Thanksgiving 2023

We decided to go to Fort Collins for Thanksgiving this year. We stayed at the Residence Inn in Loveland. We had two bedrooms which were connected to a small kitchen and living room. There were two bathrooms. Dad had a half day of work on Wednesday and everyone else had early release for school. We were able to leave a little after 2 PM. For dinner, we had BLTs in the car on the way down on homemade bread.

Since Jacob had finished reading the first Harry Potter book, he was allowed to watch the movie. We started watching it Wednesday night. 

Thursday we had breakfast in the hotel. Alice loves hotel breakfast, but said the the muffins were "not the best." She likes the bacon and juice. We played at the pool and hot tub for a couple hours in the morning. 

We bought Dani some limited edition frosted lemon cheerios which she says are delicious with blueberries.

Alice and Jacob are still light enough to get thrown pretty high in the pool.

We also had races across the pool

Before we left for Fort Collins (Monday for FHE) we made calzones and chicken bakes and froze them. They cooked up pretty easily in the hotel. They were our thanksgiving lunch/dinner. We also had chips and dip, veggies and dip and some fruit which we snacked on most of the day. Each kid got to pick a treat to have that day.

We laid around, did a virtual escape room, watched some football and BYUTV, did a little bit of a puzzle, and spent a little time at Twin Silos park. It was cold and windy but it was nice to get out of the hotel room for a bit. 

Doug and the kids all went down the slide at the same time. Dani went down once too.

 Alice and Dani made angel and snowflake ornaments out of pearly beads.

One of the big reasons to go to Fort Collins was to get to go the temple. Doug, Adam and Scott went Friday morning at 7 AM to do baptisms and confirmations. The roads were pretty slick. We forgot to take pictures outside the temple.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath of Doug getting ruthlessly surprise attacked by his boys. Mostly they just dogpiled tickled him.

We were planning on seeing Marybeth and family on our way home on Friday but they had mild cases of COVID. We missed seeing them. It was snowing pretty good on Friday with several inches of snow in the ground and with "no unnecessary travel" advisories for much of the route home. We decided to stay another day. We made another appointment to do baptisms on Saturday since we would have extra time. 

Friday we swam again. Mom got some Christmas shopping done and we watched a little football and Frozen. We drank lemonade spiked with 7up and had ice cream that evening while we watched Frozen 2. It was a lot of TV watching for our family. We do not watch TV very often at home. 

Saturday morning David and Jacob played chess in the hotel lobby while the rest of us finished up breakfast.

We got packed up and cleaned several inches of snow off the car.

Doug, Scott and Adam got dropped off at the temple while everyone else went with mom to the World Market for some shopping for her German classroom. The boys have a goal to go the temple 12 times a year. This was our 12th visit. We decided this was cheating a little bit since it was two visits in the same Fort Collins trip. We hope to go one more time this year, but sometimes the weather does not cooperate with temple trips.

We went to Costco where we filled up with gas ($2.79/gallon which is much lower than it has been for a a long time), did a little shopping (not too much cause the car stuffed full already and then ate lunch at the food court (4 hot dogs with no buns for Mom and Jacob, 4 chicken bakes, 2 pieces of pizza and 7 smoothies all for about $50 total).

By this time the snow had stopped and we got on the road before 1 PM. The roads were covered in snow for much of the way home, but completely dry in other spots. The kids did great on the drive. A few even took naps. Doug and Alice played some games from "50 games to play in the car." Dani joined in some too. 

We had a fun time. We ate too much junk (but it was Thanksgiving). It was good to get the boys to the temple. We have well behaved kids for the most part. They really get along with each other most of the time. They have fun together and we often have a lot of laughs together.

Nauvoo 2022

Pictures from the last day of school 2022. Jacob kindergarten, Alice 2nd grade, David 4th grade, Adam 6th grade, Scott 8th grade.

We left on our trip on Thursday, May 26th at 4:19 AM. It was the first day of summer vacation for the kids. Dad worked Tuesday so he would not have to take as much PTO. Mom and Dad stayed up until midnight getting everything ready. Mom had already done a lot of work prior to this. The kids packed their clothes on Monday. But there was a lot more to get ready, especially food. Because of our kids allergies and because it’s expensive and not healthy, we don’t eat out much – even on vacation. Also Mom has not been eating gluten or dairy for the past couple years. We took a lot of food with us in two coolers including grilled chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, taco meat and spaghetti sauce with meat. Also, five loaves of homemade bread and cooked rice and cooked pasta. We brought a lot of snacks (fruit cups, fruit snacks, cheeze-itz, nilla wafers, etc), soy milk and yogurt for Jacob and sandwich fixings. Mom didn’t pick up any substitute teaching jobs the last week of school so that she had more time to get things ready. She did have a JustServe presentation to give at a luncheon the day before we left which took a lot of preparation. 

