Palmyra

The main reason we chose to go Upstate on our road trip was because we wanted to see the church sites.  We live too close not to have been to all these places.  It was a cold and windy day up in Palmyra, but that didn't detract from the special places we were able to visit.

The visitors center -- The Christus statue is in the round section of the building

From the visitor's center, we walked up the hill to Hill Cumorah.  

Well, Chase didn't walk much.  He hid from the wind.

It was a bit of a walk, but I think the cold weather made it seem farther

There was a big angel statue at the top

Chase walked in circles around it several times

Our next stop was the temple.  We just drove by it and snapped a couple pictures.

The Palmyra Temple

The windows showed the Sacred Grove trees

Our next stop was the Smith's home on our way to the Sacred Grove.  Chase was getting tired and hungry at this point, so the tour was a little rushed.  

You can see the temple through the trees from this spot.  Apparently that was intentional so you can see the Sacred Grove from the windows.

Joseph Smith hid the plates under these bricks!

Taking a Goldfish break

The barn -- he also hid the plates in the rafters here, and the mobs destroyed everything on the ground but didn't think to look up to find the plates.

Then we started the walk into the Sacred Grove.

The entrance to the Grove

Chase enjoyed stomping on the leaves on the paths.

We had an interesting discussion about what kind of 'lovely morning' it was back on that spring day -- a cold one like during our trip or a green one like often portrayed in paintings˜µ,

Trying to get a family photo

Way easier said than done...

And once again, Chase wore himself out, which we used to our advantage.  We drove over to the publishing store and bought a pizza across the street.  Marcus and I ate in the car and then alternated taking the tour in the print shop.

Chase slept long enough for one pizza and two tours.

Original brick from the print shop

One of the original 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon.

It was a really interesting trip.  Crazy to see these places we've learned so much about and really put a personal memory for each location.  I'm sure it's a gorgeous area in the summer and fall!

The Strong Museum

Marcus found The Strong: National Museum of Play online while researching our trip, and we decided Chase would have a blast and needed to go.  Definitely a fun choice!

The first thing you see is a carousel, which Chase loved watching.

He'd sit on a horse for a second, but not if it was higher in the air.  Apparently he is afraid of heights or something because he had a huge meltdown about actually riding on the carousel.

Chase LOVED the train section.  He probably would've stayed there all day.

We wanted to check out other areas, so we pulled him away to the kids grocery store.

The kids get to shop around the store with a small cart.

Then they purchase their items.  So cute.

The next place Chase wanted to see was the post office -- he loves keys.

He would open up the boxes

And check for any mail

Checking the mail box is one of Chase's favorite activities at home, so this was really fun.

Of course he was drawn to a keyboard.

As well as scissors.

There were so many sections in the museum, including train stations, Sesame Street, and motion experiments.  Chase liked testing out the round xylophone.

Marcus enjoyed the percussion too.

And Marcus enjoyed the section devoted to comic book heroes and old video games :)

It's an entire family friendly museum with so many historical toys and play exhibits.  We were all pretty exhausted after all the fun.

Chase crashed and didn't move for a couple hours.
Glad we went and he had such a great time!

Upstate Roadtrip

We decided to take a spring break trip since our summer plans have been tweaked a bit :)  Marcus and I had been talking about seeing Upstate New York basically since we moved here, but we never jumped on the opportunity.  So the few days we had became a now-or-never opportunity.  

First we drove up to Rochester.  That was kind of our home base for most of the weekend.  We stayed at a hotel just outside the city so we could easily get to Rochester and Palmyra.  Though our first stop was a Marcus craving... Texas Roadhouse :)

Chase enjoyed the cinnamon butter on the rolls!

Not sure why he insisted on the fork.

He was celebrating both the rolls and the dancing servers.

Chase was a little crazy at the restaurant, but at least he ate :)

The next day was raining, but luckily we had planned ahead for that.  We took Chase to an awesome museum for kids in Rochester that had all kinds of toys and activities.  I have a separate post on that because we took a bunch of pictures.  Chase had a lot of fun -- and so did Marcus!

Later that afternoon when we were headed back to the hotel, Marcus had a jeans accident...  His current favorite pair tore a good seven inches.  Thankfully we weren't going somewhere right then.  And we had the flexibility to add in a stop at the Waterloo Outlets at the end of the trip to get Marcus some new pants :)  I know this is horrible, but it was hilarious!

Back at the hotel, Marcus and Chase went swimming.  At first Chase was really nervous, but then he warmed up to the water.  He loved the pool.  He wanted to stand on the edge and jump in, but he never quite figured out the whole jumping part.

Nervous about the water

Happy swimmers

Chase wouldn't let go of Marcus' neck, which Marcus loved :)

Jumping in the pool

In motion

Practicing kicking to swim to the edge

Trying again

"Jumping" quickly became his favorite game

They worked a lot on kicking -- I think Chase enjoyed the splashing

Chase wasn't happy to get out of the water, but we were able to bribe him with cookies near the hotel entrance.  That definitely worked!

Eating his cookie

We went to a well-known Rochester restaurant called Dinosaur BBQ.  We all enjoyed it, and Chase loved coloring a dinosaur.

Marcus enjoyed reading in every spare minute he found.  This was how you could find him if we were in the room.

The next day we went over to Palmyra to see church history sites.  That also has its own post.  We spent a lot of the day visiting the area and having tours from missionaries.  

On the way back to Rochester, we stopped at a local farm.  It was still too cold to have the animals out to pet and feed, but they had ice cream and a big jumping pillow thing.

He wanted birthday cake, and they happened to have birthday cake ice cream!

Watching Chase play

Chase stayed in the corner next to the jumping pillow and played in the sand

The next day we drove east to Niagara Falls.  Marcus loved photographing the water, so that is another separate post.  We spent the night there and drove back to the city by way of the outlet mall.  The drive was beautiful -- it followed along some of the Finger Lakes, going through cute towns and farm land.  It made us want to come back and see the area in all the different seasons.