school room had us all pick up a slate and some chalk and she told us how many brick, log, and frame houses there had been in Nauvoo and had us add up the numbers. Heidi took it very seriously and was frustrated when she couldn't get it all written down as fast as the missionary talked. Kevin made a good effort, and Ann Marie thought scribbling on the slates with chalk was really fun. The missionary also showed us how they used to spell words differently (like "curbert" for "cupboard") and what that tells us about how they used to pronounce those words.

Next we went to the brick kiln to learn about how they made bricks, and they gave us a small brick to keep as a souvenir.

We visited the Browning home and gunsmith shop, which is very interesting. Some of it has the original floor, and they have several Browning guns on display. Kevin thought it was really interesting.

After that we walked to the wheelwright/blacksmith shop, which is a really interesting one to visit. One of the things they mentioned was that Brigham Young had all the people building wagons use the same dimensions for the parts so that they would be interchangeable and they could build wagons very quickly. I was impressed with his talent for organizing such a huge undertaking to lead all the pioneers to the promised land.

I think Kevin and Heidi really enjoyed the blacksmith shop. They made a little horseshoe and our family got to keep it as a souvenir, plus Kevin and Heidi got their own prairie diamonds made of horse shoe nails. (Ryan proposed to me with a prairie diamond, BTW.)

We also visited the Scoville Bakery and got the condensed story and a cookie. The kids thought the millstones and the well in back were interesting.

After that we visited the Land and Records Office to see if they had any information about our ancestors there. We found out where some of them had owned property and were able to go see the foundation of Sydney Tanner's house and some of John Tanner's property (part of which is covered by the visitor's center).

We found the general area where Joseph Warthen owned property, but it's not in historic Nauvoo and all they know is the square mile where his property was located. We did drive through the area on the way to Carthage Jail, and wherever he lived is probably covered by a cornfield now. I know I had many other ancestors who lived in Nauvoo, but I couldn't remember them all. Fortunately, we found out from one of the missionaries there that you can fill out a form and send them a list of all the people you're interested in and they'll send you a DVD with the information on it. Eventually it will also all be on Family Search.

Old Draft from May--What's happening with the Tanners?

Looking through my drafts I found this post from May that never got published.

If you ask how we're doing I will probably respond with, "Good."

By which I mean we are still looking for a job and we have to move out of our apartment in five weeks and we don't know where we're going or what we're going to do with our stuff. Occasionally I get ambitious and think I'll go pack a box and then when I try to decide where to start I freeze up and end up pulling out the ice cream and/or a book instead. I did throw away about 5000 dysfunctional pens and pencils that I found in a shoe box in the closet the other day, so that's something, right? How much can you really pack beforehand anyway? We really don't have that much stuff. Applying for jobs has basically become Ryan's full-time job except when he's working on finishing up his second paper for publication.

Then I went through all of the kids' clothes and pulled out and washed a bunch of things to try to sell them at a consignment store. I went in with two baskets full of great clothes and I came out with two baskets full of great clothes and ten dollars, so all that effort wasn't worth it and I'm still upset about it. Now the question is, do I feel like sorting all those clothes back into their bins or should I just take them to the thrift shop?

Ryan graduated on Mother's Day. He opted to not spend hundreds of dollars on the robes of a false priesthood (his choice) and we went to church instead of graduation.

We celebrated our eighth anniversary by getting a babysitter and going to the temple to do sealings together. The sealer shared some really great thoughts about giving all that we have to God. It was nice to spend some time remembering the covenants we made together when we were married. After the sealing session was over we were able to spend a while in the celestial room. Then we went to Kroger and got some ice cream. Kroger brand triple brownie ice cream is fabulous, by the way.

Ann Marie loves participating in scripture study and when we pull out the scriptures she will say, "Came to pass? Came to pass?" which means she wants us to help her read a verse.

Kevin and Heidi are going through massive growth spurts. They average two or three bowls of oatmeal each every day and I feel like I'm constantly making food for them or washing dishes for them.

A couple of weeks ago Kevin and Heidi caught a stomach bug and there was throw-up all over the carpet. It quickly became clear that cleaning this up was going to require more than elbow grease, so I sent Ryan to rent a carpet cleaner from Lowe's. Our carpet was already pretty bad because for some reason none of the managers here have been able to see that it makes no sense to have a carpeted dining area, especially in family housing, but until the throw-up on the floor happened we were planning to just deal with it since we're moving soon. We cleaned the entire living room very thoroughly and it was delightful to have clean carpet again, not that it stayed stain-free for very long.

