We headed straight out of Lubbock on a road trip with Whitney and the kids. Our first stop was in Oklahoma City for the night, we took it easy and let the kids swim in the pool while we hung out.
The next stop was Branson Missouri. We had our first dinner at Mel's Hard Luck Diner...the food was okay the Dessert was delicious and crazy big and the funnest part was the Singing waiters & waitresses!
We went from dinner to our first show, The Haygoods. It was fantastic!
The next day we checked out downtown Branson with a trolley ride. Then we had some dinner and headed to our last show at the Sight and Sound Theatre, David. Another incredible show!
The next day we headed on our longest stretch of the trip ...on to Nauvoo! We visited the visitors center to make a game plan then walked the trail of Hope. Somehow I got SO LUCKY and Mel was in Nauvoo with her Mom and Brantley at the exact.same.time (yay!) so we were able to meet up and catch up a bit. I got lucky and saw Mel again at the Jail as they were headed on the next leg of their tour --I finally caught a photo (and one of Brantley photo bombing) On our way back to Nauvoo we had to stop for some fun pictures by the corn, so much corn growing while we were there! Then we grabbed some dinner at a local burger joint and headed for the evening activities. On our way there we drove past some people walking and Loa yelled from the back, "Hey! That's the Christensens!" Sure enough, Andrea & Ryan and their kids. What are the odds we would run into someone from Grace, so crazy! It was fun to catch up, the girls were especially excited!
The next day we packed in all the things! Starting with joining the morning parade, did some dancing with the locals, hit up the family center, took a wagon ride and did baptisms at the temple. We then headed on to Carthage Jail.
So SO happy to see Mel!
With all the awesome tall corn, we couldn't help but stop for some photos!
Found a little bit of Grace in Nauvoo! So fun to run into Ryan, Andrea and their kids!
All the kids practicing their stilt skills.
And Linq playing some baseball!
The next day was our last day in Nauvoo, Loa wasn't feeling the best and opted out of the activities for the day. We took a different wagon ride and finished up activities at the Family Center.
We hit up the sunset performance (it ended up getting cancelled the night before because performers were having head exhaustion) Then we went on to the county fair activities and stayed for the Nauvoo Pageant. Found some random sisters to get some photos with, ha!
Wrapped up a great time in Nauvoo. The plan for Sunday was to hit church then head on to Katie and Ty Christoffersons. Loa still wasn't feeling great and by the next morning both Linq and Lytzi said they had sore throats and were just exhausted --I think all of the emotional exhaustion and physically going and going with no break and no taking time to be sad about leaving Lubbock was just catching up with everyone. So we got up and headed for Knoxville. I was SO SO sad to not go to Katie and Ty's because I was looking forward to it so much but we committed to make plans to see each other soon!
We didn't catch every state sign, but we caught Missouri, ha!
Between Nashville and Knoxville we hit one of the worst rainstorms I've ever been in, and it just kept coming and coming --we were driving with hazards and going so slow, it was nuts!
We had SUCH a fun time but were also just so happy to finally make it to Knoxville and see our new home, and I think LeGrand and Maggie were happy to have us! LeGrand was already at work for the night, but we got to see him the next day after his sleep :)
