Road trip to Iowa

We left last Wednesday night to go to Iowa, to see Austin graduate from law school! It was quite a trip. We drove until 1:30 Wednesday night and got to Muskagee, OK. Then we slept for a few hours and drove through small town Missouri until arrive in Nauvoo, IL. There was some very pretty scenery on that trip. I found a new fun vacation spot...Lake of the Ozarks (who knew such a trendy place existed in Missouri?) Nauvoo was just grogeous when we got there. We met Joe's dad and stepmom there. We walked around the visitors center and let the kids run around and play until it was time to settle down and go to bed.

At the statue garden near the visitors center.


The kids did pretty well on the trip. That was probably due to the fact that there was a DVD player we jimmy-rigged in the car.

Nate had a little more of a struggle. He was awake at all the times he normally slept and kept waking up after short naps....but overall he was a good baby.

And very cute in his purple princess glasses.

We stayed in the Hotel Nauvoo. It was this cute old house up on the hill near the temple in Nauvoo. The room we stayed in had 4 queen beds. The boys were excited because they each got their own bed, but Ellie was disappointed because she didn't get to share her bed.

Sometime in the night, a huge storm came in and it was pouring rain by the time we got up. We tried to see some of Nauvoo in the rain, but it was pretty difficult. We saw this in the post office:

We also went to the family living center where we got to make rope and learn how they made bread, candles and barrels.

We were also able to go to the brickyard....then it really started pouring so we went over to Iowa where we met the rest of Joe's family for Austin's graduation.