The Garden now!

The garden is amazing. Both the flowers and the vegetables. Things really grow fast here...must be ALL THE RAIN.
We have had a lot of it :)...already eaten lots of peas, beans, and even some beet greens.

These lilys come up every year! BEAUTIFUL!

Look at the tomatoes on this ONE plant!

An overview of the whole garden...not very big, but very productive.

The garden is GROWING!

This is my garden on April 27th

Here it is on June 2nd!

And a little closer look. The little plants in the dark dirt is basil that I just planted

a lily that came up from last year!

Look at the size of those peas....about 3ft. high and the pods are almost ready...yum!

Geode Hunting

Wednesday afternoon we went with 12 other couples geode hunting in Missouri. This is a prime area to find them and several of the missionaries have already found some beautiful ones. Elder Brady who is an archeologist arranged for this activity and it was really fun. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and in a very pretty area. However, we had had one of our big rain storms the day and night before and even that morning so it was very, very muddy! We all found a few geodes, some of them good sized. We may try to go again once more before we leave here.

On the path to the area to dig....in the mud!

setting up the machine that breaks them open. You really can't tell if they are going to be hollow or not until you break them

Mike, our guide breaking onr of the "finds". By the way, the guy in the background in the shorts IS NOT one of our missionaries :) He is one of Mike's friends and owns this area where we found our geodes. We actually had to pay him for our "finds".

Brother and Sister Bench with their best geode.

Brother and Sister Deacon finding a big one in the mud.

And us with a couple of little ones.

Stopped at  The Sonic in Keokuk afterwards for a quick dinner.  We don't look much like missionaries, do we?

Geodes

Some of the Geodes we found on Wednesday. They really are pretty and sparkly in the sun.

I put the orange here to let you see the size of them.

First Night of SUNSET BY THE MISSISSIPPI!

Friday was the first night of Sunset by the Mississippi for the season and it was Great!!
It was a beautiful night and we had front row seats.

The New Young Performing Missionaries...there are 20 of them and they are super-talented! It was so fun to watch them.

The Site missionaries performing a band number.

The fiddle number by the YPM's

The finale. They were singing "Come, Come Ye Saints" to harmonica accompaniment. It was very touching.

The Guymans doing their "Chicken Dance" at Sunset. Can you see the chicken "dancing" between them when they stand up? This is only part of the song, but it was so cute, I wanted to share. (Be sure to turn off my play list at the bottom of my blog before you play these videos so you can hear them)

After the Sunset show, we had an 1 & 1/2 hour performance of the Hughes Brothers from Branson. It is actually their entire family that perform and they were so good. The show is comprised of 5 brothers, their wives and about 24 children. I wish I had gotten a picture of all of them when they came out on stage at the end of the show...it made me miss all of my family This is a short clip of one of the brother's songs, and also one of 4 of the grandson's. I only got the end of that song, but it was so darling. The title was, "Momma, don't let your Babies grow up to be Cowboys" :) They also did a fireside on Sunday night, with religious songs and talks and another show on Monday night. We attended them all! What wonderful entertainment we have here in Nauvoo, and it is all FREE! What a blessing it is to be here.

Touring the Joseph Smith's sites

Monday, our p-day group toured the Joseph Smith sites owned
by the Community of Christ. Lock MacKay was our private guide and gave us an amazing 3 hour tour. He is the director here for his church.

We could not take pictures in any of the homes except the Nauvoo House which is usually not on the tour. It is used now for youth groups and families to rent.

The Mursets, a new missionary couple outside the north side of the Nauvoo House. This was to be a 5 story building, and about the size of the Temple!! 

In the dining area of the Nauvoo House

Emma's bedroom. This is where she died in 1879.  This window looks out over the Mississippi.

 Walking to the Homestead.

Our P-day group by the graveside of Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum.

A Bicycle Ride

Decided to take a long bicycle ride the other day on the bike the Eickbushes gave me. I rode north of old Nauvoo along the river road clear to the end and back. I was mighty tired by the time I finally got home and my legs hurt the next day, but it was fun and a beautiful ride. You see a lot more of the world when you are on a bike as opposed to just being in a car.

The sky was so beautiful...the sun was coming through the clouds and making rays of sunlight

Brother and Sister Tufuaku's round house. They are building it themselves. I told you about them. They both work in the Temple. He is Tongan, and is in remission from cancer. She makes and plays harps and other musical instruments, and they both sing. They raised 14 children!   Here is her blog if you want to read about them and their amazing house.  http://irenetukuafu.blogspot.com/  

Tomasi and Irene Tufuaku

A beautiful lake front home that I passed by.

Plowing up the corn field to get ready to plant again...probably soybeans this year, since they rotate those two crops a lot.

These beautiful flowers were just growing by the roadside!

By the time, I got back the sun was close to going down.  It was a wonderful afternoon.

The Goslings are growing!

It is so fun to watch the little goslings all around Nauvoo.  They were just hatched a few weeks ago.  These first two pictures were taken the end of April, just when we return and they were small and yellow and fluffy.  The mom and dad goose stay right with them until they are full grown and they follow in a line with the mom in front and the dad behind.  They are very protective, so you don't want to get too close. 

These two pictures were taken on May 24th, and you can see how much the goslings have grown!  They are now brown and about 3x the size they were a few weeks ago.

These two pictures were taken last night, May 27th on Waters street by the river.  I couldn't believe how many babies there were!!  That mom and dad must have "adopted" some ...or kidnapped some :)  Can you imagine trying to take care of this many!  The parents were just keeping a watch while the babies were eating and eating....don't know quite what, but there are certainly a lot of bugs here for them to eat.