NebrASKa how our trip went!

I've been trying to write this post for awhile, but there's just no way to make our trip to Nebraska seem exciting. We went to Nebraska to go to temple #50, but we thought we should do other things as well. The Mormon Pioneer Museum is literally across the street, so there we went.

I like visiting church history sites because they are generally manned (womanned?) by Sister missionaries and/or senior missionaries, who are very willing to chat and usually think we're pretty interesting.

a model of what the Winter Quarters camp looked like

a model log cabin-- I'm sad we didn't take pictures inside, but we got distracted by the soundtrack

crossing the ole Mississip'

replica wagon

replica front half of the SLC temple

A major thing I liked about this visitor's center is that they talk very frankly about the turmoil the church faced following Joseph Smith's death. Sometimes people gloss over that. We told her about how, when we took the Community of Christ tour in Nauvoo, our tour guide made a big deal out of how much of a jerk Emma Smith thought Brigham Young was. I don't think our sister missionary knew how to respond, so she showed us a video about eternal families (which wasn't quite a punishment, but for a married couple without kids it didn't feel like much of a reward either).

Then we doubled back and went to the pioneer cemetery, which is right next to the temple.

at the entrance gate

There are not many gravestones that still exist, but there is this huge statue of a couple who have buried their child (at least, I'm about 98% certain that this was what the statue meant). 

The statue is surrounded by the names of the people who were buried in the cemetery, scriptures, and song verses.

on the ground around the statue

Then we continued our church history tour by going across the river (on the Mormon Bridge, no less) to the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the church.

us with the second First Presidency

Inside the visitor's center we got to talk for a long time with the senior missionaries, as well as see a video about the Mormon Battalion and their influence on the move west. 

a replica Mormon Battalion uniform

There are many things I didn't know about the Mormon Battalion, and there are many things I still don't know, but I look forward to learning more.

the replica Kaneville Tabernacle from the outside

the replica tabernacle from the inside

Finally, Josh wanted very badly to get a good Omaha steak, so he did his research and we ended up here:

The history of the restaurant is interesting, but the ambiance was very Italian Family. I can imagine that many of the people who work there are related. The absolute strangest thing, and I have such a hard time getting over the weirdness of it, was that we were seated near-ish to the women's restroom and apparently that was also the unofficial "break room" of the employees. So anyone who wanted to use the restroom had to weave their way through a bunch of servers and busboys who were hanging out, shooting the breeze, and watching us eat. Creepy.

We were only there for one full day. That night, we drove back to Sioux City, Iowa, and started another adventure-- coming soon!

Temple #50: Winter Quarters, Nebraska

It was Josh's idea to make Winter Quarters temple #50. We are crazy, I know. I can only say that we didn't really set out to go to so many. It just kind of happened over time. When we got married, we talked about all the temples we wanted to see before we had kids. And then we kept not having kids, so we kept going to more temples. I've probably told this story before.

the temple sign-- to the side of, not in front of, the temple

The Winter Quarters temple is on this big hill and it was built right next to a pioneer cemetery. In fact, if the Celestial Room window had not been made of stained glass, it would look right into the cemetery. Symbolic? Obviously.

from the front of the temple

This is a similar design to the Snowflake, Arizona temple, which means that when you walk through the door there is a stained glass window behind the reception desk, behind which is the baptistry. To get to the ordinance rooms, you take a staircase to the right.

the front doors

This temple has a few stained glass windows, such as this one (I think, though I'm not entirely sure, that the baptistry is on the other side):

The first ordinance room doesn't have landscape murals, but does have two landscape paintings. One was of chimney rock, which fans of the Oregon Trail game can appreciate. Otherwise, it is white walls with gold painted trim (except for one or two features in the upstairs waiting area, which I will get to).

The Celestial Room was small and had two green, overstuffed couches that reminded me of something my sister Tasha would buy (or possibly owns). Then the room is ringed with more chairs of different types, mostly moss green and beige. The stained glass window had the Tree of Life (I assume). The room also had a puzzling grape motif. I know that when I think of Nebraska, the first thing that comes to mind is grapes. Go figure.

