Showing posts with label katie's wedding/nauvoo. Show all posts

So much good taste all in one place . . . .

The interior of the John Taylor home . . . .

We saw one of the former homes of John Taylor who later became third president of the church (for those of my readers who are not LDS), a schoolhouse, and some other old or reconstructed homes from the mid-1800’s. Then we went on to the Joseph Smith (first president of the church) area where we saw a number of properties that belonged to Joseph and his wife, Emma. One was the little house (since added on to) where they lived during the time period when he was incarcerated on trumped up charges in Liberty jail along with our ancestor, Caleb Baldwin. There was also the Mansion House which is beautiful and quite large (though only a fraction of it remains) which was very interesting to go through. We went through the Smith family cemetery and saw the place where Joseph was buried for many years (under the bee-house for safe keeping) before being dug up in 1928 and reburied next to his brother and wife.

A low down view of the old barn near or on Caleb Baldwin's plot

Later we went to the land and records office to locate the plots of land that belonged to Caleb Baldwin during his time in Nauvoo. We discovered that he had two plots though there is nothing that remains in either that would tell us what it might have looked like when he was a resident. I did take a picture of an old barn that was close to where Caleb’s property must have been but there was no one around to ask how long it had been there. With all the humidity there, the barn could have been a mere 50 years old and still looked 200. In fact, I was totally fascinated by the barns and old buildings that were being taken over by plants growing up and through and around the roof, windows and doors. In California, the only thing that grows well are things that are purposefully watered. With all the rain they get there through the spring and summer, there is green everywhere. It was beautiful!

Sister #2 and sister #4 at the Nauvoo House hotel and restaurant


That night we had dinner at the Nauvoo House, not to be confused with the actual Nauvoo House, owned by Joseph and Emma, which was under construction at the time of Joseph’s death. The first is in downtown Nauvoo and was once a residence but is now a hotel and restaurant. It is a pretty blue Victorian style house and had period décor all throughout.

At the frozen custard place in downtown Nauvoo


Later, we were delighted to find an open store where we shopped for souvenirs and when we got hungry again, we walked in the warm dusky night down the street to enjoy a frozen custard. Yum! They had quite the sense of humor there--the sign on the door said they were open until 9:33 and until 9:36 the following evening. I suppose this is for people whose watches aren't coordinated with theirs. Tomorrow, check back to read about our run-in with a tornado!

Front row, Mom, sister #5, sister #4, sister #2, back row, sister #6, sister #3 (bride's mom) then me (in the pink) far back, Dad and sister #1

On our way back to our cute yellow motel (if you have been to Nauvoo you know just which one I mean), we got a call from sister #3, mother of the bride. She and her family had arrived and were currently at a hotel across the street. We met her at “our” place, chatted, laughed some more and took lots of pictures of each other. Talk about a mutual admiration society! Now, let’s get one thing straight. All of us are skinnier and more beautiful (not to mention younger) than we appear in this picture, but more importantly, the hair of sister #2 is always much fuller and far less straight than it appears in this photo and any others I post from our trip to the Midwest. In fact, it looked pretty good in the photo of airport security in my first post, back before we entered the “damp zone”, so reference that when you wonder why this woman is walking around with straight as a pin, loftless hair. (Sister #2, I hope that takes care of it for you.)

The very happy bride and groom--aren't they beautiful?

What I fondly like to call " The Cinderella Moment"

This picture puts me in mind of that last scene in the Disney Cinderella movie (a favorite of mine since childhood) when Cinderella and her Prince are heading down the steps of the castle after their wedding. Maybe I am too fanciful but that's how I like to think--fancifully. Her dress was so gorgeous, her groom so handsome, her crown so sparkly, her eyes so big and blue, the perfect Cinderella! Congratulations Katie and Mike! More tomorrow about how the sisters of the mother of the bride skipped out on her and turned tourist right after the last snap was shot.

Mom and Dad on the banks of the Mississippi River in Nauvoo Illinois

I am so behind on everything, the laundry, the gardening, the cleaning! In fact, I was behind before I even left on my little jaunt. I should be working but it is as hot and almost as muggy as it was in Nauvoo, which is saying quite a bit. Not only that, but I think I slept an average of five or six hours a night the whole time I was away from my bed and I am just exhausted! Sitting at the computer sounds like the best kind of activity for now. So, here goes . Back to the plane ride . . .

