Palmyra

So after picking up the rental car, getting all the addresses and loading up on road trip essentials we headed out to Palmyra. Driving here in the east is beautiful. Everything is so green here. The sunset was beautiful. I hate driving in the dark, because I am so afraid of the dark and apparently being in the car doesn't make it any better. We arrived at our hotel at 12:30 AM. Much too late for me and yet we stayed up for another hour watching TV/reading? Our car roared like a race car the whole time and our hotel is not the nicest but we were just glad to be here!

We woke up this morning to a down pour! Luckily it stopped by the time we were ready to head out. We ate breakfast at a cute little diner. Then we made our way to the Hill Cumorah visitor center. We saw costumes used in the pageant and watched videos talking about Joseph Smith. We then walked to the top of the hill. It was neat to think somewhere on this hill Joseph came and got the plates! There was a big monument of Moroni at the top.

Then we stopped at the temple. It was smaller then most but it was nice. It was interesting to me because every temple I have been too has been enclosed by gates. The temple here in Palmyra had a HUGE field behind it with lots of wild flowers, it was so pretty.

Our next stop was Joseph's family home, the frame house, and the sacred grove. We walked around with a tour and it was a great experience! The Smith family home was SO small for the 11 family members that lived there. It was hard to imagine we were standing in the place where Moroni came to visit Joseph! It just seems so unreal! An interesting thing I hadn't thought about was that Joseph shared a room with all his brothers, and they were all in the room when Moroni came to visit Joseph they just slept right through it! The frame home where they moved to was much more fitting for the large family. This is one of the many places Joseph hid the plates. Sensing a mob was coming he took out the bricks in front of the fire place, buried the plates, and replaced the bricks. A really cool thing they did was when someone died they planted a tree for that person. Alvin's tree is still growing strong. This type of tree is said to live for 80-100 years. Alvin's tree is working on about 200! The sacred grove was nice. They have lots of paths and benches to just sit and think. Newel said something in the grove that I really liked it went something along these lines, "It's not like this is the most beautiful place in the world and it's not like we worship this place like other religions worship places. Our father in heaven and savior just needed to visit Joseph so they came. We don't have to be in these really special places Heavenly Father can visit or speak to us wherever he needs to." It started pouring rain right as we were leaving.

 We then stopped at the Book of Mormon Publication site. This was a really neat place, they did a lot of really cool things to the building. They bought for little shops right next to the original shop so they could leave the original and build things around it. They had the shop where you could buy books. Then we went up to the top floor where we saw where the magic happened. It gives me a whole new appreciation for older books. They were made so carefully and so much time went into them! On the 2nd floor they showed us how they put the pages together, bond the books, and customized them, because every book was different. An interesting fact we learned today. For every page they had to find the steel letters and put them together into words. If you pay attention to the picture beneath there are rows of cases with an upper and lower section. The upper section holds upper case letters the lower section holds the lower case letters. That's where their names come from! They also had a gallery of original paintings we see all the time! It's amazing how beautiful the originals are.

After stopping at these sites we stopped for lunch at a hole in the wall place Katie and Kevin told us about called Chill and Grill. I was in shock to see the size of the ice cream people were walking out of there with! A medium cone, at least a foot high of ice cream. We then stopped at some antique shops, walked around main street, and went to the marina where we sat by the Erie Canal. Something really interesting to see was when you drive up to an intersection of main street on each corner you see these towering steeples of 4 different churches. A picture just couldn't do the scene justice, so we took a video, which still doesn't do it justice!

Our last stop was the Martin Harris home/farm. They don't have tours or anything like that and the original house is not there because it burned down. But the house was still really neat it was made of rocks so the outside looked so unique, nothing like I had ever seen before. Some of the missionaries live there right now.

 As we were going home we decided to stop at a cemetery on a large hill. We walked up and there were two visible headstones. The rest had been broken, moved, faded. You could tell it used to be a cemetery but very old. As we were walking around looking at the ones covered with moss we decided to go look at this one in the corner that was still standing. To our surprise it was Alvin Smith, Joseph's eldest brother! The head stone was new but when we walked around the back Alvin's old headstone had been put in this new head stone. Coolest headstone we had seen and we had no idea it was there!























Tonight we're going to go to the movies, hang out, and watch the Olympics. So far it has been a successful weekend.

Busy Being Lazy

I would love to say we've just been so busy I haven't had time to blog but that is not exactly true. There is not a lot that has been going on so I kept postponing it thinking, "something exciting will definitely happen tomorrow!" Nothing exciting happened unfortunately I just decided I should write before I get too behind!
Monday.
I studied all morning. I made a nice little desk for myself on the porch so I wouldn't have to sit inside all day. When Newel got home from work we went to the beach again. On the way there we stopped and got fish and chips. I ate all my fish! It wasn't very good though. Newel said on a scale of real English fish and chips it was a 4, 4's a pretty crappy number in comparison to a 10! It was a pretty gloomy day too so we didn't really swim or lay out, just walked around the beach. We found a sand crab, Newel doesn't like touching those almost as much as he doesn't like holding snakes! They also have like 6 volleyball sand courts and they were having some tournament or something. We sat and watched for a while. I sat and picked out the people I could play better then and wished I was playing instead of them. Is that rude? Oh well!
Tuesday.

