Saturday, August 29, 2009

Virginia Lovin

Dan and I are back in Provo now, but the past six weekends we have been traveling! Needless to say we have been busy, but I wanted to post these pictures of Dan with our three ADORABLE nieces. We got to visit Katy (Dan's sister) and Sean and their girls in Virginia two weekends in a row during our time working in Philadelphia. It was so fun! This first picture is of Dan and Liz dancing at the Floyd country store. Every Friday night a bluegrass band comes to play at this country store and all of the locals come out for some hillbilly dancing. It was quite entertaining! I think we were the only ones there without a southern Virginia accent.

Katy and the girls came up to visit us in Philadelphia for a few days and we saw all of the sites there. We toured independence hall, saw the liberty bell, and spent some time in Amish country. This is the only picture I got of their visit, but I think it is so precious. Little Jane is only two months old and is the cutest baby I have ever seen!
Our second weekend in Virginia we went to a lake just outside Roanoke and played in the water. It was really fun! Dan and Anna attempted to build a sand castle.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Pilgrimage to Palmyra

Since our last post, Dan and I have left the big apple for the city of brotherly love. Since we spent a month in Philadelphia last summer, we weren't too excited to come back because we have already seen the sites, and don't really like the city in general. So . . . this past weekend we drove up to Palmyra to see all of the Church history sites. It was sooooo cool! We were both very glad we made the trip. For those of you who aren't LDS, this post might not make very much sense to you. If you want to know more I would be glad to explain it though!
Our first stop was the EB Grandin print shop where the first Books of Mormon were printed. A cute old missionary couple gave us a tour and explained how the books were printed and bound back in 1830. The original press and tools they used were still there.
Dan was really excited to see copies of the first Books printed. This picture was on the first floor where the book store was located.
Here is a picture of the outside. I was surprised that the city of Palmyra was really old fashioned looking and there is only one street in the town.
Our next stop was the hill Cumorah. There is a big visitor's center at the bottom with some neat displays. We climbed to the top of the hill where this memorial marks the area where the plates were probably buried.
Our next stop was my favorite: Joseph Smith's old house and the sacred grove. Here we had a cute sister missionary give us a tour and tell us about the rooms in the house and stories of things that happened here. The old log home that these pictures were taken in is not the original, but it was rebuilt exactly like the original and in the same spot. This picture is in one of the bedrooms upstairs where the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph!
Here is the kitchen of the old log home. I was so happy because the sister missionary kept on offering to take our picture, so Dan had to consent to be in them!
This is the Palmyra temple that is just right across the street from the sacred grove.
This is a picture inside the Smith's frame house that they built a few years after they settled in Palmyra. This is actually the original home they lived in, and the one that Joseph brought the plates home to. The sister missionary pointed out all of the places he hid the plates from the mobs, and told us some other stories. It was so neat!
In front of the frame home.
This is just a picture of the fence that surrounds the Smith farmland. Upstate New York is such a pretty area. Everything is so green!
After our tour of the homes we got to walk through the Sacred Grove. It was so beautiful, peaceful, and calm--everything you expect it to be.

Our last stop was the Peter Whitmer farm in Fayette, NY. This was where the church was officially organized, and where Joseph spent some time translating the plates. This is a picture inside the house.
Lucky for us, the coolest town in Pennsylvania was on the way back to Philadelphia---Scranton! We were excited for this stop too because we are big fans of The Office. We were a bit bummed that the Scranton welcomes you sign had been moved from it's original spot that you see in the show, to a mall. But, we stopped and got a picture of it anyway!