Trip to Palmyra

Over labor day weekend we were able to meet up with my brother Steve, his wife Jess and their cute baby Clara in Palmyra, NY.  Steve and Jess live in Boston, so Palmyra was about 5 hours for them and 7 for us and a place that I've been wanting to visit for a while.  It was so neat to visit all the church history sites and so fun to be with Steve and Jess (who we hadn't seen for more than a year and a half!)  

We started out at the Joseph Smith Sr. home (John was wearing a brace on his arm because a few days earlier he had sliced his wrist while chopping some wood with a hatchet.  Not too bad of a cut, Pete patched it up with some butterfly bandages and made a little sprint to keep it from opening up).

I had to take to take pictures of these homes, not only because of their meaning, but because of my growing obsession with life in the early 1800's.  Sometimes I long to live in a time without technology, media, TV, phones and other things that can be such a distraction.  Living off of the land, squeezing a growing family into a small log cabin, huddling around the fireplace in the winter for warmth, and not having a whole lot of "things" sounds challenging yet wonderful.

In the sacred Grove

Sweet little Clara

Atop the Hill Cumorah

The cousins!

The brothers

The printing press where the Book of Mormon was first published

Home of David Whitmer, where the church was first organized

We decided to stop and see Niagra Falls on our way home.

We also stopped at Kirtland, which was literally right off the freeway on our way home, and took a tour of the N.K. Whitney store and a few other homes/buildings.  It was so fun to be able to see all these places where the church was just beginning and to think of the lives of these early Saints.  It made me even more grateful for their sacrifice and faith to endure everything they went through.  How lucky we are to have the gospel!