Before the Reunion

We just got back from Kansas/Missouri. We spent two weeks there with family, both mine and Mike's. Mike is originally from the Kansas City area (Olathe and Blue Springs, to be exact), so he has a lot of family out there still, including his grandma and several aunts and uncles and cousins. The excuse for this trip was that the Laudie family reunion was going to be in KC this year. Half the family lives in Utah, so it's typically been out there because the sibling in charge of that year lived there. But this year Grandma is having a harder time getting around and Uncle Bob was in charge (he lives in Independence), so we all made the trek backwards to KC. Actually, we flew. Poor pioneers.
We got there a couple days early to spend some time with Mike's immediate family who came out from Utah. They wanted to have some time to go see their old homes and places they remembered and a couple church history sites what we wouldn't be seeing with the whole reunion group. We went to Blue Springs to see the old house there, and also to the Olathe area to see the old house and old neighbors there. Mike and his family had a lot of time remembering old stories and pointing out where there friends used to live and where they used to ride their bikes to around town.
We also went to a couple church history sites in Independence. We started with the Temple site and listened to an abbreviated story by the church that owns the land. It's amazing how similar and yet how vastly different our church histories are, as well as the difference in doctrines. It makes me a little sad because I think of the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon and how they were in darkness for so long because of the traditions of their fathers. I think many times this is the same situation.

We then made it over to the RLDS, or Church of Christ as they are now called, auditorium. They had a small museum there that had many original artifacts from Emma Smith and other early church leaders. After that we went to the RLDS temple, which was closed, but a really nice man said he was someone who could take us in after hours. It was very interesting as we asked what was actually done in their temple. It's mostly an auditorium because there are no ordinances done there. There was some beautiful etching done in their building though.
That concluded our first day of vacation. Wow. Amy was exhausted after all of that, especially because she only got a nap while we were driving from one place to another and not for very long. That was pretty much the story of her life for the first week of our vacation. But Amy absolutely loves spending time with Mike's siblings... mostly because they are only a few years older than her! Mike's youngest sibling, Jane Anne, is only 6, so Amy was glad to have playmates.