We drove 14 hours to Nauvoo the first day. The kids (and parents) were amazingly well behaved in the car. Mom drove most of the way since she get car sick easily. We stopped for gas 3 times and to switch drivers. We paid between $4.00 and $4.19 for gas. We did not time our trip very well as gas prices were at record highs. We ate three meals in the car that first day which helped us make good time. We listened to Candy Shop War for much of the way. A few hours in to the trip we realized Alice had a fever but she did fine with ibuprofen. 

Mom found us a nice AirBnb right next to the Mississippi River and a few minutes from Nauvoo. Scott got his own bedroom. You could look out the front windows and see the river. It was pleasantly cool and windy when we got there.

We drove to Nauvoo and saw the temple that night before bed. We spent Friday, in Nauvoo going on tours of the sites and going to the temple.

We went on a carriage ride and a wagon ride – both pulled by horses. We also went on a short wagon ride, pulled by oxen. The rides were some of the favorite activities we did.

The "4-legged missionaries" were definitely a favorite with our family!

While Doug, Scott, and Adam were at the temple, the rest of us went to the pioneer pastime where you could play games like they would have played in pioneer times.

The boys got to do baptisms at the Nauvoo temple.

The stilts were fun to play with - it's harder than it looks!

We happened to be there on opening night of Sunset by the Mississippi. It was a great show that everyone enjoyed a lot!

The Nauvoo temple is so neat. It represents a lot of sacrifice that was made by the pioneers for what is truly important.

Mom was trying to take a selfie at the temple, but people kept photo bombing her.

The sunset made for a beautiful photo opportunity.

Beautiful photo opportunities tend to get out of hand eventually...

We saw fireflies. It was the everyone's first firefly sighting except for Dad. We caught a few fireflies. David, Alice and Dad played catch in the front yard with a softball and baseball gloves. Jacob and David went exploring up the densely wooded hill the house was on. Adam learned a new board game and played with a couple siblings. We cooked pizza using crusts that Mom had made at home. 

Saturday morning we went to the blacksmith shop and the print shop. Then traveled to Carthage Jail. After that, we got on the road toward Washington DC.

We went to Carthage Jail on our way (it wasn't really on the way, but it was more convenient to get to than it will probably ever be again) out of town.

We had fun having Scott and Adam recreate the statue of Joseph and Hyrum.

Here are some of our favorites from our time in Nauvoo. 

Jacob: I liked the horses and oxen. I like Adam and Nephi, the horses, and Jim and Joe, the oxen. I like the dancers in the show (Sunset By the Mississippi). I like the song where we helped out with making horse noises and coyote, rattlesnake and cow sounds. 

Alice: I like the Pioneer Pastime. There were stilts to try to balance on. There were racing bears. When you pulled two ropes the bears would move up the ropes. 

David: My favorites were the scavenger hunt (in the visitor’s center) and the blacksmith shop. I like how he actually demonstrated making something (a small horseshoe) and gave us each one. 

Adam: I liked the animals names. They have human names like Adam and Joe. 

Scott: I liked the historical sites like the printing press. I liked seeing all the stuff they used to print like the cases of letters and the press. I also liked the temple to do baptisms and see the graves of the Smiths. 

Dani: My favorite part was the temple. The artwork in the temple is beautiful. There are a lot paintings of pioneers especially pioneer women and girls. 

Doug: I liked being in the temple with Scott and Adam. The workers were all super nice and told us that the baptismal font is the largest in the church. Back in the 1840s, they had two people being baptized at once. The current font is in the exact location of the original. They also showed us the spiral staircase that goes from the basement all the way to the top floor. I enjoyed seeing the blacksmith shop. I went to Nauvoo when I was probably about 10 years old (same age as David is now) and I remember the blacksmith the most. The blacksmith gave Paul and I the small horseshoe that he made.

There was a lot that we did not get to see and do at Nauvoo since we were there for only a day and a half. Everyone had fun and were pretty well behaved most of the time. Everyone wants to go back. Dad joked that since it is only a one day drive from Gillette, we could come back easily. The weather was really nice with a cool breeze the whole time. Friday morning was a bit chilly, but very tolerable for Wyoming folks. It is very green in Nauvoo and we enjoyed seeing the huge trees everywhere. On the 28th, we drove from Carthage, Illinois to Richmond, Indiana which is right on the border with Ohio. We had planned to swim in the hotel, but the pool pump was broken so the pool was closed. We watched the Lego Movie instead. On the 29th, we got up early and left the hotel in our church clothes. We stopped in Zanesville, Ohio for 9:30 sacrament meeting. Then we drove for 38 minutes (according to Adam’s memory) to a rest stop where we stopped to change out of our church clothes. Then through a small part of West Virginia and a small part of Pennsylvania, then to Maryland. We arrived in Washington DC at just after 5 PM and got everything unloaded at our AirB&B.