Trip to Navoo for the pagent

While looking at the weekly newsletter from Church we realized that we only had 2 more weeks to get to the Navoo Pageant. Now that we are so close we couldn't pass up the opportunity to go, so we quickly made hotel reservations and Chris picked us up on Friday night and we were off like a bunch of turtles. It took us 2 hours to make it 60 miles. Of course we had to stop and eat, and potty breaks. So we determined that we had to move it along a little faster after that. Needless to say we did arrive in Illinois before midnight. We settled in for the night and early the next morning we got up, had a yummy breakfast and headed to the pool!

Later that morning we headed to Navoo. The first place we stopped was a place where the kids could dress up and do pioneer activities. Tori was into it for about 4 minutes, I was lucky enough to catch her in action.

On the other hand, Abby was all about the dress up and even changed clothes about 3 times during the time we were there. We pulled out lunch while we were there and enjoyed that in between chores.

Tori is all about moving things around so she started with moving wood chips from outside to a bucket inside a little home...

Then she moved onto a larger bucket outside...

Then she enlisted her sister and a new friend with he same love of transferring wood chips...
After that hard work, we went into town to check out all that they had to offer, Abby of course decided to take some pictures, not so bad here of her sister...

The next one didn't go so well, or maybe Dad is too tall??
Next it was on for frozen custard by the nice ladies in the shop...

Here is a closer look at the yummy treat...

After that we went down to the brick yard, because no visit to Navoo is complete without your own brick! Tori sporting her brick here...

Abby of course needed to climb up on the bricks to show off her brick!

...and of course the family picture!

Then we had the oxen take us on a short ride, wow those pioneer's had a rough time of it. It was very slow and very bumpy

We took a drive so that some kids could take a little nap and then came back for the pre-pageant activities. Abby started by learning to do an old Scottish dance...

then Tori joined in, they both did very well, it must be their fathers genes!

Finally it was time for the pageant, Tori was really excited, Abby not so much, she kept asking me, is it over yet...how much longer...
It was really a great show. I ran into a family that was down here for 2 weeks doing the pageant, and they said that the main cast did it for the whole time, but everyone else came for 2 weeks and participated. There were babies, young kids and of course adults. If you didn't know that they were a moving part, you would never know.

At the very end, it was so cool, they sang their last song and the temple lit up behind them. There are about 300 cast members in all and quit the production.

By the end, Abby had perked up a bit and wasn't crying any longer.

The next day we drove back home, tired, spent, but happy. What a fun little family get away! We plan on doing this again next year!