Thursday, July 1, 2010

I Hate Humidity

We just went on a fantabulous trip to Missouri and Nauvoo. It was really fun, after the 20 hour drive of course. We got to St. Louis at about 1AM on Thursday. We slept for a few hours and then got all dressed up (some of us more than others) to go into the city and see Wicked. The best musical, definitely on the top of my list with Les Mis and Phantom. I love this play. It was a fantastic performance too. Brandon, Michaelene, and Robert had not seen it before and I was excited for them to see it. They all loved it and I was perfectly happy to see it again. I thought that the guy who played the Wizard when I saw it in LA was better, but overall still really good.


Us Oustide the Fabulous Fox Theater


Oh BTW I hate humidity. I don't know how people stand to live there. Don't get me wrong, my skin loved it, but every time I would walk outside it was like walking into a wall of water. And my hair hated it. I didn't even try to do it the whole trip (as you can tell from my pics). Anyway back to my story, while in the city we stopped by the St. Louis Arch. Really big and cool. I wish we could have gone up to the top, but we didn't. But we did walk underneath the arch (not as cool) and see the Mississippi River for the first time (big river). The St. Louis Arch

Then we headed back out of the city to Robert's brother's house. After spending the evening getting to know Robert's brother and sister in law and their kids we went to sleep so that we could wake up and drive to Nauvoo on Friday. We got to Nauvoo which is about a 4 hour drive from St. Louis and went around to all the different shops and learned about the different houses that people from our history had lived in and left. We got to see Joseph, Emma and Hyrum's graves, which was actually really cool. It was too bad that they are on the Community of Christ Church's side. I think it was the only place that I could feel the spirit at all while we were on their side of Nauvoo. But we eventually made our way over to the LDS side and enjoyed ourselves; except for the fact that the temperature was around 109 degrees with 70% humidity (just shoot me). I did end up getting my Nauvoo brick though.
The Brick Place

But we ended up going to the shows that they put on when the sun goes down. They had the Young Ambassadors from BYU performing and they were really good. It was too bad that a storm started rolling in just as they started their Wicked medley. They started singing Defying Gravity and the wind was blowing her cape and the lightning was flashing behind her as she is doing the final part of the song that is so dramatic. The thunder is booming through the sound system and I'm thinking wow they have great effects. She's almost done and one of the leaders of the Nauvoo Mission comes out and stands right in front of her with a mic and she keeps going, until they suddenly stop the music while she is in the middle of singing and the poor thing just collapses because she's laughing so hard. I felt so bad that they stopped her. She had like two more lines. Lame! Anyway they stop the show and send everyone on their way because they have a severe storm warning in effect. And we are planning on camping, LOL right. Luckily Robert's parents were also staying in Nauvoo that night and they had a hotel room that they graciously let us stay on the floor of, so that we didn't get poured on. Now I will give that part of the country this...they have THE most incredible storms. Brandon and I sat outside and watched the lightning for awhile, we came in just before the downpour started. The storm went on strong for hours. In the morning it was its usual muggy self outside. So we went and did a sealing session at the Nauvoo Temple, which was really cool, we kind of felt like it was appropriate since before the saints left they did a bunch of sealings. We decided not to reenact the scene too fully, we omitted setting fire to the temple, we thought it was best to leave that part out.
Beautiful Nauvoo Temple

So we left Nauvoo and headed back to Missouri for the Cardinals game. Now I'm a sports fan, I enjoy basketball, football, I would even watch a soccer game, but baseball... not so much.

Busch Stadium, Home of the St. Louis Cardinals
(that's Robert's Dad and Brother in the Pic with us)
Everyone kept telling me "Oh its so different to go to a major league game." No its not. Nothing exciting happened for the first 5 innings. I was actually hoping that it would get rained out. So much for that. It cleared up just in time for the game to start, yeah. But the Cardinals ended up winning the game, they had 1 home run which was exciting and that's about it. Its official I really don't like baseball. Sorry America.

Cool Shot from inside the Stadium

So the next day was Sunday (Happy Father's Day!!) and we did stuff with Robert's family and I was so jealous of Michaelene, she got to fly home because she had a photo shoot to do on Monday, and she left the 20 hour drive home to us. But I'm getting ahead of myself, on Sunday we hung out and ate dinner with Robert's family and I was introduced to the game of D&D. I must say that the story isn't half bad (I guess that would depend on the people that are playing) but I wouldn't want to be a character in the game again. I didn't know what to do and ended up killing my own allies in the battle. So I think its the sidelines for me next time the dice are brought out. Then the next morning we woke up at 6AM and drove home. It was a long and uneventful ride, we got home around 2AM. And that sums up my first trip to Missouri and Nauvoo. Hopefully I'll be able to post something again soon. Loves until next time.