A day of family history in Wendell, Idaho

After we partied till we dropped, we got up the next day and went on a family history expedition around Wendell, Idaho with Grammy, Aunt Carla, and Aunt Kristey.  We stopped to take a peek into Malad Gorge on the way.

Then we went to Uncle LaVar's house in Wendell.  He is my 86-year-old uncle!  We visited and then he showed us around his Model-T cars that he restored (I rembered doing this as a little girl and loved it every time!) and then went around the area with us and told us family stories.

This is a picture of the historic moment of the west bound and east bound rail ways meeting together.  My great great grandfather is the man in the light colored suit.

Mom and Carla looking at Aunt Carol's oil paintings and Uncle LaVar with his favorite of his cars.

This tractor was my grandfather's (Carl Peterson) first tractor.  He used to holler "whoa!" at it when he wanted it to stop!  

Landon on his great grandfather's tractor

Driving the hornet

Uncle LaVar honks the horn and suprised Landon covers his ears!

Old rusty!

Uncle LaVar said he started to to refinish this one and then thought "what am I doing?" Stopped, and has had a lot of FUN with this one through many years and many kids!  The kids all piled in and went for a ride!

We ate the best apples in the world off of Uncle LaVar's trees

This is the Wendell farm my mom's family moved into when they moved from Utah.  It has since been added onto.

 This house was in town where my mom lived in high school with her two sisters and mom lived after her dad died on the farm.

We visited my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins graves in the Wendell Cemetery.

My mom's parents

(they both died before I was born)

We then went to the little rock house in Jerome.  It was nearly fallen down.  It's a tiny 3 room house my mom's family with 8 children lived in.  When I was a teenager, my mom and I were able to go in and see the house, since then it hasn't been taken care of.  It's a place with a lot of good family history stories though!

I remember going to these places and many in Utah as a child.  Then it didn't mean so much as it does now.  It was wonderful to be able to share these places with the kids and hopefully the stories they read are a little more real having been there!