O Banou

For Labor Day weekend, we took the family down to Old Nauvoo. It was a seven-hour drive and it made us wonder if the pioneer children ever asked their parents, "Are we there yet?" Even with the portable DVD player, the girls kept thinking that surely we had crossed the entire continent instead of just Illinois. That is the down side to living in a small town: you rarely spend more than an hour in the car.

Our favorite discovery of the drive was finding a place called Beef-a-Roo. Isn't that the greatest name? The food is average, but the name is stellar. Beef-a-Rooooooooo!We got to stay in a home right in Old Nauvoo. The girls loved that our next-door neighbor was the boot shop. This was the view of the temple from our front porch. Anna loved saying "Old Nauvoo" at the end of all her sentences and Daisy tried, too, but it came out "O Banou."
"I want to have lunch now in Old Nauvoo."
"Can we make rope in Old Nauvoo?"
"I pick up a bug in O Banou."
Really, I hope her preschool teacher will be able to understand her.
Here are Lizzie and Anna trying to pull an empty handcart. At first, I thought that we could do the three-mile trek. We've had some recent success with hiking and I thought that the challenge would be good for us. Kelly convinced me that the 1 mile alternative was better for us. It turned out that, thanks to very little sleep the night before and some intense whining, the 200-yard trek was for us. It turns out that we would have made lousy pioneers.
Lucy was a good sport, even though every activity was too old for her. Check out those tiny arms; I am trying everything I can think of to get this child to EAT. She is just not interested.
The best part of Nauvoo is the senior missionaries. They are delightful and we had so many lovely experiences with them. On my way out of one house, I found a Sister Romney. I told her that my grandmother was a Romney and we started to compare notes. It turns out that we were related! Her husband was my Grammy's cousin. We had such a lovely chat and she even came over that night for two more hours of fun.
Now we have settled back into the routine of school, and it is a serious routine. But that's a post for another day...