MaeLyn's Musings

The city of Nauvoo was built on the banks of the Mississippi River, and originally it was a swamp. The early pioneers became very sick with Malaria before the swamp was drained. There are still billions of mosquitoes in the area. I think most of them came to visit while we were in the town. Sunday night the mosquitoes had passed the word that there were members of our family who were very tasty. That night, Hannah wisely decided to sleep in the car. The rest of us weren't that smart. Tired from the many activities of the day, Steven and I retired to our sleeping bags ready to sleep. We closed our eyes, snuggled down and prepared to sleep, only to be brought to sudden wakefulness by a buzzing in our ears. We would swat away the offending bug, roll over, and once again attempt to sleep, but it was useless. Before we had achieved a truly restful state, the mosquitoes would come calling again. Occasionally we would hear John toss and turn, or Peter murmer, "Stop that!" th...

Saturday Aug 2, 2014 We awoke early this morning, dressed in Sunday clothes, and Steven, Hannah, John and I, along with Lindy's teens and a few other adults set off for the Nauvoo temple, where we participated in doing baptisms for the dead . The Nauvoo temple is beautiful, and I enjoyed being within it's walls. Our family went on a wagon ride later that morning, where we got to hear stories of the pioneers, of King Follett, and others who lived in Nauvoo, while looking at the beautiful countryside. Later, in the afternoon, we left the young children with the teens and the adults all went back to the temple. It was wonderful for so many of us to be in the temple together. I imagine that being in heaven will feel much the same way. Also that day, we visited the blacksmith shop, where we got to hear how wagons were made, and watch as a site missionary made a miniature horseshoe. That evening we watched another show in the cultural hall, entitled, "Rendezvous ...

Friday Aug 1, 2014 After breakfast, we piled in the car and set off to see the sites of old Nauvoo. We started at the Pioneer Pastimes area, where we played a lot of fun games. The kids walked on stilts, walked bears up ropes, and played all sorts of other games that pioneer children might have played.  After a while, we made our way to the theater, where we watched a play, called "Just Plain Anna Amanda". It was just as cute as I remembered it. After the play, the actors came out to talk with the audience members. Once again, Peter got to talk with Sister Romney, the missionary he had seen and talked with the evening before, and he even got his picture taken with her. After the play, we went back to our car and ate lunch. Then we went to the Family Living Center, and got to watch several demonstrations, including bread making, candle making, weaving, rope making, pottery, and coopering (barrel making). Later that afternoon we went to the Vis...

We arrived at Indian Creek Equestrian Campground a little before 8pm. It was still light, the rain which had fallen much of the afternoon had stopped, and after greeting my sister April, we got to work setting up the tent and starting a campfire. April's husband Dean showed up from a trip into town with gigantic marshmallows and a bunch of glow sticks, and as the sky darkened, the kids had a blast roasting marshmallows and playing with their glow sticks. April and the kids and I had fun singing and playing games as I was still kind of giddy from the exhaustion of my long day. Finally, we settled in for the night, and tried to get to sleep. Sleeping on a campout is always a bit hit-or-miss. Our brand new air mattress didn't seem to hold air quite as well as we would have liked. When I was packing, I had forgotten to grab our pillows. I was cold, but had to choose between using my jacket to keep me warm, or as a pillow. I did eventually fall asleep, only to be woken the next...

Josh's 5th grade class got to go to Calwood , an outdoor overnight experience a couple hours away from here. They left Wednesday morning and returned Thursday afternoon, so it was a fairly quick trip. He learned about plants and animals, went on hikes, and studied some of the effects of the flooding a few months ago in a nearby town.  It seems like he learned a lot and had a good experience there. I'm glad that he had the chance to go. Calwood Click on the link to see a few pictures they took there!

