Nauvoo Trip the story

So we are back from our trip to Nauvoo. Total distance driven: 2653 miles. Fortunately we didn't go insane from being locked up for so long in the car. But here are some of the highlights from the trip. You can also see a few photos from the trip down in the post below.

Littleton, Colorado

The town where I grew up. It was cool to go back and see everything again. I haven't been back since we moved over here right after my mission, almost 11 years ago. The house where I grew up has since been painted and had a little white picket fence put around it. I forgot how much greener it is over there than here. Been used to living in a desert for too long. We went to Black Eyed Pea, a favorite restaurant of ours. I was worried my memories had built up the place and I would be disappointed with the food, but it was just as good as I remembered it. We dropped by the Denver Temple as well (which is actually in Littleton, not Denver). Good to see my old stomping grounds, even if only for a little while.

Great Wolf Lodge, Kansas City.

The Great Wolf Lodge is a chain of hotels with indoor waterparks throughout the United States. If you stay at the hotel you get free access to the waterpark. It was a ton of fun and we got some really fun videos with our new gopro camera. We ate at Famous Daves and Emily and I shared a whole rack of ribs (I admit, I ate most of them). They had a bunch of other things you could do at the Lodge but time didn't permit us to do them all. As a side note, a company that I am working with at work had a really huge building right next to the Lodge. I couldn't get away from work even on vacation!

Independence, Liberty, Adam Ondi Ahman

We went through all of these in one day since they are all on the way to Nauvoo. They are all really special places with a great spirit there. Adam Ondi Ahman had a 17 year high of cicadas when we were there. It sounded like a million chainsaws all going at the same time. You could look at a tree and see thousands of them in just one tree. Was crazy

Nauvoo, Illinois

The destination of the trip. So many fun things here. Obviously the Nauvoo Temple was a big highlight. We did both sealings and an endowment session in the temple. While Emily and I were waiting for our names we ended up wandering down the hall north of the assembly hall on the first floor. Turns out there are a bunch of artifacts in that hall like keys from the original temple and clothes that the saints used when they were first getting their endowments! Really awesome and easy to miss since you wouldn't normally walk down that way. It was great seeing all the different places, such as the Wilford Woodruff home where our ancestor lived (my 4th great grandfather). And they had a bunch of different productions that were really well done. The first one we went to was Just Plain Anna Amanda. Lynsie and Ashley loved the girl who played Anna Amanda and ended up seeking her out wherever we went. We ended up running into her 3 or 4 times during the trip, and she was so good with the kids. Remembered both of their names and just treated them amazingly. Sunsets down on the river were of course awesome, as you can see from the pictures below. And the spirit in all of the places is great. Emily also ran into a senior couple that she taught in the MTC, which was really fun for her to be able to see them again and tell them about getting married.

The long drive home

We stopped in Winter Quarters on the way home, but other than a crazy rainstorm in the middle of wyoming there wasn't much else to see on this portion of the trip.

Overall an amazing trip, and we are really thankful to my Mom and Dad for organizing and taking us all on this trip. Such a great experience that we will always treasure.

Nauvoo trip, or the really really long car ride...

The house in Littleton Colorado where I grew up. It wasn't the ugly blue color at the time.

Denver, Colorado Temple

Dinner at Famous Daves across from the Great Wolf Lodge

Lynsie and Ashley's first encounter with Just Plain Anna Amanda

Nauvoo Temple

Sunset on the Mississippi play

An actual Sunset on the Mississippi. Not really anything like the play.

Beautiful girl in front of the Nauvoo Temple. And some guy.

Beautiful Girl in front of the Mississippi River. And some guy.

Nauvoo Temple again

Another Anna Amanda sighting with Lynsie and Ashley

Brother and Sister Coon. Emily taught them at the MTC and we ran into them in Nauvoo.

Another Anna Amanda sighting. She probably thought Ashley and Lynsie were stalking her at this point.

Ryan on the way home.

Ashley building herself a fort on the way home.

Meme Love

Ryan and I spend all day in front of computers. So, it's natural to want to send each other little notes! Here are some of the cute/funny memes we've sent/received (I have to save these SOMEWHERE!).

Ryan's Former Days

Cami (Ryan's sister in law) just sent me this picture of him on his mission. So handsome! 

He served in the Tijuana Mexico mission from 2002-2004. 

Museum of Natural Curiosity

Curious? Keep reading...

We played in a jungle gym, experienced hurricane winds, dressed Ryan up like an African queen, played with science projects, and built a Lego tower taller than Ryan. 

And obviously, I have to hug this tower because it is so tall it reminds me of Ryan. 

The married life

So this blog is really similar to my journal in a lot of ways. Really the only difference between them is that this has more entries from me in it than my journal does. Considering this is my second blog post of all time, that should tell you something about my journal habits.

Still, its now almost 2 months since I've been married. I even managed it before I hit 32 years old. I'm fairly sure my parents thought I wasn't going to pull that off, so I'm all about defying expectations.

My wonderful wife Emily has already posted lots of pictures. Head on over to her facebook page if you want to get the complete rundown, as she told you.

The married life is excellent. I especially love that Emily and I get to begin establishing all of our own traditions for our family. We talked a bit about that in FHE on Monday night (one of those great traditions you can start even when you're engaged. I highly recommend that), we get to begin establishing these traditions like family prayer, family scripture study, FHE, and others before our children are even here.

Speaking of traditions, when Emily told me to blog tonight (yes, thats really the only reason you're getting this post. You can thank her later), she said I should blog our weekly roast dinner. I'm pretty new to this blogging thing, but I'm not sure that people want to read an entire blog post about our roast dinner. Except its pretty awesome, so maybe people want to read about it in a "Oh, I wish I got to live that kind of life" sort of way. Kind of like people who watch those TV shows about really big mansions of the rich and famous, only my roast is much better. The only real problem about it is that Emily and I disagree how much A1 sauce is good for it. She'll eventually understand that yes, the whole bottle really is a legitimate way to cook roast (just kidding, I really don't put that much on, but I love A1).

On a serious note though, I have discovered one secret to getting really good roast. Don't cook it in a crockpot. Use an aluminum roaster. One of those big cast aluminum ones with the lid. I use to always cook it in a crockpot. Never again, they just turn out so much better in the roaster.

But really though, married life is good. I'm forever thankful that I have found my wonderful wife Emily, and that we get to begin this new phase of our lives together, establishing great traditions early in our marriage to benefit us later on.

We're married!

 There are a lot more pictures where these came from--add us as friends on Facebook to see a bunch more! :) Or I might just make another post with the highlights...