The Hill Cumorah Pageant

When Craig was in high school, he spent two summers on the work crew for the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York.  For those of you familiar with Mormon stuff, this amounted to what was basically a month-long EFY experience, plus construction work.  Craig loved every minute of it.  A few years later, I flew out to New Jersey to see Craig while we were engaged.  He realized that the Hill Cumorah Pageant was going on while I was there, and got his parents to agree to drive us all out for the show.  Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from that trip:

I'm not one to get overly excited over pictures of myself, but I do love this one...

Aren't we so young and skinny?

Craig loves the pageant, and could hardly wait to take our kids there.  He's been talking about it for ages, so it was about time we actually went.  He's hoping Bentley will want to be on the work crew some day, and that we can all be cast members together.  I'm not really sure how that would work, but I do know that Craig has an amazing ability to just make things happen, so I'm not ruling it out.

Our ward had talked about doing an unofficial trip to the pageant this summer, but nothing really seemed to come of it.  We only knew of one other family that was planning on going.  Fortunately for us, this family, the Patchetts, are people that we really like AND they have kids who play with our kids.  So we begged and pleaded with them to caravan with us.

In addition to Craig being excited about the pageant, we were also excited to really put that new van to good use.  As Craig loaded up all our camping stuff, he got more and more thrilled with it.  He would come back in the house after each load and announce, "There's just so much room there!  It's AWESOME!"  He didn't actually start squealing with glee, but you could tell he kind of wanted to.

When it was time to go, we offered to let the three Patchett boys (Addison, Ivan, and Cedric) come in our car.  And they took Kendra.  Our car was super loud.  But everyone was happy.  And best of all-- they were all so busy playing with each other, that no one wanted to whine at me!  It was fabulous.  Best road trip we've had in a long time!  (And Kendra said she very much enjoyed how quiet her car ride was.)

We made it up to New York in good time, found our campsite and got the tents all set up and sleeping bags rolled out.  Craig was anxious to get to the pageant right away, so we headed right back out again (our kids were a little disgruntled to have to get back in the car so quickly).  Once there, we saved seats for ourselves and the Patchetts and then grabbed food from a vendor.  I got a taco-in-a-bag and was only slightly embarrassed by how much I liked it.  Once everyone had eaten, I went and found ice cream for myself.  Then I sat and continued saving seats while Craig took the kids on tours of the area until the sun set and the show could start!

Helping me save seats

Family picture!  I like that I'm holding up my ice cream cone.  And I LOVE Ryder's face!

Sharing popcorn with Addison right before the show starts.  Camille enjoyed every chance she got to flirt with Addison.  He's ten years older than her...

We enjoyed the show, although I was surprised by how much the weather had cooled down!  It had been SO dang hot before, that I hadn't even brought sweatshirts for anyone!  Fortunately Colton and Camille both wanted to sit on my lap, so that kept us all a bit warmer, even if they were very squirmy the whole time.

The pageant is fun, especially considering all that it's trying to accomplish-- basically give a run-down of the Book of Mormon and how Joseph Smith came to translate it, all in about an hour and a half.  It's a lot of material to cover, but it was written by Orson Scott Card, so it's got that in its favor.  It also has lots of flames and water spouting around the stage, which is always a good way to liven up any story-- the kids (and Craig, and I) enjoyed it!

Getting out was a mess, of course.  It was funny counting all the other huge Transit vans in the parking lot (we'd found our people!), but backing one out without running anyone down was a different matter.  And then of course, there was the waiting.  I think we sat without moving for a good 20 minutes because everyone in front of us was being polite and letting everyone else go.  And then, when we finally were moving, I got stuck in the mud!  That was stressful and terrifying.  People came running and managed to push us out in a matter of minutes, so it really shouldn't have been a big deal, but it kind of was to me anyway.  I was proud of myself for not freaking out and either screaming at everyone or bursting into tears.  Or both.  Once we were free of the mud, Craig and the parking attendant both insisted that I not stop moving for anything, so I plowed through the rest of the crowds, cutting people off in slow motion and basically looking like a big jerk.  Oh, well.  It worked, and we got back to our campsite without further incident.  Phew!

We got everyone in bed in record time and then went to sleep ourselves.  I think I nodded off around midnight.  And, of course, Ryder woke everyone up at 5:45, asking Craig to look for his stuffed animal.  Ugh.  Craig made breakfast, and I was so tired I fell back asleep despite all the noise they were making, something I NEVER do.  After breakfast, I took the kids to the camp playground while Craig cleaned up and got himself dressed.