The final, really interesting part, of this temple is the waiting area on the second floor, right at the top of the stairs. There is a beautiful painting of the settlement of the Saints at Winter Quarters. There is also a painted stained glass-ish window with multiple scenes and people that are important to Winter Quarters and the Mormon Trail. We got to meet the temple president and matron and told them that this was our 50th temple in a little over 5 years of marriage. They seemed much more impressed than people were when we had only visited 49 temples. They were extremely nice and wished me luck with school (I told them I am going to need it). 

I have decided to include our other Omaha adventures (the Mormon Trail Visitor's Center, Kanesville Tabernacle, Italian steak, and Sioux Falls) in the next blog post. Right now I just want to revel in the fact that we actually, weirdly, have now been to 50 temples. (It probably goes without saying that Josh has already planned our next temple tour, but it will have to wait until the summer and the end of my internship). 

We Accidentally Attended a Shriner Parade

Josh and I have to wait until basically right before sunset before we go running because it is crazy hot in The Forks during the day, but last week there was an unseasonably cool(ish) afternoon. I was excited because it meant we could run, eat at a reasonable time, and I could get to bed at 10pm.

We even had enough time to run over the bridge and run/jog/walk in Minnesota.

But when we got back to the DeMers bridge, which is where we cross back over from Minnesota to North Dakota, we came across this:

 

We had some indicators that a parade was in store for the town, but when we parked the car I rationalized that it takes us around an hourish to run/jog/walk and any imminent parade would be done by then. So we parked the car in the riverside parking lot, which has only one escape... on DeMers street where the parade was in full swing at the end of our run.

We had absolutely no choice but to wait until it ended. So we saw things like:

one of many only mostly racist old, white man bands

a Viking ship

lots of clowns

horses with bejeweled hooves

lots of white dudes on motorcycles, go-carts, 4-wheelers, etc. Josh said he suspects that's the biggest draw to being a Shriner

the "culturally-appropriate" steel drum band

and, the coup de grace, a bunch of old, white guys dressed... well... like this (the dragon spat out fire extinguisher foam from its nostrils. They aimed for me, but I was behind a bridge beam)

We had to wait for an hour, so our early start on our evening run was completely pointless because we got back to the apartment at the same time we normally do and I didn't get to bed until way after 10. But we got to see this Shriner parade, which seems to be the most Midwest thing we have done so far.

July! July! July!

July is the month of ShepAlder. Both Josh's and my birthdays and our wedding anniversary are all within a week of each other, so we are big on celebrating ourselves in July. This year, we went to Winnipeg for Josh's birthday to watch "The Dark Knight Rises" on a real IMAX screen! (This was really important to Josh). Turns out? Winnipeg sucks. But the movie was good!

We also went to the one Mexican restaurant in GF and Josh got a free birthday meal completely by accident. It's a real thing that the restaurant does, but we had no idea when we chose the place.

he looks about as thrilled as one can while eating Mexican food in North Dakota

For my birthday and our anniversary the next weekend, we decided to venture to Minneapolis for deep dish pizza and the Mall of America. I had to work for most of my birthday, but I allowed myself to sleep in and ran out at the end of the day to get to Minneapolis by 10 in order to eat some deep dish for my birthday dinner:

about the tiredest I've ever looked in a picture

It turns out that good deep dish pizza is impossible to find in Minnesota (and it absolutely does not exist in North Dakota), which makes me sad. I've been craving some good pizza. Josh chose this place because it was open late, but also because of this:

It's called "Coca Cola Freestyle," and it had some of the fizziest soda Josh has ever tasted in his life, had a lot of diet options, and basically offered endless combinations of flavors. It's new, so things aren't so backward in the midwest as a Pacific Northwesterner may assume.

