Old Nauvoo

We met up with Brian & Amy and company in Nauvoo, IL on their last leg of their 3 week road trip. They were surprizingly still chipper and ready to see Nauvoo and Carthage.

We saw lots of the old shops and houses, lots of the cute productions and plays (including the Nauvoo pageant), did lots of tours in lots of heat and lots of humidity in just two days. Davis families



Ainsley & Garrett.

Fun Pioneer games.


One of the sunstones & kids in a handcart.

Carthage jail

If only my girls were that obedient.....

All the cousins.
Cooling off in the mighty Mississippi.


Ains & Kenz in front of the temple.

Cousins

We had a blast last weekend when Bart's brother and his family came to visit us for a couple of days. All of our kid's cousins live in either Utah or Boston so this was a great treat for the girls to play with their cousins. We spent one whole day at the MOA riding rides (Amy & I did a bit of shopping too.)





The next day we went downtown Mpls. We ate a picnic lunch on Nicollet Island and then walked a 2 mile loop called Heritage Trail. We began by walking through St. Anthony Main in the Riverfront District. We walked across the stonearch bridge which has a great view of St. Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi, and back across the Hennepin Ave. bridge.






That afternoon we swam in the pool, had a BBQ and went canoeing on our lake. We're going to meet up with them again at the end of their road trip in Nauvoo. It was nice to just say "see you in 2 weeks!" Rather than good-bye.

Fun Fourth

We had a great time hanging out with friends this fourth of July. Aren't good friends wonderful? First, we had a little BBQ with the Barringers then our friends, the Stanton's, came up from Georgia to visit and we hung out with them and the Stotts for some fun with fireworks. It really was a lot of fun celebrating the freedom of our country with fabulous friends.

butterfly

Our kids love finding catterpillars and raising them to butterflies. We found this catterpillar at our lake hanging out on some milkweed. Here he or she is just before it flew off.