Palmyra part 2 - The Sacred Grove and parenting fail!

After the temple visit, we headed over to the Smith family farm and sacred grove.  It was still raining, but we had 2 other families with us on this tour.  I really enjoyed this tour as well.  It was so pretty!

The log home where the Smith family first lived when they came to NY.

 Inside the frame home that Alvin Smith built and the family moved into after his death.  I loved that this house was 85% original!  It has held up well!

 The kitchen

 The tree that was planted for Alvin Smith after he died of appendicitis.  It's over 200 years old!

 The front of the frame house.

 The apple orchard where Joseph saw Moroni for the 4th time he relayed his message.

 And this is the start of the parenting fail story.  I think we are the only family in history to have a bad experience in the Sacred Grove.  Seriously!  What went wrong??!!  Well, Tj and I were still at the log cabin doing something, trying to get Bristol to come on, trying to park the stroller, whatever.  The kids somehow got a head of us as you can see in this photo.  Before we knew it, they were gone and we went in the grove and we couldn't find them anywhere.  It's a pretty big place and I didn't really want to yell for them...we were carrying Bristol all over searching down all the different paths.  No sign of them.  After probably 30 minutes we were making our way out and saw them at the exit when we got there.  Brenalee was covered, and I mean COVERED from neck to toe in mud.  She said she slipped in the mud (which I understand and believed) but there was no way she got that covered from just slipping.  What she decided to do after she fell in the mud was to rub the mud all.over.her.entire.body.  I was FURIOUS!  I mean, here we are at this sacred place.  We drove hours and miles to get here.  I wanted them to have a spiritual experience and she's just taking a mud bath!  I should have taken a photo of her, but I didn't even think about it at the time.  And Tyler?!  Well, he was no better.  The first words out of his mouth?  "OH, we were in the sacred grove??"  So yeah, parenting fail!

I do have to say that when we started to walk in, I felt the spirit so strong it brought tears to my eyes.  Good thing I had that little experience because after that it was just searching for kids.
After we found an outhouse and tried to clean Brena up, I wasn't leaving without a photo.  Again, there was no one around so I had to be the one to take the picture.  Brena was mad at us, we were mad at her and it took about 10 minutes before she would pose for this picture.   Maybe someday they will remember this with fond memories...

At this point, it was late, we were exhausted, dirty, wet and hungry.  It was time to go back to the hotel.