Went to Target like most days. When I got home I realized I don't really help my case when Newel says I eat like a child and I come home with cereal like this. Yes that would be Newel's Honey Bunches of Oats and my Reese's Puffs including a prize inside!
Tuesday we were going to go to the beach but after waiting for an hour for Newel to get done with work I rode my bike home and watched chopped! Something happened with his computer and so they were there trying to fix it for an hour and a half! Newel was one of the first to get there and the last to leave! He's already such a hard worker! So instead of going to the beach we went to dinner at Maryann's Mexican Restaurant. I say that in bold not because it was SO good but because Newel got food poisoning. He was throwing up all night and all morning. Oh I did get to skype with Alyssa. Mom she sounds like she's doing really well, the only concern I have is that she'll stay in Florida and she won't come back to Utah because she loves it so much!
Wednesday. 
Back to Newel having food poisoning, he couldn't go into work because he felt so crappy so we had a stay in bed sick day yesterday. Literally we stayed in bed until 2 in the afternoon. We watched a black and white movie on Netflix called Paper Moon. It was actually pretty good I liked it! Newel felt a little better as the day went on. So to get out of the house we went to the pool for a little while. Then later that night we went for a walk. And of course Newel being Newel he called the restaurant, complained in a nice way and then asked for his money back. The guy on the phone said he'd have to call his manager. I think that's a no.

Thursday.
Today when he left he said he felt fine, and he rode his bike still instead of taking the shuttle! So hopefully it has passed. I'm supposed to take a test today but I couldn't figure out a proctor in time! I really can't afford to not take the test so I'm stressing a little bit, okay more then a little bit. But I did everything I could so hopefully my teacher is gracious to me! Cross your fingers! Today is another rainy day! It's supposed to rain all weekend. I would say, "oh well we're going to be in Palmyra anyways," but it's supposed to rain all weekend there as well. It's okay though it seems to be less humid when it rains!
So jealous all the Cusicks/Smiths/Sorensons will be in Fish Lake this weekend! Someone please reenact our engagement for us, catch a fish and name it newlyson, win the crock pot prize (maybe it will be easier since we won't be judging), kick some bum in volleyball and drink a big cup of hot chocolate for us! Have so much fun! We will definitely be there next year!

Aly at the Beach!

We didn't have to walk to church today! Yay feet! Church was good. We're feeding the missionaries in a few weeks and maybe going teaching with them? I'm nervous about it but Newel thinks I'll love it! Highlight of church, Newel accidentally introduced himself to the missionaries as Elder Cusick! He totally still wishes he we're on his mission;)

After church we started watching Justin Bieber takes over! Basically Justin Bieber music videos all day long! Highlight of TV watching, I started singing with Justin and Newel said, "Honey stop singing I can't hear Justin."

I don't know if going to the beach is Sunday activity appropriate but we went. We strapped on our backpacks, jumped on our bikes and rode to the ghetto! The beach was like a 10 minute bike ride! Newel was angry that we hadn't discovered that there was a beach so close to us before. I love just being at the beach it's so fun! We didn't get in the water we just laid on the beach and read our books. I think for family night we're going to go tomorrow, get fish and chips at a little shop on the way and then hang out at the beach.

Lady Liberty

 We rode our bikes to the train station. The first time I've ridden my bike since we got them! Then we  started our NYC day with Lady Liberty and Ellis Island. Both really neat. I don't know if we're cut out to be cruise people because that boat wasn't feeling so great when we first got on but I forgot all about as the views started getting incredible and the Asian tourist in me emerged. Fun fact about our Lady Liberty her fingernail is as long as your forearm. I'm sure glad my fingernails aren't that long! Got an audio tour for both places and it was really interesting!

After doing the touristy stuff we tried to check out ground zero but I guess you have to get tickets on line ahead of time. Kind of disappointing but I don't know how much they actually had to see anyways. So we decided to walk through China Town, Soho, Little Italy, and Little Tokyo. We took a taxi, my first time. Not as glamorous as it looks in the movies. They drive absolutely crazy! We went from 5 mph to 40 mph in 2 seconds on a small road with cars parked on both sides. I bought earrings in Soho. China Town was not what I was expecting. I don't know what I was expecting but that was not it! Definitely had to watch my purse. Little Italy smelled really yummy.











We went to dinner in Little Tokyo at a place called Momofuku. I guess the chef went on chopped once. Unfortunately he didn't win. Still awesome though that he was on my favorite show though! Line out the door the whole time we were there. Ramen bowls the size of my head. Does that mean I'm implying my head is big? I guess so. Bought some magazines and rode the train home, Newel said that's how we're going to travel every time.

It was a fun day in New York. We did much better at taking out time planning things out so we spent less time getting confused in the subways and on our feet and more time doing the things we wanted to do. Here are some more fun/random pictures of the day.