Temple Open House and Family Reunion

This past weekend we went to the Twin Falls Temple Open house . The temple was beautiful!!! The mural in the endowment room is amazing!!!!! One of the sealing rooms is HUGE-- it is the biggest in any temple. The kids loved the Celestial Room, especially the enormous chandelier. They also thought the sealing room mirrors were pretty neat, seeing themselves go on forever and ever. I never would have thought Twin Falls would get a temple, it's only 45 minutes from where I grew up. The closest temple before that was about 3 hours away. I love seeing how many have been built just in the last 10 years.

After the open house we went to Stephen's family reunion at Downata Hot Springs, it was all of his mom's siblings and their kids and his grandparents. We didn't sleep very good with all the noise, but the kids loved the campfire and playing with all the cousins. There was a big grassy area for the kids to play soccer and tag and just run and play. The water in the pool was very warm-- like bathwater, so we could stay in for a long time and play. R loved the big slides, T went once-- and Stephen ended up giving him a push to get him started-- then stayed in the pool the rest of the time. It was fun visiting with everyone, many of whom we only see once a year or so.

Temple Time

We had an awesome Stake Conference this last weekend. I especially love the Saturday night adult-only session. President Costa of the Presidency of the Seventy was visiting-- he is an amazing speaker. The first two speakers talked about food storage and budgeting, so I was feeling pretty good. Then Pres. Costa talked about temples and challenged us to go as a couple ONCE A WEEK!!!! And I had thought we were doing good going once a month! He issued the challenge in all 3 sessions, priesthood, adult, and the general session. And he also made several promises of really good things that will happen if we do make the temple a priority.

At first I admit I kind of baulked. The hardest part for me is finding a babysitter for the kids. If I swap with someone, that takes 2 evenings of the week, and if I pay a babysitter, that gets expensive. Plus, Stephen isn't the best at taking me on dates as it is. I'm still waiting to go out for Valentines Day-- we were on our trip, but it's still been almost a month. Hint, hint.

Anyway, we talked about it and decided that we are going to do it. We went last Thursday right before Stake Conference, then we went again last night. And it was really nice. So if anyone wants to swap kids, let me know.