Nauvoo the Beautiful!

Last weekend we had the chance to meet up in Nauvoo with Dad and Mom Hulet who were on their way back home from Utah.  It was great seeing them again and Nauvoo was as beautiful as advertised!  We were able to attend a session at the temple  which was gorgeous on the inside and out.  Here's a picture of us in front of the temple.  It was great being able to see many homes and places where the early saints lived and spent much of their time.  It was also neat to hear the stories and testimonies that were shared by the wonderful Senior missionaries serving there.

The Hulets in front of the Joseph and Hyrum monument.  As they were being escorted to Carthage jail, Joseph told Hyrum that, "this is the loveliest place and the best people under the heavens; little do they know the trials that await them."

Resting place of Joseph and Emma. 

Another picture of the temple

The Mississippi River was beautiful up in Nauvoo-not brown and muddy like our view of it in Memphis.  On our drive coming right up on Nauvoo we were thinking that living right next to the river would be a very pretty place to be...until we heard what sounded like a thousand rain droplets on our car windshield.  We soon realized that they were little hordes of mosquitos and other bugs.   It was so gross!  It might not be worth the view to have to deal with all those mosquitos...

Something smells fishy!

     Kendall, one of my friends in our church ward, has been bugging me to go fishing with him practically since the day we met.  I hadn't been fishing since I was a boy scout which was quite a few years ago and had only been fishing a couple of times in my life.  As far as I could remember I never found fishing to be very much fun.  Finally, I caved into the peer pressure and decided to give it a whirl.  

     One of the counselors in our Bishropic took us out to his in-law's lake and it turned out to be a really fun morning.  The bass must have been hungry because they were biting like crazy!  I was there for about 45 min-1hr before I caught anything, but then after that I caught four more fairly quickly.  I had a great time and was glad Kendall never stopped prodding me to go with him. 

Kendall with one of the many bass he caught on the day!

Brother Law caught 4 or 5 bass in about an hour, and then went home...I guess it must be boring being such a good fisherman.

Kissing this fish's boo-boo better before putting him back in the lake.  Thanks for the fishing lessons/trip Kendall!

Guess who went somewhere fun?...

So, we went to Atlanta for the Fourth of July! It was great! We successfully saved money by buying six flags tickets on craigslist, shopping for our food at a grocery store (with one exception) and staying at my very gracious cousin's house (that I hadn't met before)--while they were out of town! We really appreciated their hospitality, and they were located just 15 minutes from pretty much everywhere we wanted to go down there. As an intro to our trip, I thought I'd show you one of the more entertaining street signs we saw in the neighborhood where we stayed:

Don't worry, they were really just speed bumps...

So, anyway, while we were there we had four main things to do on our agenda: Six Flags, The World of Coca-Cola, The Aquarium, and of course, the fireworks. All of them were fun, for instance, Coke world had a room where you could taste Coke flavors from all over the world (I think there were 89 or something?). These are the artistic coke bottles from around the world:

Here I am with one of the secrets of Coke: little furry kissing things that give coke a little kiss of flavor. or something. I must not have paid attention to the secret movie very well (surprise!):
After the Coke museum, we were super hungry and didn't bring our grocery food, so we went to an awesome restaurant nearby--Johnny Rocket's! It was a little 50's-ish diner with dancing waiters and juke boxes, and smiley-face ketchup (catsup?)! It was great. I even enjoyed having horseradish sauce on my burger, and buddy (of course) got a bacon cheddar burger. :)
When we were done eating, we went to, by far, the highlight of our trip! The aquarium! Who knew we'd like looking at silly little swimming fish so much? Apparently it's the biggest aquarium in the US, and it definitely was worth the money. But I didn't love it half as much as buddy did. He probably took at least 70 photos (of fish? I know--what a waste!) and you can even see how much he loves it by the look on his face in this picture. This is probably one of my favorite pics of buddy. he's just so happy :). I want to go back next year when they will have some dolphins, but the whale sharks and beluga whales were pretty sweet, too. If you'd like to see a ton of pictures of the fishes, just ask buddy :)
Six flags was fun, too, but we don't have any pictures of that, and the fireworks were awesome in the Olympic park in Atlanta, but maybe not worth waiting outside for 5 hours for. One thing I thought was pretty coincidental was that we were tract-ed out by the Jehovah's Witnesses while were were staying at my cousin's house. I told her I didn't really live in Atlanta so I couldn't make it to their end-of-the-world seminar, but I thought it was interesting to talk to her nonetheless. Maybe I liked it 'cause she kept complimenting my smile. but she probably did that just so I'd talk to her :) Ah, well. We had a good time in Atlanta, if you can't tell! I hope we can go again sometime before we leave the South for good!