More from our vacation

Are you ready for lots of photos? I hope this doesn't bore you. It was hard for me to not put up more. Here's a bit of this and that. Last night we enjoyed a Family Home Evening with our kids in which we shared all of our photos and stories from this awesome trip.
Me on the Smith family farm. Beautiful place! They were such hard workers. I believe they said the family cleared 30 acres the first year and 60 acres the second year, with an average of 100 trees per acre.

Steve also on the Smith farm with the temple in the background.

Sacred Grove. It's bigger than you'd think. Lots of paths to walk through it. Very quiet and peaceful. There's a special feeling there. Hard to describe adequately. Impossible to capture the beauty of it in photos.

Steve and I in the Sacred Grove.This was the Smith's first log cabin there on the farm. Tiny.

I loved seeing these flowers around. Never seen them before.

This is the Peter Whitmer farm and cabin where the Church was organized April 6, 1830. This cabin is also tiny. They let us tour it and it didn't take long. This is where I heard my favorite story. But you'll have to ask me about it if you want to hear it. It would take too long to write here.

After that meeting where the Church was organized, the group traveled several miles to this lake and many were baptized. Seneca Lake.

We also went and saw the place where they first published the Book of Mormon. That tour was pretty interesting and we learned a lot. No photos though :(

We went to the Hill Cumorah and this is us at the top of the hill and at the base of the monument.

Moroni waving to all the world. You can see the moon near his hand.

Before we left on Sunday we went to Sacrament Meeting with the Palmyra Ward. I fell asleep on Steve's shoulder during the meeting. Oops. Before heading out of town, we had a quick look at the Martin Harris farm. He mortgaged this farm in order to finance the publishing of the Book of Mormon. Now there are a few sets of missionaries living in this house.

We also paid homage to Alvin Smith. Joseph's older brother. This is the front of the headstone. On the back, they kept the original stone. See below.

Original stone. Hard to read. But it says the same thing as the new one. There were gravestones that were close to 200 years old in this cemetery. I love cemeteries. They are so interesting! You find yourself imagining up all kinds of stories about the people buried there. What kind of life they lived, how they were loved, and how they were missed.

Our flight home got delayed and we ended up not getting home until 3am. Steve's parents kept the kids that night again. It made for a sad Mother's Day. I didn't get to see my munchkins till the morning. But I took them out to lunch and we got all caught up. It could have been worse. The weather in Chicago was bad and some flights were cancelled. We made it safely home!

And that's all folks. Keep visiting us!