Church History Museum

On Friday, we got to spend some time downtown Salt Lake at the Church History Museum and Temple Square.

It was a pretty chilly day and I forgot my coat on the ground in our place because I had to get a water bottle for the kids.  I'm very forgetful these days so if I don't write it down on my grocery list or if I put something down (like my coat) to do something else, then it will never happen or get purchased.

We parked along side Temple Square and walked across the street to the museum.  We immediately went to the information desk to ask what we should do first or if we should just wander around.  

They saw that we had littles with us so they said that we should head upstairs to the Book of Mormon play area.

We wandered through the section that had several early church artifacts first.  Arthur really enjoyed that.  He'd never been here before and he really liked seeing all the neat things that make up much of our history as Latter-day Saints.

The kids stayed busy pulling a handcart.

There were so many amazing things to look at.  They even had a little replica of the inside of a ship that many saints traveled on.  They had bunk beds that the kids could climb in and get a glimpse of what it was like.

There was a whole lot more that I thought was cool; Joseph and Hyrum Smith's death masks, artifacts from the day Carthage was attacked and they were killed, some history of Nauvoo, clothing that the early saints wore, a sealing alter from the Manti Temple, and a bunch more.

After that, we headed to where they had the Boy Scouts of America display and the kids' Book of Mormon area.

The BSA area had stations for learning how to tie knots.  I was very interested in that.  Since I only spent like two weeks in Girl Scouts (wish I had stuck it out) as a Brownies and I've only observed my dad tying stuff down, I thought it was time to finally become seasoned in the art of tying knots.  They had big 1/2" ropes and a plaque that had pictures of how to tie each type of knot.  It was very cool.  BUT, I didn't last very long.  I'm a very visual person so when my knot didn't match the picture, I walked away. :-)

Next we headed to the kids' area.  They had Nephi's boat and the kids could help put planks together to build the ship.  They also had a large room that had every kind of kitchen appliance, utensil, food, etc.  Maya was pretty much in heaven there.  There were huge, soft building blocks that I enjoyed lounging on and Kade liked building them up just to knock them down = destroy!

The last area we went to was a dress-up area that taught the kids how to do popular Latin dance.

Maya and I are wearing matching skirts.

The adult ones were extremely heavy and, as you can see, had plenty of fabric to recreate the beautiful dances.

We ended the museum tour by walking through the hall called 'The Presidents of the Church."  It was very cool to read about some of the, unknown to me, experiences they had while preparing to be a prophet and while they were serving as the Lord's anointed.

It was a very fun day and very spiritual, believe it or not.  

Tune-in tomorrow for a brief summary of what we did on Temple Square.