Nauvoo Reunion

We had an opportunity to visit Nauvoo, Illinois--a significant historical site for the church--on a family reunion with the Farnsworth clan.  I love those guys!  Since we were one of the two branches within driving distance of the destination, we had a little flexibility with getting there and leaving, which was awesome because we totally got there a day early to soak up all the fun! Woohoo!

Now, unfortunately, Kendra's love for electronics means that every time we pull out one of our small cameras, these days we often end up with a picture like this:

She very enthusiastically lunges for the device while the one not holding it is holding her back.  Awesome.

So we did the next best thing.  We asked our family for their pictures to supplement our own collection.

Our first day there while we were waiting for the troops to filter in we went to the (indoor and air-conditioned) family living center, where there are many stations set up to demonstrate how the early members of the church (or "saints") lived there in the 1840s.  We learned about making candles, bread, bricks, rope and other such handicrafts and necessities of pioneer life.

I liked seeing how they put rag rugs together...it was fascinating.

The next morning, the whole family (well almost the whole family, there might have been one or two who were up into the wee hours of the morning who didn't make it) piled into a covered wagon for a tour or the historical sites.  Grant's mom covered it pretty well here.  And afterward we had fun seeing things around town.  Kendra had tons of fun with her many, many older cousins.

Later that day, we had a pizza picnic.  Everybody and we do mean everybody loves pizza!

Could someone please tell me why I look like I weigh 250 pounds in this picture?

Funny thing while we were eating pizza, though.  While I was chatting with family, I was so pleased to be seeing in person so many little faces I see all the time on blogs and Facebook.  There was a very cute little girl I noticed and just thought, "Wow, how cool it is to see her!"  After a moment though, I realized that she wasn't a member of our family, but I recognized her just as surely as if she were.  I hastily searched my memory banks to place the child with her parents to figure out who she was.  Then it hit me, "Kueser!  The Kuesers are here!!"

As fate would have it, my junior high math teacher was having a family reunion of his own in Nauvoo that very same weekend.  The little girl was the daughter of his daughter who is just four days younger than me, so I was able to say "Hi" to the various family members there I knew (and in a family of 12 children, I knew a bunch of them!).  It was awesome.  Not just to see them, but to show them how well I turned out--to stand before them at a place of such significance was pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, I was a complete doofus and didn't take a picture.  What was I thinking??

Spontaneous reunions aside, the planned one went really well, too.  Grant caught up with us later and tried out some of the pioneer pastimes.

Hopefully he won't want to get a pair of these for us to have at home...

And at one point I couldn't find my family (I love the way that rolls off, "my" family...swoon) amongst all the Farnsworths...they were too entertained by the brass band.

This picture doesn't do justice to how cute it was to see Kendra sitting there by her Daddy enjoying the music.

And we took a quick family portrait in front of the beautiful temple at the top of the hill.

Unfortunately, we didn't get the steeple in there to finish the shot.  (So here is a picture of the whole thing to give those of you who have never heard of Nauvoo an idea--it's pretty gorgeous.)  Ahhh, the joys of self-portraits.

While I mentioned Kendra's older cousins, we also had a lot of fun gathering her with her younger cousins.  Of which there are two.  So far.  These three very adorable little girls charmed the pants off of their whole family, for sure!

They're totally going to be roomies at BYU, I can already tell.

Since we know from experience that it isn't safe to leave the stuff out, when we got to the hotel, we took immediate action to protect the toilet paper and took it off of the roll and left it on the tank.  When room service came through, they adjusted our "error" and we didn't notice it until someone else had made the discovery...

Yep.  That's the entire roll of toilet paper.  She's so awesome.

Good thing she's pretty cute, too...

You really can't get mad at that face.  Occasionally frustrated maybe, but not full-out mad.

We had SO much fun spending time and making memories with family!  We went to many demonstrations and historical homes and things and even made a trip to nearby Carthage also, but these are all the pictures we collected.  It was good times with great family.  We're so grateful to Grant's parents for making it possible!!