The US Tour! The Beginning...

We begin our trip in Buffalo, NY where we flew on Thrusday. It was a long day and yet that night we all decided we sould go see Niagara Falls in the dark because they are lit up. That was a good idea! There was a little hike/walk to get there, but it was way worth it! It was cool!!
Lit up rapids.

Lit up American Falls

Shadow of Brodric with the lights coming from the Canadian side. I thought this was the coolest picture!

The next morning we hit a tour at the falls. First real stop was the energy plant where we learned all about how the falls make energy. It was pretty fun. We all had matching FRIDAY shirts. That was fun for everyone too! This is the Smithsons with Troy's parents and the Noh's with Scott's parents.


The United States side of the falls. (obviously we couldn't go into Canada due to the fact we don't have passports to return to the US!)


The Maid of the mist was great. I had to comfort a little boy so that was a bummer, but I tried to take pictures. It was pooring rain outside and the mist of the falls made it all worse! It was WET!!! But a great adventure!

At one point I tried to take pictures through the blue rain parka thing, it wasn't too bad!

It was wet and Windy!!!

Ok... the cave of the winds wasn't anything I was going to do! When we were looking over the falls the night before you could see this little wooden stair pathway down below and I thought it was suicide. But sure enough we did! The top of all the stairs is called the Hurricane Deck and that is because it is literally like a hurricane! The kids and some of the dads actually stood UNDER the water fall! You can get that close! They said it pounded on their backs! Oh my gosh! There was moss every where and you could hardly see due to the water blowing all around. It was quite exillerating!

Before we headed up. We had both parkas on hopeing that it would save us some of the soaking, not really!

I got Brodric to smile at least once.

I think Papa got surprised by how powerful it was. The water was coming at him!

Here is the Hurricane Deck! WOW!

And that was just the first day!!

Second day... Much calmer. We went into Palmyra, NY. For those who may not be LDS this is where the Book of Mormon originates from. There we were able to see an awesome pagent that depicts some of the stories of the Book of Mormon and enjoy the BEAUTIFUL little village and town. We saw the printing presses that first printed the Book of Mormon and learned about the sacrifices and miracles that made this great book be able to be shared with so many. It was a really great day!

This is the Hill Cummorah (I don't know if I spelled it right.) It is where the ancient records were found burried in the ground.

Monument at top of hill.

From the top of the hill this is the view of the chairs set up for the pagent. It was Huge as you can tell and it was really awesome the things they were able to do from that stage!

At the top of the hill Carter sat at the monument playing the penny whistle. It sounded like a recording that was being brodcast up there but nope, it was Carter playing songs like, Oh how lovely was the morning and other songs like that I can't think of right now. It was beautiful.

This is the kids walking down the back side of the hill. There is just beauty everywhere you go here.

And finally, this is the only good picture of the pagent that I shot! It is so hard to get pictures that far away and they move, but this one was awesome because of the water works in the background. It was depciting a dream that Lehi had.


NOW, stay tuned for a few weeks because I'll try to update often. I haven't gotten to TODAY (Sunday) and to the beautiful home we were privleged to stay in these past three nights! It was very neat!

(Sorry for mis-spelled words, the spell check won't work!)