Honest Babe

Today I was able to have a Lincoln adventure with our fun friends, the Atkins. Laura is the Young Women president at church, and I am her first counselor. I am so glad that Greg and I have gotten to know their cute family! The other day their son Connor took an Abraham Lincoln test at school, and when asked what Lincoln's nickname was, he responded, "Honest Babe." :) After learning about Lincoln, Connor wanted to go see some of the Lincoln sites, so our first stop today was at Honest Babe's house. My friend John gave us a great tour of the home, and the kids earned a Junior Ranger badge by being so good during the tour.

We then went to see where Honest Babe is buried. Connor and Emma thought it was especially fun to rub the Lincoln statue's nose for good luck!




Here we are in the lobby of the Lincoln Tomb. Connor did a good job making sure that everyone was quiet while we walked through the burial chamber. And Emma and I matched in our pink coats! We had so much fun today, and I am really glad to be friends with the Atkins.

And here are a couple of random things: the other night I was up late working on the computer, and when I looked over at Greg's chair, Lily was sound asleep with her paw over her eyes. She looked so cute!















And at work last Wednesday I got to help put an original General John A. Logan Civil War frock coat out on display! It's always cool to touch something with that much historical significance. General Logan was from Murphysboro, IL, and was one of the Union generals during the Civil War. He was made the military governor of Vicksburg after the city was captured by the Union Army, and he later commanded the entire Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Atlanta. So he was a pretty important figure, and the museum is lucky to own a bunch of stuff that belonged to him. His wife donated a lot of his personal belongings to the state of Illinois back in the early 1900s. The jacket looks a little wrinkly, but it had been in a box for a long time . . . and we can't iron it :)

Adventures in Alton

This has been a FUN long President's Day weekend! Because of my work schedule, I usually never even get two days off in a row (including weekends), but thanks to the President's Day holiday, I got a three-day weekend. Yesterday I had a very fun day visiting Tuscola, Illinois with my good friend Laura Atkins. We had lunch at the best restaurant in the whole world: Flesor's Candy Kitchen. And we of course ate the most delicious thing on their menu: the Reuben! It was as tasty as ever. Then we had a fun afternoon visiting the outlet mall. It was a great day!

Today Greg had to attend a class in Alton, Illinois (close to St. Louis), so I decided to tag along and go exploring. I have always wanted to visit Alton and see the Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument at the Alton Cemetery, so that was my first stop after dropping Greg off. Mom, Dad, and I first learned about Elijah Lovejoy when we were visiting St. Charles, Missouri in 2004. Lovejoy's wife's family lived in St. Charles, and we saw a plaque about him when we were walking downtown one day. He was an abolitionist newspaper editor who was killed by an angry mob in Alton in 1837--just seven years before Joseph Smith was killed by an angry mob in Carthage (Illinois was a rough place if you had ideas that went against society's norm!).

I wrote a paper about Elijah Lovejoy in college and was interested to find many similarities between his and Joseph Smith's families. (I realized that a lot of my cool college paper ideas came from things I first learned about on trips with Mom and Dad--Elijah Lovejoy, Sterling Price, etc.) Lovejoy's murder inspired people like John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to stand up against slavery. Lincoln even went so far as to say, "Lovejoy's tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world." So it was really cool to visit the Lovejoy monument today!

Elijah Lovejoy is buried at the Alton Cemetery, but when I realized that his grave was not at the monument, I wasn't sure how I would find it. But after driving around the cemetery for a few minutes, I only saw one plot with a fence around it--and sure enough, it was his. When I got back into the car after visiting his grave, I typed my next destination into the GPS, but then the GPS just turned off for no reason. This happened several times, and I thought it must be Elijah Lovejoy trying to contact me from beyond the grave . . . until it happened again later in the day :)

My next stop was the Lincoln-Douglas Debate site. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had seven debates throughout Illinois when they were both campaigning for the senate in 1858, and today there is a statue on the site of the debate in Alton. The Stephen Douglas statue looks super mean and scary!

Stop #3 was the site of a Confederate prison during the Civil War. Unfortunately there is only a small portion of the prison left, and it stands in the middle of a parking lot across the street from a grainery, but at least there's a remnant of the prison. 11,764 Confederate soldiers were imprisoned here during the war, and 1,534 of them died from sickness and exposure to weather--yikes!

Next I visited the National Great Rivers Museum, located next to this lock, the Melvin Price Lock and Dam, on the Mississippi River. I arrived at the museum just in time to join a tour of the lock. It was SO COOL!


We went up to the top of the lock, and it was REALLY windy. Being up so high, we had a nice view of Alton and the very wide Mississippi River.






We got to watch a barge come through the lock, which was really neat to see. Here is the barge first entering the lock. It took about 20 minutes for the barge to get completely inside, and then it took about 10 minutes for them to fill the lock with water.





This was the point at which the water inside the lock reached the same depth as the water level outside the lock, so they could lower the gate . . .








. . . and the barge could be on its way. It was really cool to see the entire process! I remember that one time in Clarksville, Missouri, Mom, Dad, and I watched a boat go through a lock, so it was neat to see it up close again today. I am totally fascinated by the Mississippi River!