For my birthday, Josh gave me the newest Nancy Drew game, and for our anniversary the next day, I woke up to a big bag of peanut butter M&Ms, so this is how I spent my morning:

he knew what I was when he married me

The ShepAlder lore is that Josh and I had our first date on the same day that I had my first date with someone else at a church function. One of the snacks at the function were peanut M&Ms that were snapped up rather quickly. I made an offhand comment that peanut butter M&Ms were better anyway, and when I came home from my first date, I had a bag of peanut butter M&Ms waiting for me on the doorstep. So I called Josh up to thank him, which turned into inviting him over to watch a movie, which turned into dating for a year and a half, and then being married for 5 years. All because of peanut butter M&Ms. 

Eventually I got out of bed and we went to the temple. From there we went to the MALL OF AMERICA:

Which was bigger, but not necessarily better than other malls.

They didn't even sell real Ducks hats. Sheesh.

But I did get to eat a fabulous wedge salad at Tucci Benucch, which still makes me happy thinking about it.

We didn't ride any of the MoA rides, though they looked fun.

But we did stop in the massive Lego store, which is just topless (roofless?) in the middle of the mall.

the gigantic wall of single Lego pieces

And in the rafters there were these massive Lego sculptures that were extremely impressive.

When we got back to the hotel, Josh tried to watch the Olympics, and since we don't have cable he was excited about the prospect of seeing some of the games. Unfortunately, this is what NBC looks like in the midwest:

he still left it on for an hour or two

That night we went to a former speakeasy:

To sample a local delicacy, the Juicy Lucy (or "Jucy Lucy" depending on who you ask):

Unfortunately, as with all trips, this one had to come to an end, but Josh had a very specific request for the ride back to GF:

We absolutely had to stop in the teeny town of Darwin to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, made famous by Weird Al:

Josh was pleased:

It really was a very big ball of twine, housed in its own little enclosed gazebo:

So that was the gist of our trip to "the cities" (that's what they call them here). We took one weekend off from traveling and that appeared to be a mistake because I spent all weekend sleeping rather than being productive, so we're going for a trip again this coming weekend and, yes, it will involve temple #50. I've been thinking all week about how this will be my last chance to visit the temple in awhile (unless I want to drive 6+ hours round-trip to Bismarck) and I realize how spoiled I was/am in Oregon having a temple 15 minutes from my house. 

There are a lot of things that I was spoiled to have in Oregon, like friendly neighbors and more than one running trail. After a month away, I am realizing how much of an Oregonian I am and how much of a midwesterner I am not.

Temple #49: St. Paul, Minnesota

Josh and I decided to spend the morning of our fifth wedding anniversary at the St. Paul, Minnesota temple, which is about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Grand Forks. I love going to the temple on our anniversary.

This temple was dedicated in 2000, so it's one of the smaller, more plain temples. There are a couple pretty notable things, though. Firstly, this temple may have the least amount of grounds area than any temple we've been to so far. What you see in this picture is literally it: 

The temple shares a parking lot with a stake center, but even that isn't very large. The other unique thing is that this message, which appears on all LDS temples, is etched in glass over the door. I don't think we've seen that before, either:

Finally, the temple workers were mostly young marrieds, which was unusual. But maybe it was just that weekend for some reason. Also, someone's cell phone went off multiple times while I was in the dressing room. In a temple that small, you can hear that stuff. Turn off your cell phones, people! You're in the house of the Lord!

a weird, backward way of letting you know with my fingers how crazy we are for visiting so many temples

I have said many times that the 50th temple makes us officially crazy. Well... we've chosen #50 and we're heading there soon. I'll let it be a surprise as to which one it will be. 

Five Years of ShepAlders

I always like to surprise Emily with something fun for her birthday and our anniversary, as they are literally on consecutive days in late July. This year, I decided to make a video chronicling our engagement, wedding day and (briefly) our honeymoon in Jamaica. Then, while we were in Minneapolis, I covertly posted it to her Facebook wall.

The song in the video is "Real Love," by John Lennon, one of my musical idols. I sang it while playing my guitar at our wedding reception. It's one of my most favorite songs and I think it perfectly captures how much I love Emily. Enjoy!