Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Gilbert Arizona Tempe


This weekend was the groundbreaking for the Gilbert Arizona Temple. I am so excited to be here for this! We have had the Mesa temple since the 1920's and this will be a second one right here in the valley. I am mostly excited to take my girls through it once it's finished. That is honestly my biggest excitement - to see their faces and they look upon the beauty of the celestial room and the bride's room. I can't wait. We opted out of going to the actual site and went to the stake center instead to see a broadcast. I just didn't want to battle thousands of people with a 2 1/2 year old for hours -- because I'm sure people were there very very early!

Our stake presidency has prepared for this for a while and had a stake theme all ready for us. A few months ago they asked us to go the the site and take a family picture so that we can go back once it's built and take another picture with the temple there and compare the two and see how much we've grown spiritually during that time. At the time, it was vague, but after stake conference this weekend, it all makes sense and I'm excited about it!

We haven't gone back to get another picture and we need to before they get started too much! We took this when Nate was in Texas. But we need another with him! And it was windy and the girls weren't happy and this picture isn't framed too well with the equipment in the back. Just to the right of us are some beautiful mountains - much prettier than equipment. I'll have to post an updated version with Nate in it when we get out there again.

The adult session Saturday night was great. I felt so uplifted and ready to do better in my life. Here's the blueprint that will take us "from groundbreaking to dedication" so that we can see how far we've come on our own temple (ourselves).

They are all very basic gospel principles, but there are some specific things as well. For example, we are to pray daily as families and individuals, but they don't stop there. We are to pray "that our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will increase, that He will bless each person and family living within the boundaries of our ward and stake, and that we will reach out in love and service to each other."

On "attend the temple" we are instructed to not only go frequently but to pray for those things mentioned above when we are in the temple and we are to make a goal to attend and be accountable for that goal.

For studying the scriptures individually and as a family, they gave us numerous scriptures to read/discuss as a family (the border of the paper). I will say that we have only recently (since Nate got home) started consistently reading the scriptures as a family and it has been wonderful. Even Reagan gets to read and she looks forward to it -- Nate or I will say one or two words and she'll repeat them until her verse is over. It's funny because if she's doing something else and doesn't have her BOM open (which is almost the whole time), then she insists on opening it before she'll repeat what we tell her. She loves being a part of the reading. And the girls are doing great learning the lingo as they read. Plus, I love hearing Nate teach the girls.

Under service they talked a lot about serving not just our families or ward member, but also our neighbors. I need to reach out more to neighbors. Here in the valley, I think members have a reputation of keeping to ourselves and helping each other. I think the goal here is to change that perception so that more missionary experiences will open as this temple is built over the next few years.

So here we go on a quest to become better. . .

Monday, November 15, 2010

Reagan and Ryder played together today. They have so much fun. I get to watch Chancho every Monday from 7 to noon while Tyler and Gina go to school together (how romantic!). It is so easy to watch this boy and it keeps Reagan busy while I get the girlies off to school, do yoga (or whatever exercise for the day, most often yoga), shower and get ready. My morning flies by with someone to help me keep Reagan busy -- I should thank Tyler and Gina because today is the first day in a long time that my yoga hasn't been interrupted once by Reags. They even came in during the last five minutes and did stretches with me.

Speaking of Tyler, his birthday was on the 6th. Amy had planned on making these darling cookies and invited me over to help. I love going over and learning her tricks of the trade. It was even better because these cookies were only for Tyler and Nate so I got to do a lot more hands on learning than if she'd been doing it for someone else. She's a good teacher and I am surprised at how fun and easy it is to do these! I was especially impressed with my little deer -- yes, I actually made all those tiny deer! I was more impressed that I impressed Amy with them! They turned out cute and left me wanting to make more although I have no reason to and I can only eat sugar once a week (Happy Holiday Habits). For better pictures of the cookies, go here - Amy is amazing and it made me really miss living by her.

I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving!!!!! Seriously. The other day Reagan found this pilgrim hat and insisted on wearing it so she could be a "cowboy." I don't know where she got that but she was thrilled to be a cowboy and wore the hat most of the morning.

This weekend was the groundbreaking for the Gilbert AZ Temple as well as Stake Conference. Both were uplifting and I will work on blogging that tomorrow or Wed.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Halloween

I never got a good picture of the girls so this is all I have -- after the school party and Savy's hair was all messed up instead of slicked back in her vampire bun. Oh well. I get so sick of dressing them up five times in a week! Last weekend we had our ward carnival so this weekend we ended up going to Jill's ward carnival/trunk-or-treat Friday night. So after the exciting school parade and party, we came home and got ready for the trunk-or-treat.


Savannah has had that costume since last year when we saw it on clearance at Target. She loved it and I loved that it was only $6! She's been excited for a year to wear it for Halloween. Then London fell in love with Savannah's snow princess dress from about two years ago (weird - very weird for London). She got the glasses at her school party and they definitely made the costume more "London."


London just cracks me up!


They thought I was crazy making them pose like this.


Trunk-or-treat


Personally, I think London should have been the vampire!
Check out those teeth!


Jill had a couple streets in her ward that had lots of members and they sent out fliers about trick-or-treating on Saturday night. So we headed over there and the girls got to go around with dad. Here they are with their Archibald cousins - Dallin, Ryan, Luke and Paige.


Sunday we had a little party. I like doing fun stuff for holidays and I love Halloween. Plus, I felt bad that the girls didn't get to go out on Halloween so I planned this fun food. They were actually fine with not going out since we'd had such a non-stop busy weekend and they already had tons of candy.


Mummy hot dogs, bones 'n blood, pumpkin bread bows with soup, and apples with caramel dip. Tasty spread. I especially liked our skeletons hanging from Grandma Norma's lamp!