Palmyra

Next up was Palmyra!  (see 2 other posts below) It took us close to 2 hours to get to our hotel there.  It was a great hotel.  It didn't have a pool, but it was a one bedroom suite so we had our own room and it had a little kitchen.  Perfect! We were proud of ourselves on this trip for not going out to eat a single meal!  We brought lots of food and it worked out.

So we got to our hotel about 3 in the afternoon and we settled in and then went to a grocery store nearby for a couple things.  Then we came back and ate dinner in the lobby.  They told us when we checked in that they serve dinner Monday-Thursday, so that was a score!  It wasn't anything amazing, more snacky kinds of stuff but there was enough dinner-like food to give us a decent meal so we took it! :)

Here we are back at the hotel.  Eli was being a goof as usual.  He was also excited about his huge bed (sofa bed).

The next morning we got up early, got ready, ate breakfast (this hotel had breakfast, yess!), and drove out to Palmyra, NY.  It took about 20-25 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.  For anyone reading this not a member of my faith, Palmyra is a small town where Joseph Smith lived when he prayed to know which church to join.  His prayer was answered as Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him to join none of them, but that he was to restore God's true church on the earth.  It's also the place where the Book of Mormon was first printed.  It is a very special place and we were so glad we got to go!  I had been here before too, but not since I was a kid, so it was really nice to go again as an adult.  They also didn't have the temple built when I went last.

This was a great time of year to go.  The weather was CRAZY and all over the place, but it was super empty and we had private tours of everything.  And with kids, that was just awesome.

Our first stop was the Book of Mormon publication site.  We had these 2 sweet sister missionaries give us a great tour.  It was really interesting about how everything worked to make the printing possible.  The Erie Canal was built shortly before, which allowed E.B. Grandin to get a new printing press shipped to him just months before Joseph asked him to print it.  The press had a new technology that enabled the Book of Mormon to be printed faster and in better quality.  Everything was working to allow this to come to pass and it was great to learn all about that.

We didn't get any pictures inside, but here's the outside.

Then we went over to the Smith farm.  It was also neat to be there in the winter because when the Smith family moved there, it was the middle of the winter and they traveled by sled.  I can't imagine arriving here with no heater, just a fire to keep you warm.  We went first to the log cabin, where they lived for a few years before building a bigger house on the property.

This is inside the log cabin.

And outside.

And through that break in the trees you can see the temple!  The church purchased all this land and it is the original 100 acres that the Smith family owned back in the early 1800s.

Here is the "frame house", they call it, where they moved after a few years.  We again had these sweet sister missionaries give us a great tour (and again we were the only ones!).  They were so nice - and beautiful!  I said to Jeremy, what is with all the bombshell missionaries?  Do they put all the super-attractive ones at the church history sites?  I don't know, but they were all gorgeous.  Moving along...

This is on the property somewhere...

And here we are in the Sacred Grove, where Joseph Smith received the First Vision.  We were the only ones there and it was so quiet and peaceful.  Another note - as you can see, there is snow everywhere.  When we went inside the log cabin, it started blizzarding (that's a word, right?) like crazy!  Snow was coming down hard - sideways- and as soon as we finished in there it stopped.

The sun even peeked out for a bit while we were in the Sacred Grove.  It made me think too, that it could have looked a lot more like this than we often think when Joseph prayed.  It was in the "early spring", we don't have an exact date, and we were there in early March, so who knows.  It could have been brown instead of green. :)

Then we hopped in the car and drove over to the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center, at which point it became a blizzard again!  Holy cow, it was crazy.  We sat inside our warm car, ate our lunch, and waited for it to stop.

Then we went in and got another one-on-one tour and then we watched the Joseph Smith movie (which was so good!) in a room all by ourselves.  It was great.  Then we drove up the Hill Cumorah, but didn't get out because it was super windy and the kids were tired and a little bit cranky...(this picture is from the car!)

Oh, and we drove by the 4 corner churches.  These are two of them.  When Joseph was growing up, there was a lot of religious talk.  Just in this little town there were 4 different churches all on the same corner.  His family was torn on which church to join.

Then we went back to the hotel!  We made dinner, did baths, packed up most of our stuff, and put the kids to bed.

Eli got this strange attachment to one of his dinosaurs on the trip and insisted that he take a bath with him, and then have a towel.  Haha.  Here his is.  What a sweet little velociraptor.

The next morning we got up too early for a vacation and went back to Palmyra.  We met up with our friends the Janzens (who live here in Pittsburgh).  They had been doing a similar vacation so we decided to meet and exchange babysitting so we could go to the temple!  It was sooo wonderful.  Jeremy and I took the 7:30am session and they went to the 9:30.  There were only 10 people in our session and it was just beautiful.  Ryan and Becca have 2 kids similar to our kids' ages, so they had a lot of fun playing together while we went.  Rulan is 3 and Annabelle is 1.5.  That was probably Eli's favorite part of the trip.  Haha.  

Again it snowed the whole time we drove to Palmyra, and then by the time we were all done at the temple it was a beautiful day!

That was our trip!  After that we headed home.  It took less than 5 hours to get home, so it really wasn't bad.  The kids were so good through all the tours and it really went smoothly.  We were so glad we were able to go!