Church History Tours and Fire Flies

 Monday morning we woke up and headed out to tour some church history sites. The weather had cooled down quite a bit and it was a beautiful day. We started off at Joseph Smith’s farm. We saw the house where he grew up, the house he lived in with Emma, the barn and barrel (Cooper) shed, the fields and the orchard. It was neat to see what a house looked like so long ago and try to picture ourselves living during that time. The best part was walking around the Sacred Grove. I tried to have a quiet moment to pray but everyone was being pretty distracting…

From there, we visited the Hill Cumorah where Joseph found the golden plates. We took a little hike up the hill through the trees and and saw not one but 2 snakes! That gave us quite the thrill! We ended our afternoon at the Grandin Press. It was super cool learning about book making and how the first Book of Mormon was printed. Jack was totally in his element and I could picture him with his own printing company back in the day. Jack Peterson’s Printing press. He would have been the most popular guy in town with all the news and all the latest gossip. I’m sure he would write his own stories and illustrate them. He would sell games and pictures, too. I’m glad we were able to visit the Grandin Press. All of the missionaries did such a good job of explaining how everything worked and the history behind it all. 

We got Mike’s Pizza for lunch and then stopped at the store for more ice cream and a couple things for dinner. We went back to the house for a couple hours of relaxing and Tanner grilled some chicken and we used the left over Olive Garden Alfredo sauce to make some yummy pasta. And of course, ice cream. 

Then we hopped in the car for one last adventure. And boy was it amazing!!!! We drove back to Palmyra to the stake center and saw millions of fire flies! We even caught a bunch in a jar. What a magical night! I’ve been wanting to find fireflies with the kids for years and this was absolutely perfect. They were so happy! It was really such a wonderful way to cap our time in upstate New York.