Vacation Part 3

Finally. And it's a long one. Sorry.

Saturday we went to Watkin's Glen. It's a state park. It was really cool and we had lots of fun there. This picture is of the canyon that we walked through.

There were tons of stairs we had to climb. They were made of rock with a little rock wall all along the way. It was so pretty.

We are standing up at the top by the waterfall. The trail went behind the water. Corgin loved that.


This picture is not near as cool as the real thing. Watkin's Glen was beautiful.


Corgin loved getting down and walking and playing with rocks and plants.

This pic shows how much plant life grows on the rocks. I thought it was neat.

Our little family with Grandpa and Grandma Hamblin.

Before going to Watkin's Glen, we attended a session at the Palmyra Temple. The temple has three windows that were originally all stained glass. President Hinckley decided that the middle one needed to be clear, so they changed it. Now the middle window is clear and it looks over to the Sacred Grove.

We took these pictures Sunday. Luckily there was a meeting and the gates were open so we could come get pics while in our Sunday best.

After church we went to the Hill Cumorah Visitor's Center. The Christus is visible though windows and can be seen from the road.

I love this picture of Corgin. He's feeling the hole is Christ's foot while looking up at him. It is one of Clint and I's favorites pics from our vacation.

Before we took off for home on Monday, we went to the Grandin Building. This is where the Book of Mormon was printed for the first time. These pictures depict what it would have looked like when first entering the building in the time of Joseph Smith.

This picture is on the second floor where the printing took place.

This is the machine that E. B. Grandin had purchased and made it possible for 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon to be printed back then. Even with this machine it was a big task to print that many books. In the big cities it would take about 17 months to do this job. Grandin accomplished it in 7 months, with the first book off the press 11 days before the church was officially organized.

The book in the case next to us is a first edition Book of Mormon.

These next pictures are all of Corgin. He kept us laughing a lot of the time. He's a funny little guy.

This is where he slept at night. The couch was a hide a bed where Clint and I slept. I thought he might be spoiled by sleeping so close to us here that when we came back home he might not sleep in his own bedroom. Luckily, he was very happy to see his bed. As soon as he saw it he said "night, night" and he's good as before.

This is Corgin in Grandma's chair. Whenever she left the room he thought it was his job to steal her chair. He'd climb up in it and rock. One night he was all wound up, so he was climbing up in the chair then climbing down the side, running around and then climbing up into the chair again.

When we were at Watkin's Glen Corgin found some leaves. He used them to tickle his face. He had so much fun doing this.

Finally a picture where he would look at the camera. He used to always give us the cheesiest grin when we had the camera out. Now he tries to avoid looking or smiling at all costs. The little stinker!

While we were at the Hill Cumorah Visitor's Center we watched the Joseph Smith movie. Since we had our connections there, we had the theater room to ourselves so we just let Corgin run around and have fun. Well, he somehow managed to get himself into a pickle. We laughed pretty hard, took some pictures, then decided we should rescue him. He's a silly boy.

Corgin loved playing out in Grandpa and Grandma's yard. The grass was so green there and the weather was pretty nice during our whole stay. All around, it made for a great vacation!

Thanks Grandpa and Grandma.

Vacation Part 2

Today we took a tour of the Smith farm. This is the Smith log house.

Clint and Corgin are enjoying the parlor of the Smith log house.

This is the bedroom where Joseph and his five brothers slept, and the same room where the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph three times in one night. We hadn't thought about the other boys being in the room when this happened, but they probably were there.

From the Smith Farm, the Palmyra temple is just across the street. President Hinckley had them leave one of the windows in the temple clear so that the Sacred Grove could be seen from inside it. We are going there tomorrow.

This is the framed home on the Smith Farm. Alvin, Joseph's older brother, started building it for the family, but died before it was finished. The house is 85% of the original. It is quite nice inside.

This is the kitchen in the framed home. It even had a pantry.

This is the fireplace in the parlor of the framed house. Joseph Smith had to hide the gold plates under the bricks here. There were a few other places where he had to keep them hidden from the mobs that came looking for them.

This is the Cooper Shop. A cooper is one who makes barrels, and this is where the Smiths were able to do that.

Here is a barrel in the Cooper shop. When the Smith's left Joseph and Emma hid the plates in the bottom of a barrel of beans.One time Joseph had to hide the gold plates in the floorboards of the Cooper shop.

Joseph had hidden the plates in the floorboards and then was warned that he needed to move them. He moved them to the rafters of the Cooper shop. The mob came with a diviner who claimed to know where the plates were. The mob went to the Cooper shop and started tearing up the floorboards. They tore the whole place apart, but never looked up where the plates were hiding.

We also saw the threshing barn. I didn't want to bore you all with too many pictures so I didn't post any.

Here is another picture of Corgin in the Sacred Grove. We spent some time walking in it after the tour of the Smith Farm.

This is the Hill Cumorah. The monument is up on the left with the gold angel Moroni. Tess told us that we needed to hike up it to appreciate it, so we hiked down. It's steeper than it looks!

Here we are at the top by the monument. Corgin was being a little pill, so he sat down and played in the rocks for the picture. He loved being outside though.

This is by the big monument. Each side had a different picture of something that happened that pertained to the gold plates. The one you can see is of the angel Moroni showing the plates to the three witnesses.

This is the giant Book of Mormon by the entry to the Hill Cumorah visitor center. We thought it was pretty cool.

Vacation Part 1

We are here in Palmyra enjoying our vacation. We have already seen quite a bit, so I wanted to share some pictures. We started with the flight. With Corgin, that was in and of itself an adventure.

Here is Corgin's first airplane ride.


This is how we got around the airports with our little guy. Sorry the pic is a little blurry.


The travel took us almost all day Tuesday. So yesterday was when the fun started. The first place that we visited was the sacred grove, we just took a little walk and we will get the tour later.



Then Grandpa and Grandma took us to Seneca Lake to the girls camp there. It was pretty nice! The church even owns lake front property and part of a creek. We got around by golf cart and Corgin had lots of fun helping his dad drive. I didn't get any pictures of the cabins or the nice shelter with a kitchen (spoiled New York girls!). It was prettycool. Here are the pics of that.





This is where the fourth year girls get to camp. They actually camp in tents and not in the cabins like the others. Though, they have people that bring them their food from the kitchen. Like I said, SPOILED!


Once we were done there, Grandpa and Grandma took us over to Sauders. It's a mennonite store with all sorts of things. We enjoyed looking around and we even bought us some peach butter and banana strawberry jam. We can't wait to try them once we get home. By then, it was time for Grandpa and Grandma to go to work. They had to go to the Whitmer Farm, so off we went. Grandpa gave us our own private tour and told us some really good stories. Here are some pictures of us outside the farmhouse where the first meeting of the church was held.


Inside the house.


The room where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdry worked on the translation of some of the Book of Mormon. This is inside the Whitmer farmhouse.


We did all that yesterday. Today we took a little trip up to Niagra Falls. Here's a pic, that does no justice, of the falls. The far ones are the horseshoe falls where we went on the Maid of the Mist.


The Maid of the Mist was quite an experience. Grandpa and Grandma had done it with Jake and Tess when they came to visit. They told us that they didn't get very wet that time. Well that wasn't the case today. The mist was more like rain drops and when we got done our shoes and bottom of our pants were soaked. Corgin loved it.




After we saw Niagra Falls, Grandpa and Grandma took us out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. Thanks! It was super good and lots of fun. We'll keep you posted on more of our trip later.