What's a vacation without a few little mishaps?

(Warning...this could be a long post! Read at your own risk...)

Hallie and I returned from Nauvoo last Wednesday where we held the annual Strobel Family Reunion this year. Good times were had by all, though we missed Devin (of course he had to work). Hallie and I flew out on Saturday the 24th with my Grandma Shawna as well as Sadie and Jennifer. It seems we can't do anything the easy way, so of course our trip was full of "adventures." I am sure we will remember this trip that much better because of all the fun! Here is a short recap:

Day One: (these pictures are all random, not necessarily from the day I am speaking about)

Devin drove Hallie and I to the airport and on the way, Hallie started projectile vomiting. I was shocked as she has honestly never thrown up in her life. Of course the first time has to be on the way to the airport...Outfit #2 by 9 am.

The flight was luckily okay. Hallie sat on my lap and my Grandma was seated next to us, so that was nice. She was pretty well behaved. It was hard to contain her in that small space though and eventually she and Sadie played in the aisle a bit (Sadie and Jen were across the aisle from us). That is until we got a nice reprimanding from the flight attendant about it not being safe for them on the floor in the event of a crash. I am thinking nowhere is exactly safe in the event of a crash, but oh well.

We rented a car in St. Louis and stopped to get some food before hitting the road for the supposedly three hour drive to Nauvoo. Our first mistake came when Grandma and I decided that we would like some ice cream, so we pulled over in a town despite the fact that the girls had just gone to sleep. HUGE MISTAKE!!! As soon as we stopped, they both woke up, and Hallie started vomiting again. All over herself, her car seat, everything. There was a Walmart right there, so while Jennifer and Grandma had the disgusting task of stripping her car seat down to the skeleton (it was that bad) in the 100 plus degree weather, I walked Hallie into the Walmart to buy some Powerade, a new outfit, and to change her clothes. Outfit #3 by 3 pm or so. This was not going well.

Poor Hals had to sit on her bare car seat with no padding the rest of the trip. At about hour 3, we hit the most massive rain storm I have ever seen in my life. We literally could not see 5 inches in front of the car to drive. We switched drivers and I, being the most capable driver, took the wheel. What should have been a 3 hour trip took at least 5 hours. It was ridiculous. By the time we pulled into the hotel, the girls were both starving and screaming. Hallie had diarrhea that was all down her legs (poor girl, musta been sick!). We decided to skip another outfit and put her straight into her pajamas. It was awesome that the first thing I did upon arriving at the hotel was a load of laundry. :)

We soon found out that though Jennifer and I had called weeks ahead to reserve cribs at the hotel, they had given them all away. We were panicked and upset, as you can imagine. What were we going to do with these two girls? We hung out with the family for a few hours and after at least 5 trips ourselves and numerous others by various family members to the front desk, the hotel managed to drop off some pack-n-plays to our room. I don't know where they got them from, but had they not, we would have been furious!

Day Two:

Day two was much better. We started out by going to the Visitor's Sacrament Meeting. I had mentioned to Jennifer on the drive Saturday that Hallie has never said the word "mine", which is a phase Sadie is in, saying "mine" all the time. So during Sacrament, Hallie and Sadie were playing on the floor with Sadie's toys. Each toy, Sadie would hold it up and say "mine". Finally, she tried to grab Hallie's shoes out of her hands (Hallie doesn't like to keep her shoes on) while saying "mine". Hallie had had enough by that point and stood up, grabbed her shoes, and literally shouted, "MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" A fair few people turned their heads at the outburst. It was pretty funny. So much for her not knowing the word "mine" anymore.

We then went to Carthage Jail for a tour. That is always a good experience. Oh except for the part where Hallie refused to sit in her own stroller, but took over Sadie's. Then she insisted upon pushing it around and threw a huge fit when I took the stroller away once and for all. I am sure everyone was able to feel the Spirit at Carthage with all the screaming...

The rest of the day was spent seeing other sites and having dinner as a family, of course followed by games.

Day Three:
Monday, most of the family woke up to go on an early morning handcart trek. I volunteered to stay with the girls as I had been on a 20 mile trek for youth conference back in the day. After that, we headed out to see some more sites. This day was pretty good as well, nothing too major happened.

