Christmas in St. Louis was wonderful! We had tons of fun! I really enjoyed getting to know Jeff's family. They were a lot of fun and made me feel very welcomed and comfortable. Here's the highlights of what we did:
St. Louis:
The Gateway Arch
City of St. Louis
The great Mississippi River and Illinois
At the very top of the arch - 630 ft. high!
The Dred Scott Court house, where the Dred Scott case took place.
St. Louis Zoo:
Despite the fact that half the animals were gone due to it being winter, it was still a lot of fun. The animals that were left were all very active and entertaining (my favorite was the monkey house).
Camel - seriously foaming at the mouth... gross.
Deep in thought... (sorry it's blurry)
Inside the Penguin house (Jeff loves penguins)
Butterfly House:
Jeff and his little sister Hannah inside the Butterfly House
The "owl" butterfly
Felt like I was back in Hawaii with all the beautiful tropical flowers and serious humidity
Nauvoo/Carthage Day Trip:
Frozen Mississippi
Nauvoo temple. I have always really loved this temple.
I went to Nauvoo with my family many years ago (before temple was built) and I've always wanted to go back there someday. It was only a three hour drive from where we were at in St. Louis so me, Jeff, his dad and younger sister took a little day trip. We went to Carthage Jail first. Standing in that room was the first time I had really felt the spirit as a little girl, so it was really awesome to go back and feel how strong that spirit is again. Also, due to the winter time, both Carthage and Nauvoo were almost completely dead, so it was nice to not have crowds and pretty much have the entire place to ourselves.
It was cool to go back to Nauvoo as well, and see the temple now standing there. Due to the lack of time we were only able to visit a few a the houses and buildings, but we made sure to stop by all the ones with free souvenirs of course.
My favorite part of the trip however was going and doing baptisms in the Nauvoo temple. This was a dream come true for me! It was a neat experience and that temple is just so beautiful inside! All the workers were super friendly and talkative too :) They told us that the Nauvoo temple's baptismal font is the biggest of all the temples. That's because they used the measurements from when the temple was first built. And the reason why they made it so big back then was because they were trying to get so much work done that they would often have three baptisms going on inside the font. Pretty interesting huh?