Colton and Camille were very serious about making car noises while they were swinging

And this enormous slide was a big hit

Then we headed out to visit church history sites.  We stopped by the Palmyra temple quickly just to take a couple pictures.  They weren't great, but I'll still take 'em!

Looking out towards the Sacred Grove

For balancing his phone on the ground and hitting the timer button, this isn't too bad...

We went to the Smith farm next and toured their first houses and the Sacred Grove.  During that time Ryder experienced a whole rollercoaster of emotions.  Crying because he was too tired to walk any more, and then perking back up into full-on happy mode.  It was interesting and exhausting to watch.  Almost as though he didn't get enough sleep the night before...  Anyway, letting him take pictures was an easy way to cheer him up, so I now have at least ten shots of a gravel pathway, and too many to count of various flora and fauna along the way, most of it blurry...

Selfies with happy Ryder

They were happy here, too!

Craig took the big kids around the Sacred Grove and they had a really nice time, so that was cool.

Another family picture, this time with the top of the temple barely visible in the back ground (nice, since it got cut off in our previous family picture!)

The weather surprised me again by not being hot or humid at all.  Upstate New York in July, I figured we'd be roasting the whole time, but it was overcast and really pleasant.  It kept threatening to rain, but never really did.  And it was just...  nice.  I'd worn the most heat-friendly muumuu I had (just got it in Hawaii-- thanks, Mom!), and I would have been fine in regular clothes!  Go figure.  But I was so glad to not be too hot...

We went to get lunch next.  We'd heard good things about some Mexican restaurant in the next town over, so I decided we should check it out.  The food was pretty good, but the service was really slow.  That's one of those things that doesn't normally bother me, but when I'm sitting there with five kids, I think it's in everyone's best interests to get our food out to us as fast as possible.  Also, they charged for chips and salsa, which is just wrong.  But on the plus side, Bentley snapped this adorable picture of Camille:

Love that smile so much.

Revived with our food, we went back to the actual Hill Cumorah.  I wanted to climb the hill with the kids-- you can drive to the top, but it's a nice, quick little climb and the view at the top feels more rewarding when you put the work in somehow.

Then, because we're Mormon, we had to get ice cream.  This place we went to had HUGE portions, and only took cash.  Totally worth it, even if none of the kids could finish.

That was the smallest one you could order...

And then we went to the Grandin Print Shop where the Book of Mormon was published.  In hindsight, loading the little kids up on sugar and then expecting them to demurely walk through a tour that would only interest a geek like me was probably a bad idea.  (But who isn't fascinated seeing how a printing press runs?!?!)  We were maybe halfway through before I finally pulled Colton and Camille away and let them run around on the sidewalk outside.  We try, though, don't we?

Bentley is super gangsta with Moroni...???

These three were pretty good at least!

By this time everyone was pretty much done, so we headed back to the campgrounds.  All the kids were very anxious to swim in the pool there with the Patchetts (who'd been doing all the same stuff we'd done, but in a different order), so as soon as we were back they threw on their swimsuits, dove into the pool, and were told that it would be closing in 20 minutes.  We had checked the closing time earlier and knew it was supposed to stay open until 8pm, so we were a bit confused.  It turns out that the campsite had a favorite activity they called "Christmas in July" where they would load up everyone onto a trailer, pull it around by tractor, and take us Christmas caroling around the campgrounds.

Now, I love singing and I love Christmas and I LOVE Christmas caroling, but I just can't get excited about Christmas in July.  There's just never any magic there.  And closing the pool so this could happen just really felt like cruel and unusual punishment to my older kids.  I went along gamely (because my little kids were really excited for the wagon ride), but nearly lost at the end when they insisted we had to sing all the verses of 12 Days of Christmas.  Seriously???  Was I being held hostage by Christmas songs???

Fortunately for everyone, they did open the pool up for quite a while after that, or else we might have had a rebellion on our hands.  But I probably won't ever stay at that campsite again.

The Patchetts had rented these two little cabins-- aren't they cute???

After all that, we roasted hotdogs and s'mores and foil dinners and sat around the fire enjoying one another's company.  I think we spent a lot of time talking about people who'd lost fingers-- who can resist conversation like that???  I slept great that night.

The next morning looked like it wanted to rain (it never did, though), so we packed up our tents pretty quickly and headed out.  It was Craig's birthday, so we stopped at a Dunkin Doughnuts, and I promised to make him a real celebration dinner the next night.  The drive back was long, but fine.  And it was good to be home again.

As always, Craig manages to make trips like this absolutely fun.  I'm so glad we went!