Finally we were on the plane! Many episodes of “Airline”, a show about imbroglios, such as the one we nearly experienced with the cold cream incident, at various Southwest gates around the country, did not prepare me for that tiny plane. I had last flown nine years prior on a large and lovely British Airways plane (to the even larger and lovelier British Isles) and I had forgotten how compact an airplane can be. I found a seat next to my parents since my three sisters were already seated together across the way in what Mom called “the giggly aisle”. What they had to be so hyper about, I’m not sure but they certainly weren’t so giddy on the way home.

But I digress. It was a fast 4 hours and I enjoyed talking with my mom and catching up on news while my dad looked out the window testing his voluminous brain power by theorizing over just what part of what state we were currently flying. We were told that our landing could be delayed due to a storm in Chicago but we actually landed early. This bit of good news was apparently at the expense of my twin sister (sister #5) as her plane had to wait for ours to land after circling the airport for an hour waiting for a break in the storm. Poor sister #5 almost had to land in a different airport which would have made it pretty much impossible for us to find her. This would have been heart attack fodder for my mom, so we are all glad that the storm let up when it did. We also met up with sister #4, whom I personally hadn't seen in two years, and then we were off to acquire our two rental cars.

This is where the really sad thing happened. For those of you who regularly read my blog, you know just how I feel about my Target ballerina flats, the ones made of multi colored satin that smell just like real toe shoes (prior to usage—an important distinction). I wore them on the plane, never expecting rain—actual real rain!—to be part of the scenario on my trip. Yes, I did live in Colorado for over a year and did experience rain in summer, quite a bit of it, in fact. That is one reason why I no longer live in Colorado. Nevertheless, I didn’t really expect it. What I was expecting was a tornado and we got one of those, too, but that is fodder for another day. The point of this paragraph is that my beautiful little shoes now have watermarks half way up the sides, squiggly lines that did their squiggling around every available surface.

The great Mississippi River as seen from Missouri

I could go on and on about the five hour drive to Nauvoo but all I will say is that the 4 of us in my car had a great time talking and laughing so that by the time we got to Nauvoo at 8 PM, we were starving. We checked into our motel (a little tough to do since the office staff had knocked off for the night) then headed off into the dark. It was a bit disconcerting in that there were very few visible people, no houses with lights on, no open stores or restaurants. We drove and drove but all we ever found were convenience stores (we didn’t want microwaved frozen pizza) and a bar called The Pink. Finally we found out that there were some fast food stores in the opposite direction across the Mississippi River in Iowa. We headed in that direction pronto because fast food was what we truly needed about now, based on the hysteria in my car at the time. In fact, sister #2 laughed at every single one of my inane jokes so I know her blood sugar level must have been pretty darn low.

And here is where the story gets a bit weird. If there are any out there who can shed light on this scenario, please, start shedding. We drove onto the bridge, the reality of food being consumed sometime in the next half hour almost like a beacon of light in the distance, when we found that there were cars stopped on the bridge. Naturally, we were forced to come to a stop, as well. We grumbled and theorized over the delay for about five minutes. We suspected the drawbridge was up for a boat to come through but there was no boat, ship, or raft in sight. Finally, we spotted a very bright light wayyyyyyyy down the river to our right. Could that be the ship causing the hold up? No way, that just couldn’t be right, we had already been stopped for twice as long as any traffic light in California, L.A. included, and it looked like it would take at least ten or fifteen minutes for that light to reach us. And so it was. Just about fifteen minutes later, this slothful slowpoke of a barge came slithering under the bridge. We were chagrined, we were giddy and weak with hunger, but we rallied when that barge went by, sure that we would finally be able to put the car into gear and be on our way.

But that’s not what happened. Oh, no, we had to wait at least another ten minutes to watch the barge disappear into the night on the other side of the bridge. There really are no words, no words whatsoever.

We did finally get to eat at a great fast food joint where I discovered french fries smothered in velveeta cheese and real bacon (they went down very well with a real ice cream chocolate shake topped with whipping cream—yum—though I suspect a plank off that barge would have tasted like manna at that point) which vastly improved my mood. In spite of that, when we went back over the bridge and paused at the booth to pay our toll, I really wanted to ask the two women inside why in the world we had to wait so long for a barge miles away. Actually, that’s not true. What I really wanted to do was get an explanation and then give them a good smack but, alas, I was in the back seat and couldn’t reach them.

