Day 5&6 Barfy, Chicago Deep Dish, Kirtland Ohio, Canadian Niagara Falls, Buffalo New York

We were packing our hotel room up to travel on to Kirtland, Ohio early this morning when Noah started throwing up.  I started panicking because bugs like this usually spread through the family really quickly and we were so far from home with 13 days of vacation more to go.  Ugh!!  Aaron gave Noah a blessing and we finished packing up and Noah threw up again.  We decided to take our chances and left to go onto Kirtland anyway.  We stopped by McDonald's for breakfast and Noah had to barf again.  We traveled on and by lunch Noah was just fine and back to his happy self.  We kept our fingers crossed and thankfully no one else caught whatever Noah had the rest of the trip.  That would have made for a pretty miserable trip so we were so grateful!!

While we were in Nauvoo we met so many different people.  It was fun to ask where everyone was from.  While we were waiting for the carriage ride we ran into a lady from Chicago.  Since we were going to be driving by the next day Aaron asked her where to get a quality deep dish Chicagoan pizza.  She gave us a few names.  Aaron took a picture of her phone and we settled on trying out Giordano's for lunch.

We weren't going into downtown Chicago and this pizza joint was on the outskirts so it fit into our travel plan perfectly.  We hit it just in time for lunch--wahoo!

They sat us by a window so we could watch the guys make our pizza throwing the dough up in the air and everything.  It was pretty cool.

However, since we did order a deep dish it takes a long time to cook.  After ordering it we waited about 40 minutes until it was done.  Matthew was fit to be tied by the time it was finished and they brought it to our table.  When we saw it, it looked substantial and delicious.

Every piece was incredibly thick and cheesy:

Aaron and I could only eat one piece until were completely stuffed.  Good thing Josh was around to finish off the last four pieces--holy cow that kid can eat!!

Everyone enjoyed the pizza and I am glad we stopped for this experience.  Now we can say we have had some truly famous Chicagoan deep dish pizza--yum!

After lunch it was time to hit the road again.  We drove through Indiana:

Then we hit Ohio--wahoo!

We finally made it to Cleveland, Ohio and checked into our hotel and crashed for the night.  Aaron gets reward points with Hilton hotels.  He has done so much traveling that he has an upgraded status at these hotels which gave us a few perks.  His favorite place is Embassy Suites only because they have a really awesome all you can eat cooked to order breakfast and a lot of other choices. The buffet was great in feeding all of our kids.  It made our food budget cheaper because we let the kids fill up on breakfast and then we wouldn't eat again until about 3 pm when we would have 'linner' lunch/dinner.  That way we only had to pay for one meal a day.

Anyway, at the Embassy Suites they have a chef that will cook omelets, pancakes, plain eggs, bacon, etc.  Matthew got in line and ordered pancakes.  He was wearing his autism shirt and hat and the chef was a really nice person.  He went out of his way and made Matthew some Mickey Mouse chocolate chip pancakes.  It was really sweet.  The kids all had to get their own Mickey Mouse chocolate chip pancakes, too.  It was pretty awesome.

However, that set the bar pretty high.  Every other Embassy Suites we stayed at Matthew asked for chocolate chip pancakes which they DON'T usually make, but they always made an exception for Matthew. We were pretty grateful for that.

Anyway after leaving the hotel we first stopped by the John Johnson Farm historic site.  The Johnson family provided a place to stay/home Joseph Smith and his family from 1831-1832.  Here, Joseph Smith received many revelations and faced serious opposition which we learned about on our tour.

The tour started in the carriage room nowadays known as the garage which still had some original beams from when the house was built.

The older missionary gave us a very informative tour and painted a great picture of what life was like back then.  He showed us how they would use the fireplace for cooking, etc.

They only had two original door knobs from when the house was built so we got to touch one of them on a door outside of the kitchen.

