Nauvoo Weekend

Ahhh… yet again another wonderful Nauvoo Memorial Day weekend! Last year we were invited to go to Nauvoo with a few members of our church and it was a great experience. We were lucky enough to be invited to join again this year and it was a blast!
Jason and I left after work on Friday and picked up 3 of the teenage boys from our ward. I was a little curious to see how 3 teenage boys would be in a car for 4 ½ hours but they were great. We listened to music the whole way down with all of us singing along! We stopped for dinner and met up with the Billings family at Subway. One thing that did make me laugh was how much those boys send text messages I thought that was a girl thing – boy was I wrong!


We got to Nauvoo at about 10:30 and the kids immediately wanted to play games. We got unloaded and I tried to go to bed at midnight to no avail. Around 3 am I finally fell asleep – only to wake up at 6 am to help with breakfast. Jason went golfing with some of the other guys in the group and I worked on my dad’s history and took naps. The weather was gorgeous!!!! We ran into a member of our Stake Presidency and visited with him for a little while. Then Jason and I had the opportunity to do a session at the Nauvoo Temple.

That temple means so much to me – I don’t know if it’s because my ancestors helped build the original and went through the temple there themselves or because the saints sacrificed so much to have the temple built and then had to turn around and leave it. For whatever reason, I really love that temple and get such a great feeling every time I see it. We finished the night by going to see a group perform Polynesian dances (wow!!!!!) and then more games (of course). Rob and Tiff arrived later that night and Jason was in heaven to have his buddy back!
On Sunday it was another beautiful day. Jason and I went to church and then we explored and enjoyed nature with Rob and Tiffany. We went on a walk around Nauvoo so I could get some pictures and enjoyed watching the sun set on the Mississippi River. Nauvoo is so quiet and peaceful that I felt so relaxed the entire weekend.
Monday we headed home and Rob and Jason went golfing again. Tiff and I drove home together and the boys went home together. Before we left we took the two youngest Billings kids – Cameron and Kristin out on a “date” to get ice cream. We had promised them earlier in the week that we would take them out while we were in Nauvoo. They are great kids!


It was a fantastic weekend although I was completely exhausted when we got home. We got very little sleep because of all the games and fun! We tried some new games that I will have to buy – KuhHandel & Wacky Sixes. Those were a lot of fun!

What a weekend

What a weekend we’ve just had!! It was definitely packed with a lot of fun – some adventures – and many hours spent with each other and friends!
We went house hunting after taking a month and half break. We saw 10 houses and found one that we really liked. We are now in the big debate of “Do we make an offer?” and even more so of “If we make an offer, how much do we offer???” I hate that debate! While house hunting we had some interesting things happen. Our realtor Rose is the sweetest person ever (and super patient with us) she brought her 5 year old daughter Lexie and her husband Greg, who is a member of our church, with her and we all had a great time together followed by a yummy pizza lunch. One of the houses we went into started out really great – I had great possibilities for it and loved a lot of the things they had done to it. When we went downstairs to see the basement the lights going down the stairs didn’t work – but that can’t stop me…I was in the lead and started down the stairs and into the basement. A few steps into the basement I suddenly realized that I was now in water – up to my ankles!!!! We have had a lot of rain recently and apparently that particular house doesn’t handle water well. We quickly left – me with a wet foot!
I thought that would be the extent of our “Fun” for the house hunting expedition until we saw another house that raised a few eyebrows. The owner is an older gentleman that we discovered is originally from Germany. He loves Porsche’s and actually had a few on his property that his son was restoring. So we enter the house and I go into the master bedroom. I quickly came out with a shocked look on my face. Jason looks at me and all I could say was “Look at the picture hanging on the wall above his bed.” Jason bursts out laughing and comes back to me with an incredulous look on his face. This gentleman had a nicely framed picture of Adolf Hitler hanging in a place of honor in his room. WHAT?!#(%^#) That is insane!!!! Did he miss the whole WWII thing? Needless to say we didn’t put that house on our list of possible….I was in too much shock – we all were.
Some other great things for this weekend included a CUB’s baseball games. A friend of Jason’s from work has season tickets and invited us to join her and her husband for the game. It was incredible weather and we loved it! There is such a great feeling of excitement as you are sitting there surrounded by 40,455 other cub fans! In addition we saw Ron Santos and Jason and I saw our first Grand Slam. Bases loaded and POW! He hit one out of the ball field!! It was great!

And last but totally not least was our new acquisition – bikes! A couple that we have become friends with is preparing a move out to the Seattle area and decided that they were going to bring as little as possible back with them and offered us their Trek Bikes. We jumped on it and got an amazing deal (and no Tiffany we did not rip them off – they will be blessed)! We got 2 bikes one for me and one for Jason, a thing that attaches to the hitch on the jeep to transport the bikes, helmets, a computer thing to calculate speed and distance traveled, an indoor trainer for the bikes, and repair stuff. So on Saturday night we went on our first bike ride in ages! It has been so long since I rode a bike and I absolutely loved it – although my butt really hurt afterwards. We’ve made a goal to try to go bike riding every night. Along our bike ride we saw my second favorite spring thing next to tulips – baby geese and ducklings. They recently hatched and they are all around the ponds and are just so darn cute! I love spring!!!!