When Steven arrived home from work Friday afternoon, we loaded up the car and set off on our family vacation for the summer: an overnight campout at Boyd Lake . We arrived at our campsite, and quickly set up the tents and started on cooking hotdogs for dinner. Steven made a peach cobbler in the dutch oven for dessert. John helped with the dishes. Later on, we got caught in a brief thunder shower, but we gathered in the car to wait it out, and it soon passed over and we were able to take a walk.    Before heading for bed, Hannah played her harmonica and we practiced memorizing the periodic table. The next morning after breakfast, the kids washed the dishes, while Steven and I took down the tents and cleaned up the campsite.  We headed down to the lake, where we took a walk by the shore and played element frisbee. (When we tossed the frisbee, we said a number and the person who caught it had to say what element that number referred to.) After...

Hannah returned home from Beehive camp yesterday. Here is what she has to say about it: It was really cool. and stuff. ..Um we did archery and canoeing and horse back riding and we made a trail. yeah. The first day, we met at the church and hung out for about half an hour or so talking to people, putting our gear away and stuffages. The drive up was, like, two hours. When we arrived, it would have been, like, tenish and then we did something really cool, like, we had a hike for, like, five miles round trip to a waterfall. Then we, like, set up our tents, I think. When we arrived at the camp right after the hike, they split us into groups, and then we set up the tent and stuff. Yeah.  I was in the "faith" group. Other groups were "love, humble, divine, sweet and one other. There were five people in my group including the YCL (youth camp leader). Their names were Tortoise (with a hand motion - see movie), Girlie, Jaedyn, Alyssa, and me (Hannah). We had pulled orc sand...

John says that at 11:00 tonight, he will be    11 years    11 months    11 days    11 hours and    11 minutes old. Today he and Steven returned home from 11 year-old scout camp. While he was there, he ate two grasshoppers live! He learned a song called "Three Blind Jellyfishes". He learned about knife safety, did lashing, went on a hike, built a monkey bridge and had a lot of fun. At the camp, each of the patrols was named for a Book of Mormon prophet. John was in the "Samuel" patrol, as in Samuel the Lamanite. Their patrol yell was, "Repent!" They did a skit at the campfire where Samuel was attacked by the evil Nephite horde and the evil Nephite minions, first with rocks and arrows, then with spears, then with automatic weapons, then with phasers set to 'kill', but Samuel avoided them all and eventually all the wicked Nephites were "smoten" and fell down. The moral of the story is "Listen to the prophet." Last...

A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from my sister April. She and Heather were chatting on line and were thinking that they missed getting together since April moved away from Colorado, and so they wanted to pick a camping place halfway between their homes, and get together for a weekend. Over the next couple weeks, we found a campground roughly halfway between Colorado Springs and Green River, Wyoming, reservations were made, meals were planned, and we were excited to go. On Friday afternoon, I picked up the kids, had them change out of their school uniforms, hurriedly piled everything in the car (I forgot the camera...), picked up Hannah from school, filled up the tank with gas, and headed north. We arrived at Curt Gowdy State Park around 6pm. We spent a little while debating which camp site would be best, but finally settled on the group campsite at the top of hill that we had originally reserved. We set up the tents, ate pizza for dinner (there is a full fire ban so we coul...

We're back from our four day vacation to South Dakota. We did so much and had so much fun that it is going to be hard to limit what I write here to something that someone is going to want to read. But here goes: Wednesday June 2nd. --6:00AM -The house was locked up. The cats had food, water and litter boxes to last a few days, and the fish had a weekend feeder in his tank. We pulled away and began our adventure. --Noon or so, and the rest of the day - Arrived at Beaver Lake Campground just outside beautiful Custer, SD . This was a wonderfully fun campground. We slept in a tepee, played at the playground, went swimming and played on a water slide. Here was enough fun to last us the rest of the afternoon!   Here is our campsite. Our van was parked just to the left of the tepee, and the playground was a hop, skip and jump behind me when I took the picture. Here is Steven inside the tepee, lying on our queen size air mattress. There was plenty of space for the six of us... There ...