Cornbelly's and Pumpkins

I am taking a break from posting about our trip to post some recent events. This past Saturday we went down to Thanksgiving Point for the Cornbelly's Pumpkin Festival with our friends the Calls. This has been a tradition for our family for the past three years. If you have never been, I highly suggest it! They have so many activities, especially for little ones. A $10 pass (2 and under are free) includes: the corn maze, hay rides, cow train, a huge jumping pillow, pedal bikes, slides, and we even watched some pigs race! They also have yummy food and treats! For the most part we had a great time. Near the end, Wesley threw one of his famous 2 yr old tantrums and we decided to leave a little earlier than we had planned. Overall we had a great time and we will most likely go again next year! For FHE last night we decided to have a pumpkin theme for Halloween. We picked up a Jack-o-lantern Pizza from Papa Murphy's for dinner. Wesley thought it was so cool to eat a pumpkin pizza. After dinner we decided to carve our pumpkins we picked out at Thanksgiving Point. I thought Wes would love digging out the slimy pumpkin seeds, but he wouldn't go near them. He was more obsessed with the knife I was using. We finally got him entertained with poking holes in his pumpkin. Beckett didn't get to join in the fun. He had a bottle and then went to bed. Rob and I every year love to pick out difficult pumpkin designs to carve. And every year we are always kicking ourselves for doing it. It takes us forever to carve them and our hands cramp up and hurt for days. But it is so worth it! Our pumpkins always turn out so cool! I was sad that Wesley was in bed by the time we finished. We will just have to show him tonight.

Yummy Pizza!Don't mind my scary face!Beckett missing out on all the fun :(Be very afraid!
My wicked witchRob's Spider Web

John Johnson Farm

The John Johnson Farm is located in Hirum, Ohio, not far from Kirtland. The John Johnson Farm was church headquarters for about six months between Sept. 1831 - March 1832. The Johnsons were converted in the spring of 1831. The Johnson Farm is important in Church History because Joseph Smith received many revelations here including section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the vision of the three degrees of glory. The Prophet also continued his translation of the Bible at the farm. The Johnson Farm is also the place where the Prophet was dragged from the house and tarred and feathered. Sidney Rigdon was also tarred and feathered near the Johnson home. He was beaten so badly that he suffered a concussion that lasted the rest of his life. He was never the same. For this reason he was replaced as scribe for the Prophet. We visited the Johnson Farm after touring Kirtland. The original Johnson House still stands. In the slide show you will notice pictures of open cupboards. If you look closely, you can see where they striped the paint down to find the original colors that the Johnson's used. I thought the wood painting in the kitchen was very unique and beautiful. The farm was purchased in 1956 by the Church and now serves as a welfare farm.

Technical Difficulties

I am so frustrated with my computer or blogger, I don't quite know who's to blame. I have been trying to upload a current family picture for our header and this is what I get...Rob's mouth and Beckett. I'm guessing the picture is too big, but all of my other pictures have worked and I did click the little box that says "shrink to fit." And the preview picture showed the whole picture, so I don't know why it is only showing a third of the picture. And I created a cute little header in Photoshop, and downloaded it, but when I click save it says "please fix the errors on this page," but I don't know what errors it's talking about. I am so frustrated I want to rip my hair out. Does anyone else have problems? Then I tried putting back our old header but would it let me do that? NO! It still says that there are errors. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Beautiful Kirtland

People keep asking what my favorite part of our trip was, and to tell you the truth...all of it. I truly loved every place we visited. Kirtland is definitely a place I would love to go visit again. Especially in the fall. Kirtland is a quiet quaint little town. It is only about 22 miles east of Cleveland. Kirtland is very significant in church history. Most of the sections in the D&C were revealed to Joseph while in Kirtland. We started off our visit watching a video in the LDS visitor's center in historic kirtland. The short video was told by Elizabeth Ann Whitney, wife of Newel K. Whitney who owned the store house in Kirtland. After the video, we were given a tour of a couple of buildings around historic kirtland. We started off with the replica of the Whitney home. It was interesting to see how wealthy they were for that time period. They were a very successful business family. Next we visited the Whitney Storehouse. The Whitney's and their storehouse played an important part in the church's history. Newel was the first Bishop of Kirtland. His storehouse was the very first Bishop's storehouse. He sacrificed a lot for the church. His storehouse was the beginning of the church's welfare system.
Joseph and Emma lived above the storehouse for a while during their time in Kirtland. Their son Joseph III was actually born in the storehouse. Another reason for it's significance is that sections of the D&C were revealed to Joseph while staying in the storehouse. He conducted a lot of church business in the store as well. Including holding classes for the School of the Prophets. Joseph also had a vision of the Savior there. The spirit was very strong there and I knew that it was a very special place.
Next stop on our tour was a Replica of the old Saw Mill. It was interesting to see how they did all their woodworking back then. We also toured the replica of the Whitney's Ashery. When we got there I had no idea what an ashery even was. People would bring their ashes there and they would heat it until it turn into big rocks (they looked exactly like lava rocks). People would then buy the rocks and make gun powder out of them. It was another successful business for the Whitney's.
Next we went to the visitor's center at the Kirtland Temple. The temple is owned by the Community of Christ, which is the church that was know as the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints which was started by Joseph Smith III. We watched a short film on the Kirtland Temple. It was interesting to see the differences in the two videos that we watched. The one that the lds church made was very spiritual, and the video by the Community of Christ was very cold in a way. It's hard to explain. The videos told the same story, but the vibes were very different. After watching the video, we were given a tour of the temple. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside which I was bummed about. It was a very beautiful building. Very different though. It was neat to see that a lot of the building were parts of the orignial structure. It was amazing to me that they made this beautiful building with practically their hands. They didn't have the luxury of technology that we have today. I really admire all the hard work the saints did for the church back then.
Our last stop was at the Isaac Morley Farm. Joseph and Emma also lived with the Morley's while staying in Kirtland. Isaac Morley owned 300 acres. Shortly after Joseph arrived in Kirtland, they built a small house where Joseph worked on a translation of the Bible and where he received many revelations. Emma gave birth to twins on the Morley Farm, which died shortly after birth. The Smith's stayed with the Morley's until 1831, when Joseph asked Isaac to sell his entire farm so he could buy land in Missouri.

