Bed, Breakfast & Beyond

My husband came up with that clever little title. Things like that come so easy to him, I think because he's so incredibly random.

Well, I know I have been AWOL from the blogging scene for a while, but we were out of town for over two weeks and I have also been SLAMMED with photography stuff (8 shoots in a month, and that includes going out of town for two of the four weeks in the month!). But, I have returned. I have to backtrack, however, and talk about our trip to Nauvoo to see the Nauvoo Pageant at the end of July. We went with our friends Phil and Heidi Harrop, who found this cute little bed and breakfast to stay at:

I've actually never stayed at a Bed and Breakfast before, so it was fun for me to finally experience. When I say that I mean it was fun to experience the coziness of it and the home-made breakfasts in the morning, etc.; I do NOT mean it was fun to experience sleeping with my three children in the same bedroom or trying to sleep while Cole is screaming that he wants snuggles and Claire is screaming at Cole to be quiet and Ava is screaming because everyone else is screaming. Grant and I gave up and let Cole sleep in our bed both nights. Sure, we might have been rolled on and kicked at all night, but at least the other two kids and the other entire FAMILY in the next room got a good nights sleep. Ah, traveling with kids... Anyway, the place was really fun otherwise. And it was just a few blocks away from the temple. The first night we were there we walked over to the temple and it was just breathtakingly beautiful in the sunset light.

(Grant says that the temple in the above picture looks like it is sliding off the hill. I told him he just doesn't understand art.)


We spent the evening just hanging out on the grass by the temple and letting the kids run around. I, of course, took some pics:

This is a cute one of the Harrop family:

The next day we went to the visitors center and the Relief Society statue garden, which is where this lovely shot was taken (I SWEAR I did not tell them to pose):

We went on the horse and buggy (well, motorized buggy) tour and then we went to the Pioneer Pastimes area, where you can dress up as Pioneers and play pioneer games. This yielded my favorite pictures of the weekend:

Yes, that handsome pioneer is my husband. Anyway, we had fun. We also went to the "Anna Amanda" play and, randomly, I happened to know the girl who played Anna Amanda. She was in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with me. Then, that night we played games down by the pageant area (and saw some other people we know, the Englishes) and then saw the pageant. It was actually better than I thought - I thought it'd be kinda cheesy, but the actors were pretty good and the story was even touching. I really liked it. Grant, of course, did not enjoy much of it because he was worried about our kids disrupting everyone - Claire and Cole kept running back and forth from their seats to get more treats from us, then fighting over who wanted to sit on my lap, then Daddy's lap, then Cole started crying because Claire decided to sit in the stroller and Cole suddenly decided he wanted to sit in the stroller, then Claire had to go to the bathroom, then we couldn't find Ava, who had crawled under someone else's seat, then Claire kept complaining that she was bored, then Ava started to cry, then Cole had to go to the bathroom, etc., etc., etc. I kept trying to remind Grant that we were surrounded by Mormons who were used to kids and their disruptions, but that didn't change anything for him. He's just too nice, I guess! The next day was Sunday and we went to Sacrament meeting there in Nauvoo (and saw our old Bishop, Bishop Rutowski, who lives there now). There were so many visitors they had to set up another table for all the sacrament trays. There were, like, 20 people passing the sacrament! After Sacrament meeting we went to the brick yard and got our little Nauvoo brick and then headed home.

This is a picture of Heidi and me:

We met in our study abroad program to Vienna during our BYU days and it was fun to hang out with her again.

The following picture is the best of many I took of the kids before we left for home. I had bought all of their "matching" shirts for the sole purpose of getting a good shot of all three of them to hang on the wall, but after none of them were cooperating very well (including my husband, who was complaining about the picture more than the kids were) I gave up. Oh well, it's still cute:

So, that was our trip! Next entry will be about our trip to my parents lakehouse, where we just went for two weeks, and then I'll basically be up to speed with my blogging again!