Hello Utah!!

I thought that I might blog while we were on our enormous road trip from Maryland to Utah, but each night when we got to the hotel sitting down too a computer just wasn't tempting. I was either too tired or I figured that it had been entirely too boring to find anything of interest to write about. Our day across Wyoming, for example, would have looked something like... saw some sagebrush.... more sagebrush... and over that hill is some more sagebrush. We weren't really big fans of Rawlins, Wyoming. (Sorry to any of you from Wyoming.) Basically we drove about 4-6 hours a day for 6 days. We had 1 or 2 breaks each day and usually arrived at our next hotel around 7 or so. Each night when we arrived we all made a break for the swimming pool and played until we were so hungry we had to stop. Our first stop was by far my favorite. It was Kirtland, Ohio. This is an important historical place for members of the LDS church. Many revelations were received here and it was really a powerful feeling at many of these places.

This is the Newel K. Whitney home. Newel Whitney was a wealthy business man in Kirtland who had been prepared for the resoration of the gospel. He had been praying to know what the Lord would have him do. Joseph Smith saw his face in a dream and when he arrived in Kirtland he went straight to his store and said, "You prayed me here... what would you have of me?" Joseph and Emma stayed in the Newel K. Whitney home for several months. In the attic of the Newel K. Whitney store was an office that Joseph used and next to that is the school of the prophets. In this latter room is where the Savior actually appeared to Joseph and several others.

This store is the site of the first bishop's storehouse. In 2007, the church gave $260 million in cash donations, nearly 60,000 tons of food and about $750 million worth of material supplies. The humanitarian efforts of the church is something that I am proud to be a part of and so seeing the beginnings of it was really cool.

The sawmill.

The last stop in Kirtland was the Kirtland temple, now owned by the Community of Christ church. Anyway it was really interesting. These bright green doors were kind of a surprise to me. It was beautiful though and remarkable to think about how much they sacrificed in order to build a temple.

The other church history site we visited was Winter Quarters in Omaha, Nebraska. This is where the pioneers were camped for sometime during the trek across the country. There was great sickness throughout these camps and many, many died. I wish we'd had time to go up to the cemetary as well, but we had to get back on the road. I feel really grateful to the pioneers who made such sacrifices for their faith. It causes me to consider how dedicated I am and how much I'd be willing to sacrifice for my faith.

Thanks to the generosity of our good friends Heather and Scott (well their parent's generosity as well) we were also able to stay in Iowa one night in a real live house instead of a hotel. (Thank you guys!) It was so sad to see the enormous damage from the flooding across Iowa only a few days earlier. An RV floating in the water off the side of the freeway was kind of a "wow" moment for Aaron and I because we have never really seen flooding like that. We tried to run to a grocery store that evening only to find it's parking lot an absolute pool of water.

As for the rest of the trip, I was very grateful for a few little games and toys. My mother-in-law sent a game called Rubberneckers Jr. which was a lifesaver. We also had a great time with glow-sticks, books, toy cars and stickers. Lizzy was into "decorating" her side of the car as illustrated in this picture.

My boys all snuggled up.

The kids really did great and I was proud of them. After so many hours together in the car I was afraid they'd never want to see each other again, but thankfully this is them only a few hours after our arrival at Grandma's house. (Sigh of relief) I'm so glad they still like each other.