That’s it for today—I will have to retreat and try to figure out what amusing anecdote I can share without making anyone look bad. I mean, no one actually did look bad, it just isn’t very amusing to talk about how good everyone looked. Was. Is. My brain hurts.

The LDS temple in Nauvoo, Illinois


I’m back from four wonderful, fun and wacky days visiting Nauvoo, Carthage, Liberty and Lee’s Summit, four lovely cities in our nation’s heartland. The purpose of the trip was to attend the wedding of my beautiful niece Katie to her cutie-patootie sweetheart, Mike, in the Nauvoo temple. A four hour plane ride was between me and my destination and since our flight left at an unsightly hour (very few people are “sightly” so early in the morning) I begged a bed off of my sister who lives close to the airport . My husband, along with our three kids, drove me to her house but insisted on stopping to have dinner along the way to celebrate the fact that they weren’t going to see me for four days.

It was one of the nicest, tastiest meals I can remember having in a long time. We went to Olive Garden and, by gum, it was really top-notch! The waiter was efficient and personable and, as my daughter pointed out, had the good sense to be really attractive, as well. Everybody ate heartily, including my big guy who had more than his share of bread sticks, minestrone soup, raspberry lemonade and lasagna, a menu which will be important to remember later on.

We had one more thing to do before I was dropped off at my sister’s house—we had to give the big guy his medicine or the hour-long ride home would be nothing short of hell on earth for the others trapped in the car with a 260 pound manic bouncing ball. Normally we crush the medicine and put it in chocolate ice cream but when we are on the road, we use a McDonald’s chocolate sundae. We worry that he doesn’t get the full benefit of the meds when we do it that way, however, because it often melts before he finishes it all. So, my dear husband suggested we scoop a little of the sundae out into the lid and mix the medicine in that.

It was a near-fatal mistake. In light of the fact that one of my sisters both reads my blog and hates talk of bodily functions, let’s just say that the small amount of sundae did not compensate for the gag effect of the foul tasting meds and before we could talk him out of it, the big guy’s dinner, every single bite, was all over the interior of our mini-van. Needless to say, this put a pretty big pall over the celebration but it did make our imminent separation a bit less poignant for moi. After helping my husband clean up the van, I closed the door of my sister’s house with a sizable sigh of relief.

My father, my mother and one of my sisters trying to work things out.

Before I proceed, let me point out that I was traveling with my six witty sisters as well as my mother and father (both also witty). My brother, the youngest of 8 children (and witty, to boot. In fact I wish he would get a google ID and comment on my blog, that’s just how witty he is) chose not to go as he travels frequently for his job and took pity on his wife who is often left alone with their four children. At least, that’s the story. I think he was overwhelmed by the thought all that wit.

The first leg of the journey included my parents, three of my sisters, and myself. My eldest sister, as leader of this expedition, suggested we each only bring one bag to check and one carry-on. My parents, as the, er, parents of this expedition, thumbed their noses and brought five bags between them. The rest of us wondered what they could possibly need to fill five bags but the mystery deepened when my mother was stopped at security, her bag seized and searched. The rest of us were busy either re-lacing our shoes or wiping the gunk of the floor off our bare feet before replacing our slip-ons (which brings to mind another topic of conversation—which is better, sox and lace ups for comfort or slip-ons for speed and ease?) but our attention was soon claimed by the drama at security.

Apparently someone forgot to tell Mom that you can only carry-on 3 ounces of liquid. A large jar of cold cream and who knows what else is many more ounces than they can allow. I try not to imagine her humiliation at having all of her toiletries pulled from her bag and thoroughly investigated. One of my sisters, sister #2 (I feel it best to avoid names to protect the innocent as well as the guilty) joined my parents to see if she could do anything to help. In the end, she had to go back to check the bag, making it back to the gate with time to spare. Phew! Now we only had a four hour plane ride and a five hour car drive to reach our destination, a place we soon learned closes down and rolls up the sidewalks far too early in the day . . .

I'm back from a wonderful four days with family to attend my niece's wedding in Nauvoo Illinois and what a great time was had by all! It was heavenly to sleep in my own bed last night but I am still soooo tired. Check back later for pics and funny stories of some of our madcap adventures! It all started when my 77 year old mother was taken aside at security and her bag searched. Who knew a bottle of face cream was a security risk?