City Beautiful

While I was making plans for my annual trip to Iowa City with the girls, I struck up a bargain with Brent. Instead of coming home on the weekend, I'd take the girls to Nauvoo and then attend my home town ward for church on Sunday if he would go through his boxes of crap. With no kids around to mess up his system, and oodles of time, he'd have no excuse NOT to go through it all, right?

Actually, making sure the girls have a connection with Nauvoo is kind of important to me. I went a lot as a kid and of course, Brent and I were married there. I have ancestors who lived, and some who died, there. Getting Brent to cull through his boxes was just a side benefit for me.

We started out in the Visitor's Center to find out what was happening and to grab some free tickets. There are very few sunstones from the original Nauvoo temple that survived intact. Here is one:

There's another one in a Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

I loved watching the girls with the Christus.

 Have I mentioned my dad has seen the original in Denmark? Makes it just a bit extra special to me.

We stopped in the Monument to Women Garden and the girls had fun recreating some of the statues like Woman and Her Talents:

My personal favorite is this one of Joyful Moment:

 I'm obsessed with how those pigtails are flying!

 We took in a few tours like Scovil's Bakery where the girls got a gingerbread girl. 

Brigitta was really intent on that little cookie! When the arm broke off, she'd just lick it and smoosh it back on. Then the head came off and she did the same thing. She tucked it just inside the bodice of her dress to protect it and a couple hours later, finally gave in and ate the darn thing. 

We went to a play called Just Plain Anna Amanda which the girls loved.

See the gingerbread girl on Brigitta's lap? Ha!

The girls learned how to make rope:

Lost of twisting in that process!

We went on a wagon ride where we discovered Ireland, like me, is also allergic to horses.

Afterwards, Liesel begged me to take this picture of her petting one of the horses. We went into the car and I just about scratched my eyes out. Ireland was a little miserable there for a while too.

At the blacksmith shop, each of the girls picked out a "prairie diamond" which is basically a nail pounded into a ring. 

Oh man, Gita was kind of obsessed with that thing too. She loves jewelry and was SO happy to have a ring on her finger at the end of the day!

All the things I've mentioned so far are things I visited when I was a kid. There's something new called Pioneer Pastimes where the girls could dress up and play. This was hands down their favorite part of our trip to Nauvoo. They loved the costumes:

Getting to play house:

Playing with pioneer era tools like this milkmaid's yoke:

On the drive home they talked about Pioneer Pastimes more than anything else we'd seen. We are definitely going to have to do that one again.

Before heading out of town, we stopped by the temple grounds.

We headed back to Iowa City pretty exhausted from a very full day. Brent told me that night he'd thrown away a huge trash bag of old papers. Win-win!