I love to see the Temple!

Last night we had tickets to go to the Draper Temple Open House. Maddie and Jeni were especially excited to go inside of the Temple since they've never been in one. We left our house about 5:15 and went to the church the ticket directed us too. We went inside and they directed us to the gymnasium to sit and wait. They were working their way through two rows of chairs at a time. That's when we realized that it was going to be a lengthy process and we were very unprepared to entertain four getting-hungry children for an undetermined length of time!

But as parents you learn to get creative and roll with the punches so we played plenty of "Rock, Paper, Scissors", "I Spy" and lots of poking games as well as entertaining trips to the restrooms and drinking fountains. The promise of refreshments at the end of the tour also kept us going!

Finally it was our turn. They took us into another room where we watched a short video about temples and about the Draper area. Then we got to go out and get on the bus that took us up to the Temple. They had assigned a color to each of the chapels that were staging areas and they told us to make sure and remember blue so that we could find our cars when we were done. Well Nathan heard blue and after we got on the bus in the foggy darkness he was sure we were riding on Thomas the Train. So we got to ride on "Thomas" up to the Temple.

The Temple was very crowded but well organized. We started by seeing the baptistery and Maddie and Jeni are both very excited to turn 12 so they can start doing baptisms for the dead. Everything was so beautiful and well done. Even in the hallways between rooms were interesting, beautiful pictures to look at while we waited. Next they took us through the marriage waiting room and dressing rooms and then into the ordinance rooms that had beautiful murals on the walls. The Celestial Room (me and Maddie's favorite room) was absolutely beautiful and so was the sealing room where we ended the tour. After we were done we were directed into a church building on the Temple grounds where they had cookies and water and more information as well as plenty of missionaries on hand to answer any questions we had. It was a really neat tour and I enjoyed talking to Maddie (Bob was busy with Jeni and Nate) about it as we went through.

When we finally got back to our car it was 8:45! We were all starving so we decided to go to "Chuck-A-Grandma" (Nathan's name for Chuck-A-Rama) that was just by the freeway exit. We got there just as they were closing and wouldn't let us in so we ended up going to the "Star Restaurant" (Carl's Jr.) instead. It was after 10:00 when we finally got home but it was lots of fun and a really neat experience for all of us. In fact Nathan has been asking this morning if we can go and ride Thomas to the Temple again today!