Day #23 Palmyra Temple

Eric took the older boys to do baptisms in the Palmyra temple this morning. Yesterday a sister missionary told us they have a room for the younger ones to watch a video while we waited. Anne was so excited to go in the temple she got dressed in her church clothes and wanted me to french-braid her hair around her head so it would be fancy. She's so sweet!
We walked all the grounds first (and had a mini photo session. ;) ) The girls have loved all the beautiful flowers at each of the church sites we've visited and always want their pictures taken with them.

Day #22 E. B. Grandin Press

The Grandin Printing Press was a very cool place to visit. The old building has been preserved as much as possible and the Sister missionaries gave us a tour of how the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon were printed, sewn, cut and bound. It took six months to complete the job, one by one! Amazing!
Bottom pic is one of the original 5,000 copies.

Day #22 Palmyra Temple and Hill Cumorah

We left the Sacred Grove and drove to the temple. It's tiny but beautiful! The stained-glass windows all look like a grove of trees- very pretty!
Around the corner is the Hill Cumorah and the Palmyra Visitors Center. We had lunch at the top of the hill in the grassy area.

Day #22 Sacred Grove

The top picture is of old-fashioned beehives on the Smith Farm! Very cool! ;)
Next, the pathway leading from the farm to the Sacred Grove.
We spent about an hour in the grove, just soaking up the special spirit there. It was so peaceful and serene!

Day #22 Palmyra, New York

We left Sharon yesterday afternoon and drove most of the evening through Vermont countryside. There isn't a freeway anyway near Sharon so it was slow going. We pulled into Palmyra after midnight and went to sleep in a parking lot.
We went to the Smith family farm first this morning and toured the log home where Joseph Smith lived when he received the First Vision. Very neat! The kids are sitting on a bench upstairs where Joseph and siblings slept and where he received the visits from Moroni during the night.
The bottom two pictures are taken in the home that Alvin, his brother, started but died while it was being finished. The Smiths finished it and lived in it for a time. Under the bricks in front of the fireplace was a hiding place of the plates. Also the bottom picture shows a room where Joseph's sisters slept. One night he felt prompted to hide the plates in their bed while they slept. In the middle of the night a mob broke into the home, searched everyone but didn't bother the girls while they slept.
We heard so many wonderful historical accounts in Palmyra!

Day #21 Church and Sharon, VT

We left the beach and went to church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a smallish ward and they were very friendly. The senior couple who spoke had just returned from serving a mission in Sacramento, CA. They have only been members for seven years. They did a great job. The teacher in Relief Society brought cookies and so did another lady. I teased them that I was coming back next week! ;)

After church we drove about two hours to Sharon, Vermont, the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It is tucked back in the small towns of Vermont. It is beautiful.
We heard the amazing story of how the granite pilar was commissioned to be made. It was made 38 1/2 feet high for the age he was when he was martyred. It was cut out of one solid, unblemished stone and it was completed in less than six months, just in time for the 100th birthday of the Prophet in 1905. The last six miles up to the birth site took three weeks to move the stone pilar by wagon. They used teams of oxen and horses and pull it up the hill. There was a muddy patch in the road and everyone asked the man in charge (can't remember his name) how he was going to get this heavy load through the mud. He answered he didn't know but he was going to go home and pray about it. That night the temperature dropped 35 degrees and in the morning the heavy load drove over the frozen mud without a problem. Very cool story I hadn't ever heard before.
We walked down the path through the woods to the home of Solomon Mack, Lucy Mack's father. He owned the property where Joseph Sr and Lucy Smith lived when Joseph was born. He was the only child of theirs to be born there in Sharon.
There was certainly a special spirit there at the site!

Day #20 York Beach

Today was so nice. We slept in a little, had blueberry muffins for breakfast and spent most of the day at the beach. It was nice to be able to relax on the beach and let the kids play. No driving, no city, no schedule. It felt like vacation. ;)
We had a seafood lunch on the beach with sandy fingers and all. The weather was a bit chilly but the kids didn't care, they still played on the beach and in the water and had a blast!

Day #19 York, Maine

We were on the road by 7am this morning, trying to get an early start on our day. We left NJ Harbor and headed toward Boston. It took us 2 hours to travel 25 miles out of the NYC area! And we were taking the outer freeways... not even the ones nearest NYC. And to add to it we had to pay a $34 toll to cross over the Washington bridge! One short bridge! Wow. Anyway we intended to get to Boston by noon and have the afternoon and evening to walk the Freedom Trail but it was close to 3pm when we got near to Boston-- and it had tons of traffic already. We looked online and several people suggested leaving RVs outside the city about 30 minutes and taking the metro into Boston because there's nowhere to park a car, let alone a huge RV. So sadly we decided it wasn't worth the hassle to spend 5-6 hours in Boston and we kept cruising up the coast to Maine. Boston will have to be its own trip sometime.
We arrived in York, Maine, set up camp, ate dinner and walked down to the beach. It was so beautiful! I was so glad to be out of the big city! The kids were glad to be out of the car and had fun playing in the sand. We left the older ones and took a walk with Ruby up to the lighthouse. It was just at sunset and so pretty! I missed the pink sky in this picture by seconds, literally. This is Nubble Lighthouse, built in the mid 1800's.

Day #18 Central Park

We stayed in Central Park til dusk. The kids were having a great time.
We watched an adult kickball game-- hilarious!! They started arguing about a play and the ref (yes there was a real ref!) came and broke up the argument.

It rained on us on our walk back to the subway station and a very nice couple gave us an extra umbrella, they said we needed it more than they did. The kids were surprised to see so much garbage piled up on the sidewalk.
Look who's become the biggest book worm!? We've had to fight him at times to put away the book and look out the window at the sights.

Day #18 NYC Temple

After the cemetery we went back to our parking lot campground, parked the RV and got on the subway and went uptown to the Manhattan Temple. Eric took the younger kids to Central Park ( block away!) while Caleb, Luke and I went into the temple. It was so nice to visit the temple in such a busy, crazy city. We as stood in the doorway of the temple you could look out into the busy street or into the lobby of the temple. I had the boys take notice of the difference in the two! Loud traffic, dirty streets vs. serenity, peace and beauty.

The bottom pic was taken by a New Yorker who wasn't too happy about being our photographer and wouldn't wait long enough for me to tell him what building we wanted in the background. ;) I guess he thought we wanted lotsa sidewalk. And this was the least blurry of the three he took. ;)

Day #18 NJ Cemetery

We visited a cemetery about an hour from NYC in New Jersey. Eric's fifth great grandparents are buried there along with many other great aunts and uncles. We hunted all over for his grandparents and couldn't find them, but found other family members that we didn't know about so it was good! There was a fire in the 1950's and some of the older records were burned so they didn't have an exact location for them. We had fun hiking all around the cemetery in the light rain. It was a very well-kept cemetery.

Day #17 pizza, pizza!

We were all hungry and it was getting late so we stopped for dinner at a little pizza shop that is probably half the size of my kitchen. It was yummy though! We ate it on benches out on the sidewalk and watched the craziness of New York pass by.

Every time we went in and out of the subway it was a scene! Getting all seven of us and the stroller through those turnstiles was a major ordeal. Half the time our metro cards didn't work, and we'd have to swipe them twice then we'd pass them back from kid to kid to go through. We definitely didn't look like locals! Haha (as if towing five kids around NY looks normal)