Winter Quarters and Kanesville

My parents living in Iowa (they moved after I went to college, I grew up in Texas) has giving us the unique opportunity to visit a lot of church history sites. About two years ago, Hailey and I visited most of the sites and are glad that Nathan and Robert has joined us this time. Nathan has never seen these sites and is fascinated by church history and anything educational.

The first place we went to was Winter Quarters. It has a very nice visitor's center that goes through the history surrounding the area. The tour starts with the Nauvoo Temple and ends with the Salt Lake Temple.

We had a sister missionary with us the whole time and was very patient with the kids and pointed out different things that they could play with. Hailey enjoyed dressing up as a pioneer.

Robert, however, was ready to just run around and didn't want to stay with the group. He was able to spend a lot of time with Grampa and became good friends.

After the visitor's center we went across the street to the cemetery, which is right next to the Temple.
After we were done with Winter Quarters, we visited Kanesville which is renamed Council Bluffs. We were planning to see the pageant there at 1:00pm to only find out it really starts at 4:00pm. So, we stayed for a little bit to hear the story of the place from the missionaries there.

They talked a lot about the 500 men who were requested to join the US army and go to California. Due to the sacrifice that they made by leaving their families, many great things were able to come about. It sounded like they were the first people to make a trail from California to Utah which was over very rough train. Also this is the time period that "Come, Come Ye Saints" was written. Another significant thing that happened was that Brigham Young came back to this place to be sustained and ordained as the President of the Church. A Tabernacle was build specifically for that purpose.

Instead of staying for the pageant, we visited the Children's Museum in Omaha. We were all able to get in for free because of the passes mom and dad have.
This was a very open play place, which is what the kids needed after a long time in the car.

Robert and Gramma went shopping.

Hailey played in the garden.

Robert is magnetically attracted to the water.After we were done with the downstairs which had more kid size real world, we went upstairs to play with balls and contraption.

Robert loved trying to jump on this button.

After Gramma and Grampa showed Hailey how, she pulled herself up and down in this chair.

Robert loved this air blower and giggled everything the ball was there.

We had a great day.