Sojourn in a Far Away Land - Nauvoo

I am going to start out this post by admitting to pride and ignorance when I first arrived here in Missouri. After the first four days, I decided that everyone was crazy to warn me about the heat and humidity. It wasn't that bad, and surviving the summer here seemed easy. Well, I later learned that they were having LOW humidity and MILD temperatures when we arrived. The weekend that we went to Nauvoo for the pageant, it was HIGH humidity and 98 degrees. It felt like you couldn't even breathe, and you were wet the minute you stepped outside. My kids couldn't figure out why their clothes were wet. (They just don't seem to get the concept of humidity) To make matters worse, our air conditioning in our car died on the way to Nauvoo. I wasn't a happy camper, to say the least. I am a girl who runs air conditioning at home, where there isn't much humidity. Oh well, we survived and had a great time! It is definitely a great family place. I would recommend it to all!

We stopped to see the temple first.
Benjamin kept trying to go inside. He liked the Twin Falls temple a lot, and he couldn't understand why he couldn't go inside this one too.
We went to the visitor's center and reserved our seats for the pageant that night. Then we went out into the statue garden and posed with some of the staues.
We were trying to copy this statue, and it turned out pretty good, even without the heads on the statue showing.
We got to ride in a wagon pulled by oxen.
It is pretty sobering when they tell you that over 60% of your wagon would have had to be filled with food. Those wagons are not that big. They must have had to leave most everything behind.

The kids enjoyed playing in the children's area. Ben made sure to ride all the sheep.
The girls, of course, played dress up.
They also played pioneer games and tried doing some chores that pioneer children would have done.
At the bakery, they showed us how the ovens worked and gave us some yummy gingerbread cookies. We also got some potato bread that was really good. I had always thought the ovens worked by lighting a fire underneath them, but apparently they had to light the fire in the oven itself, remove all the ashes afterwards and then cook in the brick oven. That is why it would take all day to bake bread, because they had to keep reheating the oven for each batch.
In the Family Living center, we learned how to make barrels, dip candles and make rope. Everybody got to participate in the rope making. Leilani turned the wheel to twine the individual strands together (with a little help from Benjamin), Alan got to tie knots at the end and Emily and Elisabeth got to cut the rope ends.
We got "Prairie Diamond" rings made our of horse shoe nails at the blacksmith shop. Supposedly some people used them for engagement rings. (I know the picture is upside down, but I couldn't get blogger to let me turn it)
Each of the kids got their own brick at the brick maker's shop. Last time we went it was only one brick per family, so they were pretty excited to get their own this time.
We ended up our tour of Nauvoo by visiting Joseph, Hyrum and Emma's graves. They are not on property owned by our church, but the RLDS (I know they changed their name, but I can't remember what it is now) have the homestead and graves and stuff right next to our church's historic Nauvoo area.
They had a mini fair of sorts before the pageant started. They had stations to do pioneer activities at. You got a bead at each station, and when you collected 10 beads you could go get a bigger "memory" bead too.
We really had fun trying the different games and activities. There were lots of volunteers dressed up as pioneers manning each station.

The girls were greatly outnumbered on the tug-o-war game.
The boys won, even with benjamin as their anchorman! (He saw an older boy do it and insisted that he was going to do it too. I kept trying to get him to put the rope on his back, not his neck, but apparently this worked for him)
Each of us teamed up for the sawing competition. It is not as easy as it looks! Each person has to pull, rather than push, and it takes a few tries to get the hang of it.
Alan worked up a good sweat pulling the handcart uphill and then down. The kids even talked him into doing it twice. (He let me ride too on the second trip) It was a lot of fun. We did horse shoes and stickball, and they had an area where they branded the Nauvoo temple onto wood for you. They had paper dolls and coloring. It was a great way to pass the time.
The pageant was very good. Neither Benjamin nor Elisabeth got a nap that day, so I expected them to crash during the pageant. Elisabeth did, but not Benjamin. He managed to stay awake for the whole thing. He loved it when they built the temple and raised it up.
Afterwards we went up and met the actors who played Joseph and Hyrum. It was kind of cool that they really are brothers in real life. They are just out here from Utah for the summer with their family to do the pageant. We met the lady who played Emma too (right side of the picture and behind) I told her that I didn't think I could be a pioneer woman and wear all that clothing in this heat. She laughed and said that you would be hot no matter what you were wearing, even if it was a swimming suit, so it really didn't matter how many clothes you had on. I guess that is probably true... but I still think I would've been tempted to shed a few under layers.