Where did summer go?

Seriously?! How the heck did that get by me?
The biggest event of our summer was our epic trip from hometown Idaho to Michigan. We left early on the Fourth of July. We spent a few days in Missouri touring church history sites. We saw Haun's mill, Far West, the new Kansas City temple, attended church in independence, visited Liberty Jail and maybe a few other places that I may be forgetting.

Monument at Far West

Liberty Jail

If you ever have the opportunity to visit Springfield ILL. do it! and go to the Lincoln Museum. I have visited a lot of museums in the US and western Europe and this one is in my top five. I heard president Obama once say that Lincoln was one of his favorite presidents and I know why; Lincoln is the reason why Obama could become president. The career of Lincoln, the good and the bad, was plastered everywhere and I was humbled by what that man stood for. We need more Lincoln's.

Lincoln's tomb was neat. A place of reverence. All but one of his kids is also buried there along with his wife. The building erected to cover his burial site is beautiful. It was obvious by the way people acted while visiting these places that Lincoln is a well respected historical figure in most people's eyes. I was thrilled that our kids had this chance to see a piece of our countries history. The bad and the good. I hope they walked away understanding that we are all God's children regardless of our color or deformities etc.


From there we went to Nauvoo. Some dear friends of ours are temple missionaries there and we were able to spend quiet a bit of time with them. They even watched our kids so that Matt and I could attend a session in the beautiful Nauvoo temple. What an experience! I loved the woodwork in that building. One man got permission to take us down to the baptistery. It was incredible. The kids had a blast visiting all the little shops and playing the pioneer games in the children's section.

Nauvoo Temple

After a week of travel and site seeing we arrived in Three Oaks Michigan where we stayed for a week. It was so nice to be able to spread out! The kids could run around. We were able to catch up with a lot of Matt's cousins and our kids had plenty of playmates. They loved their time at the beach playing in the sand and swimming in Lake Michigan. For a bunch of Idahoans. Who seldom see much exposure to water, we have a bunch of fish for kids! Even the littlest one was at home in the water!

While in Michigan we took a few day trips including one to South Bend Indiana to visit Notre Dame University. We paid for the tour of the football stadium and got to go into the locker room and see the iconic "Play like a champion today" board that every football player touches on his way out of the locker room. Worth the price! It was an awesome tour and the campus was pretty sweet.

Another high light of our trip was visiting the home where John Wayne was born. In case you didn't know our family is huge fans of him and so that was a must stop on our trip.

That week went by too fast and after a two day driving marathon we were back home. Back to life and reality.

School has started and we have four going all day and four home. The four home are by far my busiest children so I have had to be creative in finding ways to distract them. We have set library and park days and look for other activities that help to distract and expend their energies.

We have taken advantage of some extremely low cost extra curricular activities and a free jump rope clinic that is held once a week. Makes for a few busier days than we are used to but they are worth the time since getting kids to bed seems to be easier on those days.

We are still trying to find where to throw down our roots. Hopefully we'll have things in order by Christmas. Who knows? It seems that just when we think we have it all figured out we learn how little we really know and end up readjusting. Our road is a lot smoother than the roller coaster ride from on high but He knows best; so we will just keep holding on, with a scream here and a scream there :).