Snow Days in Carthage

In December 2007, Grandma and Grandpa Tueller were serving an 18-month mission in the Illinois Nauvoo Mission. At the time, they were assigned to the Carthage Visitors' Center and were living in a nearby house. We decided to visit them during the Christmas holiday. We left College Station on December 26 and stayed with them in Carthage for several days before heading home on December 31.

While we were there, we visited Carthage Jail. After finishing the tour, we wanted to take a family photo around the statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. As we were getting everyone together, another family was nearby with a couple of teenagers who were jumping around and horsing around.

One of the teenagers suddenly jumped up and tried to do a roundhouse kick. Tanner happened to be standing in exactly the wrong place and got kicked right in the face. Tanner and I were the only ones in our family who saw it happen. He was stunned. Instead of stopping to see if he was okay or apologizing, the teenagers ran off and disappeared back with their family.

We eventually recovered and got our picture around the statue.

Our family with Grandma and Grandpa Tueller
at the Joseph and Hyrum Smith statue in Carthage

We also spent a day visiting Nauvoo. Because Grandma and Grandpa had served at several historic sites during their mission, we got more than the typical visitor experience.

We took one of the horse-drawn wagon tours through old Nauvoo. Grandpa Gordon had previously served as a wagon driver, so he was able to drive the team for our entire tour. Instead of having an unfamiliar missionary driving us around Nauvoo, the kids got to ride in the wagon with their grandpa holding the reins.

Grandpa Gordon drove our wagon tour through old Nauvoo

When we visited the bakery, Grandma Margaret, who had previously served there, took over the missionary role and gave us the tour herself. She told us the story of the bakery just as she had done when she was assigned there. It was fun for the kids to see Grandma and Grandpa doing some of the things they had been doing as missionaries.

We also attended church with them on Sunday. It was an unusual church meeting for us because almost everyone there was a full-time missionary. Most were senior missionary couples like Grandma and Grandpa, along with some young sister missionaries. I don't remember seeing any young elders. It was interesting to attend a church meeting where nearly the entire congregation was made up of missionaries.

One of the things I remember most about visiting Nauvoo was the cold. We walked down the road the Saints traveled when they left Nauvoo in February 1846. It was a cold winter day when we were there, which gave us at least a small sense of what it might have been like to leave Nauvoo during the winter. Of course, we knew that after our walk, we could get back into a warm vehicle and return to a warm house. The Saints leaving Nauvoo did not have that luxury.

We also saw the restored Nauvoo Temple surrounded by snow. I have a picture of Tanner standing in front of the temple on that snowy day. There was so much snow and haze in the air that the temple almost disappeared into the background behind him.

Tanner in front of the Nauvoo Temple
on a snowy December day

While we were staying in Carthage, it snowed about six inches one night. Growing up in Texas, our kids did not have many opportunities to play in that much snow. The next day, we bundled everyone up and went outside.

Grandpa Gordon came outside with us, and we started building a snowman. We rolled the snow until we had built a pretty impressive snowman, certainly much larger than anything the kids normally had the opportunity to build at home. Margaret, Annette, Tate, who was 18 months old, and Ashton, who was three, stayed inside for most of the snow playing but came outside for the family picture around our snowman.

Our family with Grandma and Grandpa Tueller
and the snowman we built outside their home in Carthage

At some point, we also started rolling another snowball. We weren't building another snowman. We just kept rolling the ball to see how big we could make it.

It kept getting bigger and bigger.

Eventually, the snowball was probably 35 to 40 inches in diameter. By then, it was getting very heavy. As we rolled it across the field, its weight caused it to pick up almost all the snow in its path.

Under the snow were many large leaves. Once the snowball became heavy enough, it started picking those up, too. Before long, our nice white snowball had leaves packed throughout it.

Then we discovered we had picked up something else.

A dead squirrel.

I don't know whether the squirrel had been caught in the snow and frozen or whether it had already been dead when the snow fell. Somehow, though, we managed to roll right over it, and the squirrel became part of our giant snowball.

So somewhere inside that enormous ball of snow in the picture is a dead squirrel.

Our giant snowball with a very unfortunate squirrel inside

We saw a lot during those few days in Carthage and Nauvoo. We visited historic sites, saw the Nauvoo Temple in the snow, rode through old Nauvoo with Grandpa driving the team, and listened to Grandma give us the bakery tour. But some of my favorite memories are simply of our kids getting to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa while they were serving their mission.

And, of course, the dead squirrel in the snowball.