We're Home!!!

We're home! Did you miss us? Probably not. Most of you probably didn't even know we were gone. But we are back and boy does it feel good to be home! We had a perfect flight home after a little fiasco while boarding our connecting flight. If any of you want to hear the details let me know. We had so much fun on our trip though! I thought for sure we would want to come home after being gone a week, but we didn't. Our 12 day trip flew by! The boys were so well behaved that it made our trip pretty much stress free. But now it is back to reality. I have loads and loads of laundry to do, groceries to buy, and bills to pay. I think everybody deserves a week after returning from a vacation to recover from vacation. But I am excited to get the boys back on a regular sleep and nap schedule. They did pretty good last night, let's hope it stays that way!

Now onto our trip...I have lots of pictures to post, but I have to go through 600+ pictures, so I will be blogging our trip for probably a couple of weeks. I hope none of you get bored. If so, I guess don't check up on us for awhile. I decided to put our trips into some categories, that way you aren't bombarded with a million pictures. I also decided to do slide shows so that my posts aren't 5 miles long. I wanted to do my pictures in order, but some of them are on my Dad's laptop and he is out of town for a couple of days. I decided to start with one of my favorite places that we visited...Niagara Falls. I already told you about our little trip there, so here is my slide show. Most of the pictures look very similar, but I had a hard time deciding on which ones to post. So...I pretty much posted most of them. I hope you enjoy!

We made it!

Well...we actually made it to New York. We left on wednesday afternoon and finally landed in Rochester, NY around 9:30 pm EST, after catching a connecting flight in Cincinatti. I think I was dreading the plane ride the most with the boys. Wes hadn't been on a plane for over a year, and this was Beckett's first time. They did FANTASTIC! I was so SHOCKED! Wesley just loves airplanes and he thought it was the coolest thing to be flying in one. He got a little restless during the middle of our long flight, but the super bumpy landing hyped him up again. I thought for sure he was going to lose it on our short flight from Ohio to NY, especially since it was a tiny plane. But I was proved wrong again! Beckett on the other hand was a dream flyer. Not a peep out of him. He was all laughs, giggles, and snores the whole time. We couldn't have asked for anything better.
Thursday morning all the adults (except Lil' Brady) attended an endowment session in the Palmyra Temple. It is a smaller temple, but definitely beautiful! It overlooks the Sacred Grove. My favorite part on the outside of the temple was the stained glass windows. They had gorgeous trees on them. The spirit was so strong there and it was a great way to start off our trip. After leaving the temple, we went and picked up all the kids and went back to Palmyra. We visited the Smith Family Farm and the Sacred Grove. It was absolutely amazing how strong the spirit was in these sacred places. To think that Heavenly Father and the Savior actually walked the paths that we were walking, and that the Angel Moroni appeared to Joseph many times in the farm house we were standing in. Nothing can describe how I felt while we were there. It definitely solidified my testimony of the first vision. Not to mention that this part of the country is SO beautiful! We came at the perfect time of year as all the leaves are changing.
Yesterday we took a road trip to spend the day at Niagara Falls. What a fun and beautiful day we had! We spent the whole day in Niagara Falls, Canada. The falls were so breath taking. I have never seen anything like them. We experienced pretty much all that you can while there. We took a boat ride on The Maid of the Mist that took you as close as you could get to the falls. We went on a journey behind the falls to see and feel how powerful the falls are. We watched an imax movie on myths and magic of the falls. It reinacted various stunts that have been performed over the falls, like tightrope walkers, people going down in barrels, trying to make it through the whirlpool rapids, and there was also a reinactment of a 7 year old boy who went over the falls after a boating accident on the Niagara river. It is amazing he survived. At sunset we went to the top of the Skylon Tower to look at the falls from above. What an amazing view! It was a long and tiring day, but definitely worth it! We had so much fun!
We still have 9 more days to go, but if we went home today this trip would have been so worth it. Sorry that I didn't post any more pictures. I need to go through them all and find my favorites. So stayed tuned for lots and lots of pictures!

Going Pro at the age of 2!

Recently, Wesley has been obsessed with golf. He honestly can't get enough. A couple of months ago we were at my parents unloading the car after a trip to Bear Lake, and my Dad made the huge mistake of allowing Wes to play with one of his golf clubs. So, every time we went over to my parents, he had to play with one of "Papa's toys." He was very particular in which golf club he wanted to play with. He started out with the putter, moved up to a wedge, and now he will only play with the biggest driver my Dad has. He became so obsessed that my Dad so kindly gave Wesley one of his old drivers to take home. And Rob and I were so thrilled with my Dad that day. That is just what we wanted...our tornado 2 yr old to have a driver all to himself. The whole way home Rob explained to Wesley that Papa's club had to stay outside at all times. Wesley has gotten pretty good at hitting the ball. We have been completely impressed with how coordinated he is with all sports. He can even hit a ball with a baseball bat when we throw it to him. But golf seems to be his favorite. I'm sure he makes both of his Grandpas proud. We took this video of Wes a couple of weeks ago. He is one funny kid.


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books