That night, we went to Fort Madison for dinner. As we came to the bridge to cross the Mississippi, the arm came down and the bridge moved to make way for a barge boat to go through. That was all good and dandy, except that we could barely even see the barge in the distance. So we ended up sitting on the bridge for a good half hour, meanwhile making ourselves very late for our catered dinner. It was a good time to meet all the people in all the other cars though, as many of the family members did, or to take pictures alongside the great Mississippi, like we did.

On the way back, my Aunt Tiffany and Grandma had a great experience at the toll booth. Not paying attention, they sped on through so that the lady had to come out and chase them down to get them to pay. Tiff backed up the car, pulled out her wallet, and threw the lady her smallest bill, all the while still holding her conversation. The lady handed back a huge wad of bills, which Tiff handed to Grandma to count while they continued on. Grandma got to 30 one dollar bills and mentioned that something was wrong as they had only paid with a $20. Tiff pulled over right on the bridge, hopped out and stopped the nearest car going the other direction toward the toll and asked the man to hand the lady back all the extra change. After they were nearly off the bridge, Tiff turned to Grandma and said "Did I have a $50 in my purse?" Grandma confirmed that she did and they both knew immediately that they had given that to the lady. So another trip around to the toll, where the lady was standing outside with the money in hand ready to give back to them. I am sure she had had it with them at that point!

Day Four:
Tuesday started bright and early for me as I was going to the Temple with most of the adult family members. Jennifer and Tiffany were keeping all kids under 12 and all the teenagers were doing baptisms. I didn't feel too well, but I didn't think anything of it. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to the Nauvoo Temple and I wasn't going to miss it. On the way, my Aunt Angela and I decided to just do initiatories, so that we could then go help with all the kids. This proved to be a wise choice.

During the initiatories, I felt sick the whole time. I kept telling myself to just do one more name and then I could go be done. By the time I finished the fifth, I was really feeling ill. I stepped outside and headed toward my dressing booth. As I did, Angela and one of the Temple workers asked if I was okay. I told them I didn't feel well and that I was going to sit down. I sat in the booth and closed the door and then the urge to throw up hit me so hard. I managed to squeak out that I was going to throw up and the Temple worker said "are you really?" I said yes, and she handed me over a tiny little towel. A TOWEL??? I was thinking that a bucket would be better, but I made do the best I could with the towel. I won't go into details, but let's just say that I threw up 5 or so times and it ended up all over the towel, my white Temple outfit, my legs, the floor....okay you get the picture. It was not the most glamorous moment of my life...I was horrified. The lady was very nice about it all though and said that I could just wad everything up into a pile and they would take care of it. They even gave me another towel to take with me in case I had another incident on the way out. ha ha.

I came back to the hotel and immediately went to sleep while everyone else finished up at the Temple. The rest of the day was low key, though we did go on a horse ride and see a few shows (including the famous Sunset on the Mississippi). We went to the Nauvoo Pageant that night, which I had never seen in all my trips to Nauvoo. That was pretty amazing and probably one of the highlights of the trip for me.

We got back to the hotel really late that night and the girls were both very exhausted. Sadie threw up in the middle of the night, which was just a perfect ending to our trip.

Day Five:

We woke up really early Wednesday morning in order to get back to the airport to catch our flight. We knew that it took 5 hours to get there so we planned to have extra time. It's a good thing we did, too. We barely made it out of Nauvoo when my cousin Sarah called to tell us that the highway that we needed to take to get back to St. Louis was washed out (remember all that rain???) so we would need to find an alternate route to go. Ensue panic. We called my dad, who had dropped my brother Clark off in St. Louis a few days before to ask how he got there. He recalled from memory, though his directions were a little shady at times. We made it back to St. Louis in one piece without anyone even throwing up! We made it to our gate with just about 20 minutes to spare. Whew.

What a trip! We were glad to have gone and spent time with everyone, but we were really glad to be home too to see Devin.

That weekend, we packed up again and drove to St. George (my first time there!) for Jana and Karl's baby blessing of their new son, Grady. It was a quick trip, but good to see everyone on that side. I didn't take any pictures, except for the one below of the Temple. Whoops.

We are staying home for a while now, luckily. We have enjoyed all the traveling, but being gone for half the days in July also takes its toll. Hope you have all had an amazing summer too!