Great Smoky Mountains

I think this entire summer will go down in our family history as "The Summer When Everything Worked Out." In the weeks leading up to our move and our trip, I was praying that things would go smoothly. Instead, as you will see, very little went smoothly, but everything did work out.

Example 1: Camping in the Great Smoky Mountains

Our plans were to be moved out and on our way to Tennessee by noon on the 27th of June (Monday), and since instead we were leaving Durham at about 6 pm we weren't sure how things would work out. But we had a campsite reserved in the Great Smoky Mountains for that night and a hotel reserved in Nauvoo for Tuesday night, so we decided to just drive to the Great Smoky Mountains and see what would happen.

On the way there we drove through a storm, and it rained so hard that I had to slow down significantly because between the dark and the rain visibility was quite low. It occurred to me that if our original plan had worked out we would be hunkered down in our drenched tent with rain pounding on it outside, and probably the whole roasting hotdogs idea wouldn't have worked out either.

I drove most of the way there and then at some point I got tired and Ryan took the wheel for a while so I could take a nap. It was getting quite late and we were worried that the gate to the campground would be locked and we'd have to figure out something else for sleeping arrangements (like sleeping in our car, which sounded awful). But we decided to just go and see what happened.

When we got there the gate was wide open even though it was around midnight, and there was a slip of paper there with our name on it to hang up at our campsite. So we found our campsite and with flashlights we were able to set up the tent in the dark. We could see the bathroom, but we couldn't get to it because we couldn't find the path and there was a huge patch of poison ivy in the way of just tromping there through the forest, so nobody got to use the bathroom until morning. The kids couldn't understand the concept that there were other people nearby trying to sleep, so we kept having to hiss at them to be quiet and stop talking out loud, but nobody got up and lynched us, so I guess it worked out. Everybody went to sleep pretty easily and we felt a lot better in the morning. We were very grateful that we were able to use our campsite and have a place to sleep.

Ryan took Kevin and Heidi for a little walk around the campground and I rolled up the sleeping bags while Ann Marie slept a little longer. Then we got the car packed up and left because we had a 12-hour drive to get to our motel in Nauvoo. We ate Costco muffins in the car for breakfast.

It was a beautiful area, and we were really sad that we didn't have enough time to explore more. We enjoyed looking at the woods and seeing the mist floating around the mountains. We'll have to go back soon.

Ryan had banged his knee moving boxes and the injury was exacerbated because he had to keep going so we could get moved out, so his knee was hurting pretty bad and he asked me to drive. It was a little better the next few days because he could get ice in the hotels to put on his knee, but we didn't have any ice that morning.

We drove and drove and drove. I've realized that being the sole driver on a cross-country road trip probably will never work for me because I get sleepy, but fortunately Ryan was able to drive some of the time.

We realized we really needed to stop for lunch because the kids were getting miserable, so we stopped at McDonald's. When we drove into the parking lot, Kevin said, "What are we doing at McDonald's? We can't eat here--we're Mormon!"

We stopped for a bathroom break at this gas station in the middle of nowhere. They were smoking a pig in a big roaster in front of the gas station and selling the pork inside. They had this interesting steam tractor on display by the road.

I enjoy seeing the roadcuts. You don't really see stuff like this in North Carolina, and for me it's really cool to have all that geology exposed.

Later in the day it was becoming clear that we were going to be getting to Nauvoo late at night, so we started worrying that we wouldn't be able to get into our motel because they had said they generally leave at 10:30, so we just kept driving. Around 9:00 we called Motel Nauvoo and explained that we would be getting there late, and they said they would just leave the key in an envelope with our name on it. So apparently the people who visit Nauvoo are a trustworthy lot.

So that was a relief. We probably got there around 10:30 or 11:00 and our key was there, and they had left keys there for other latecomers too. For the first night we were in the cottage. It had two bedrooms with a shared bathroom, two living rooms, and a dining area and kitchen that you weren't supposed to cook in. It was really nice. We brought the kids in and got them ready for bed and brought in our things, and then we went to bed and slept really well.