We love to see the temple..

I love children.  I love how you can talk something up so big for so long that a one-night "vacation" 2 1/2 hours away can be as exciting as going to Disneyland.  We are in a fabulous ward right now.  Our bishop has adopted the suggestions from Sis. Dalton's talk at the YW Broadcast last April for our ward goals.  They are to do 3 things every day:

Read Scriptures

Pray

SMILE!

Our family decided earlier this year to do something to make it fun.  With the Vancouver Temple opening this year, we thought it would be a wonderful experience to take our kids to the open house, as well as a good incentive to do the things we should be doing anyway.  We do pretty good most of the time, at least with the nighttime stuff.   We could work on smiling a little more during stressful moments, but that's life, right? :)  Our bishop expanded on Sis. Daltons counsel a little bit to include doing the following every day:
1. Reading our scriptures individually and as a family
2. Praying morning and night individually and as a family
3. and again.... SMILE!

Our goal was to do them all, but to really focus on morning family prayers since that's where we could use the most improvement.  We had a great excuse while Dan was in school and leaving at 6 a.m. for class.  Now he leaves at 8:00.  There's no reason not to, except that Jacey LOVES to sleep in, but practice is the only way to learn a good habit right?  So we had a Family Home Evening where we introduced what became famous in our home as our "Temple Chart" 

I wish I would have taken a before picture, but it's much prettier with all of the squares filled in anyway.  I was proud of our kids.  They were so on board with this activity.  They were so excited to see the inside of a temple.  (I'm pretty sure they were pretty excited for the pool at the hotel too!)  They were good about reminding us, especially on Wednesday nights when we get home late (past kids' bedtime) from dance class, Dan's at scouts, and Sadie's STARVING that they can't go to bed until after we've had scriptures.  Because I let Jacey take books to bed with her most nights, she decided to start taking her scriptures so she could do her own "scripture study".  One night she asked me to show her where she could find the story of when Christ was born.  I helped her find Luke Chapter 2, and pointed out a few important verses.  Long after I thought she was asleep, she called out, "Mom, I finsihed that one... Can you help me find the story of Daniel and the Lion's Den now?  She had read the whole chapter, and spent much more time doing it than I do reading my scriptures on any given day.

A few other experiences that made this project soo worth it-

- Hearing our kids talk to their friends about the temple.  "Did you know a new temple was just built?!"  They were so excited, and passed that excitement onto their friends, even though many of them didn't know what temples were before the last couple of months.  Jacey had some friends over to play one rainy day, and they were playing legos.  One of the friends said, "Let's build a temple!" and they did.  Another friend drew a picture of a person going into the temple on our chart, because he said "That's me.  That would be cool if I could go to the temple with you guys."  We went to buy new clothes to wear to the temple and Jacey told every clerk that we were going to see the new temple that was built.

- I was grateful for the opportunity to bear my testimony about the temple many times in a very casual and non-awkward way when people came to our home and saw the chart on our wall.  I'm not always very good at taking those opportunities because I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable.  I learned though, that people genuinly wanted to know and were interested in why temples are so important to us.  I had many opportunities to talk about the peace I feel when I go to the temple, even during the most overwhelming times in my life and how grateful I am to know that I can be with my family even after we die because of promises we make in the temple.

The trip itself was an adventure, as trips always are with children.  You know how sometimes when you go to the temple, it seems like things happen left and right earlier in that day to stress you out, and maybe interfere with being able to go?  We kind of had that same experience with this trip.  We knew we would go, but it seems like everything took just a little longer to get ready... we couldn't find our camera, we realized last minute that we hadn't gotten a birth certificate for Sadie yet, so we had to run down to Tacoma to get one before we could cross the border, the GPS wouldn't work,  we got delayed at the border, even though it was not a weekend or rush hour when we went, we got lost finding our hotel.  We had decided to go straight to Stanley Park to let the kids run around for awhile Friday after riding in the car for so long, then get up the next morning to go to the temple.  It took us 3 hours to get to our hotel from our house (not terrible), but then it took us another 3 hours to get from the hotel to the park because traffic was so bad (it should have taken 20 minutes)  We obviously didn't plan on Friday evening traffic in downtown Vancouver.  By the time we got there, we went for a short walk and then it was dinner time.



We got in the car to go back to the hotel to find a restaurant around there, only to find out that there were only  asian restaurants by our hotel.  Guess what?  Our kids don't like Chinese, Japanese, Vietmanese, nope- none of those kinds of food.  Finally we found a McDonalds at about 8:30 p.m. and came back to the hotel to eat.  We had already promised swimming, so Dan took the kids down to the pool for a little while, and then we all crashed.  The next morning we resolved to make it a more peaceful day.  We slept in until about 8:00, then took our time getting ready and eating breakfast.  Then we realized- oops! Mom packed a size 2 white shirt for Broden to wear with his suit, and there was no chance that thing was going to fit him.  So Dan took off on another adventure to find a store that was open where he could find another shirt for him.  Finally we showed up at the temple around 12:00.  We parked our car and went to wait in line for the shuttle.  Just then it started to rain, and a  (kind of grumpy:) usher said, "Are you sure you want to do this?  The line is wrapped around the block up there and it's about a 4 hour wait."  I wanted to cry.  Of course we were going to still do it, it was the whole point of the trip.  But I knew that Sadie wouldn't be happy that long without getting hungry and tired without a stroller, and getting Broden to stay anywhere for that long, especially a line, without running around was asking a lot.  After a silent prayer, we boarded the shuttle and prepared for another chaotic day.  This is where Heavenly Father's tender mercies came into play.  Sadie was an angel.  Broden stood in line.  Our children were reverent.  They did so good.  If you spent a rainy day at my house you would know that Broden has far to much energy to be still for that long.  If he has to stay inside, he usually resorts to running laps around our couch.  We walked through the temple.  Jacey loved the celestial room with the big chandelier.  Broden liked the "lion room" (the room with the mural of the Garden of Eden)  Jacey also liked the bride's room.  Even though it felt strange to be in the temple where people where in and out of all the rooms, talking loud, wearing extremely casual dress, it was wonderful.  It felt good to know that many people in the community  were curious enough to come see what our temples are all about.  Afterwards, we ran into some friends from our ward, and then a family who was in our first ward after getting married.  It was a wonderful weekend, even with all of the setbacks in our plan.

   I learned a few things from this trip.  Nothing I've never learned before, but definately good reminders.  First I learned once again how very grateful I am to live in a time when temples truly do dot the earth.  I learned that children are capable of recognizing the spirit.  I learned that it's important to have goals to work towards.  Finally, I learned that even when we think we're doing ok, there's always something we can improve on.  As we try to improve on those things and put things of spiritual nature first in our home, our families really are happier!

P.S.  Since our trip, these are the kinds of pictures Jacey is drawing:

She talks about getting married in the temple all of the time. We're not too worried though, because she also drew this.... (with no coaching from us, I might add:)  If she brings a boyfriend home from college freshmen year, we have every intention of pulling this out! :)