Original door knob/pull:

They tried to restore the home back to what it looked like when Joseph stayed there.  It appears that Mrs. Johnson liked to have her home quite colorful.  When the church acquired the property and stripped the paint they found these original colors on the floor in the bedroom:

When Joseph stayed here he had many people coming to visit him.  The Johnson family was nice enough to accommodate them.  They turned the area above the carriage room into a makeshift extra bedroom for all the new guests.  Here's what it must have looked like:

The Johnson family turned their upstairs floor into a working area for Joseph Smith.  In this makeshift office is where D&C 76 was revealed as well as many other revelations, too.  It was cool to sit and ponder what happened here:

We also learned that a mob came here and tarred and feathered Joseph at this house as well.  There was so much opposition to the people of the early days of the church.  They sacrificed so much.

After finishing at the John Johnson Farm we drove into Kirtland, proper.  We started at the Visitor's Center:

We were waiting for the next tour when one of the sister missionaries took us over to check out the restored school house next door.

I am glad our schools are more modern these days!

We started our tour by watching a film about church life in Kirtland.  We then went on a tour around the common buildings.  We started in the lumbar yard/sawmill.  The sawmill is even functional, too.

They did some pretty intricate word work back then which is pretty impressive:

We then went to tour the ashery.  The ashery converted hardwood ashes into lye, potash or pearls.  Lye was used to make soap, pearlash was used as a leavening agent.

We then stopped by the Newel K. Whitney store.  Joseph lived here for a time and established the School of the Prophets in the one of the upper rooms.  It has been restored to what they think it looked like back then:

Here's what Joseph's living quarters looked like:

During the tour Noah and Aaron decided to try out the rope/hay bed in the bedroom even though they weren't supposed to.  Jeez--I can't take them anywhere--haha!

This is the room where they had the School of the Prophets where they taught the brethren of the church about things pertaining to the gospel and the kingdom of God.   This is also where The Word of Wisdom was revealed and a few other D&C sections:

We got to see the Kirtland temple.  It is owned by the Community of Christ church so we didn't do a tour since we didn't have that kind of time.  We did walk around it and take a picture:

After that we got back on the road again.  We were headed to Niagara Falls.  We passed through Pennsylvania:

Then we hit the New York state line:

Then we made our way over to Niagara Falls.  We wanted to go into Canada to see it from that side so we had planned ahead and gotten Matthew a passport a few months ago since he turned 16.  The other kids only needed a birth certificate to go into Canada and to come back into the United States.  It was exciting to actually see the road signs to get into Canada:

And the Canadian Flag:

Going over the Peace Bridge into Canada:

Finally made it:

Right inside the Canadian border AT&T doesn't work for our cell service.  It switched to Rogers as you can see in the screen shot of Aaron's phone:

After finding a place to park the kids were mesmerized by the Falls:

They are so pretty:

We didn't ride on the Maid of the Mist, but we got to watch it make a few runs into the falls:

Niagara Falls are really a lot prettier from the Canadian side.

Niagara Falls is supposed to be a romantic place so we made sure to take a selfie--haha!

After visiting the falls for awhile we wanted to stop by a grocery store to pick up some Canadian bounty.  Aaron served his mission in Canada so he wanted to pick up some of the yummy food he ate there.  I even got in on some of the action since they actually have the true Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate bar with the good chocolate.  I used to eat those when I lived in England for a semester.  Aaron even saw some dreaded ketchup flavored potato chips.  He said when he was a missionary that kids of the people he was teaching would eat these and then want to touch the missionaries white shirts with their powdered red fingers.  Ick!

So many things to choose from:

Here's the stash we finally made it out of the store with:

We let the kids pick out their favorites. Aaron and I picked out ours, too.  Wahoo!! Lots of snacking was had in the hotel room that night!

Here's the sign telling us how to go over the Rainbow Bridge to get back into the United States:

Here's our last look at the Falls as we drove back to the United States.

I must say I was glad getting back into the U.S.A. because I had a hard time trying to figure out how fast to go since all of their speed limit signs are in kilometers per hour.  Glad I didn't get a speeding ticket while I was there since I didn't know how fast to actually drive--haha!

We spent that night in Buffalo, New York.