The museum was also really cool. My favorite part was their fish tank full of different types of fish that live in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. This guy with the long nose was really funny. He was very intrigued by my camera and kept wanting me to take pictures of him (at least I think that's what he wanted). After three hours of non-stop adventures, it was time to go pick Greg up. What a fun day I had exploring Alton!

Silly Lily

Lily has been doing some funny stuff lately, and luckily I've had my phone with me so I can capture her silliness.


She is very intrigued by the fact that during the winter I work out in the living room using the Nintendo Wii. Here she is watching "me" on the TV. She seriously sat there watching the TV for about five minutes :)






And here she is in her "window seat."









The other day I bought a little roll of curly ribbon, and it took her about five minutes to find where I had hidden it! We don't buy her cat toys anymore because her favorite things to play with are shoelaces, ribbon, boxes, and crumpled up paper. She is such a silly kitty!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Our Valentine's Day celebrations began on Saturday when Greg and I went out to Olive Garden for dinner. We had hoped to avoid the Valentine's rush by going out before it was actually Valentine's Day, but it was still pretty busy there. It was also very delicious! Then on Sunday after church we made white chocolate cherry Valentine's cookies (Grandma F.T.'s pudding cookie recipe--the best cookie recipe in the world) and took them to our friends the Atkins. The Atkins then invited us over for Family Home Evening last night, which was SO MUCH fun. Their kids are really cute, and we had a nice lesson about friendship, followed by a fun activity of making valentines. It also snowed yesterday, which was kind of exciting since we've been a little short on snow this year (but I'm not going to complain about that). Today Greg and I both had the day off, so we slept in, had lunch at Smashburger (their sweet potato fries are divine), and then tonight we are going to watch the Valentine's Day episode of NCIS while eating our Papa Murphy's "Heartbaker" (heart-shaped) pizza. Sounds like the perfect Valentine's Day to me!

Super Weekend

This has been a great weekend; in fact it has been SUPER! It all began on Thursday when Greg and I celebrated his birthday with presents and eating out, since we were going to be otherwise occupied on Saturday, his real birthday. So Thursday was a fun day, and then on Saturday we got up bright and early and headed to Nauvoo where I gave a presentation about the history of tourism in Nauvoo at the Untold Nauvoo Stories Symposium.

As you can see, it was kind of a gray, misty, rainy, foggy day. It was really neat to be in Nauvoo on February 4, since it was February 4, 1846, when the pioneers left Nauvoo on their exodus to the Utah. February 4, 2012 was much warmer than it was in 1846 when the pioneers crossed the FROZEN Mississippi River! They wouldn't have made it very far on the ice yesterday, since there was no ice. I enjoyed reflecting back on a day when the river was nearly frozen over, February 4, 2003, when I was in Nauvoo for the semester with BYU Travel Study. That morning we attended a special ceremony at the river commemorating the pioneers' exodus from the city. I had on my warm hat, my down coat, and numerous layers of clothes, but I was still SO COLD. I couldn't imagine having to endure those kinds of temperatures, not knowing when you would ever be warm again.

So yesterday we reflected on the sacrifices of our pioneer ancestors and thought about that momentous day in 1846 when the Saints had to leave their beautiful city that they had worked so hard to build. As always, the temple looked beautiful from Parley Street, especially with all of the mist in the air. This was the last view the pioneers had of the temple before they crossed the river. One of my favorite quotes from that day is by Wilford Woodruff who said, "I looked upon the Temple and City of Nauvoo as I retired from it and felt to ask the Lord to preserve it as a monument of the sacrifice of His saints."

The river looked really pretty with the fog hanging over it. The fog was so dense to our south that you couldn't see very far down the river. Even though the frozen river in 1846 meant that the temperatures were unbearably cold, at least the ice allowed the pioneers to cross the river. I think it would have been pretty hard to get everyone across the river, with all of the covered wagons, on a day like yesterday . . . and then they would have had a big mud problem as well. But I just can't imagine how cold they must have been. I am grateful for their courage!

Greg and I spotted a beautiful bald eagle out in the middle of the river. He was SO PRETTY!!






After watching us watch him for a few minutes, he took off, flew down river a bit . . .






. . . and landed back at his nest! If you look down by his feet, you can see Mom Bald Eagle sitting on the eggs. It was so cool to watch them! But I think they were both glad when we left. After our eagle watching, we went to the symposium, which went well. It was especially fun because our friends the Andreasens were there--Bishop Andreasen was giving a presentation as well. After my presentation about the history of Nauvoo's tourism industry, a lady in the back of the room raised her hand. She said, "A few of us who work at local businesses here have a joke that goes like this: Mormons bring two things with them when they come to Nauvoo--ten dollar bills and the ten commandments. And they won't break either one of them!" Ha. That made everyone laugh :-)

The temple looked really pretty with the lights on that evening! Greg and I had a wonderful day there.









Then today after church we continued the celebrations with our Super Bowl party! Our tasty snacks included Thai shrimp spring rolls, jalapeno poppers, and two varieties of lil smokie pigs in a blanket. Everything was really delicious. We have many leftovers.


We also had Greg's birthday/Super Bowl cake! It is a little tricky to make his cake of choice, German chocolate, look like a football, but we managed to do it. To top things off, the Super Bowl was very exciting. I think you could say that we have had a super weekend!