I celebrated my birthday this week by taking Talmage to the eye doctor and visiting Costco to buy new glasses for him.  Not really...that was just what I happened to do on my birthday.  The real celebration was on Sunday when I had my birthday dinner of salmon and carrot cake and my husband gave me the afternoon off. One of our traditions is to sing the Happy Birthday song as loudly and off-key as possible.  So Mindy is plugging her eyes and almost everyone is singing theirs hearts out. I also wanted to go up Provo Canyon for my birthday so Scott and I did that yesterday over lunch while the kids were in school.  We went up the Alpine Loop which connects Provo Canyon and American Fork Canyon.  We like to go up and see the fall colors. We got lunch at Kneaders and then headed up to find a place to picnic.  There weren't a lot of fall colors actually.  Some trees near the top were still completely green while some trees lower down had completely ...

One of the perks of being in the "Gold Cast" for the pageant is that we had time to do some sightseeing because there were not a lot of rehearsals, since we only sang in the finale plus do the pre-show.  We had been to Nauvoo several times so we tried to do some things we hadn't done before. This year we went on the Community of Christ Church tour.  It cost about $3 per person and featured the homes that Joseph Smith lived in (the Homestead and the Mansion House) plus the Smith Family Cemetery and the Red Brick Store.  Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable--obviously having a love of history.  My children got a little tired of standing around so much but Scott and I enjoyed it.  I think the Homestead was my favorite.  It was the home they lived in the longest. The Homestead  The Homestead This was about halfway through the tour and already the children are wearing out.      Another thing I did was...

We've been home about 6 weeks and I'm finally posting about our trip to Nauvoo.  I'm really glad we went, especially as I look back at the pictures.  I blogged about our decision to go  here  and now that we've made the trip, I really feel it was inspired. Everett with some of his new friends. We left on July 25 as soon as our daughter got home from girls' camp and my son got all his lawns mowed.  It was a long day to North Platte, Nebraska, especially when we arrived at the hotel where we thought we had reservations, but we didn't and it was completely full.  The county fair was that weekend so most hotels were full.  Fortunately we found a spot not too far away to rest our weary bones. The next day we drove to Pella, Iowa, with a brief stop at the Archway Museum near Kearney, Nebraska.  It's a museum that spans I-80.  You can look out the windows and see the freeway traffic passing right under you.  It was moderately interes...