A Family Temple Trip

The Atlanta Temple belongs to me. It's mine by inheritance as well as by natural claims and experiences. By inheritance, my parents paid an assessment back when I was little that went towards building this temple. That makes it mine too. I can claim it in other ways too. I attended the ground-breaking ceremony and saw President Kimball hold that shovel. I can even remember approximately where I sat on the ground while he did it and was able to point it out in the pictures on display at the temple. That experience allows me some claim on it too. And I was there when it was dedicated. That really makes it mine. But its also where I was sealed to Tommy. Nobody can tell me its not MY temple. So this experience has really affected me and I wanted to share it with at least my family since they are the only ones I'm fairly sure read this blog anyway...

So the temple has been renovated in a LARGE way. It is only familiar to me in a couple places...that's how different it is now. It feels smaller too, but that's ok. On Tuesday, Tommy and I and Manti went to be ushers for open house tours. We did two shifts each, and let me tell you- after 8 hours of standing on your feet,.... you are tired! But our younger children have never seen inside the temple before and neither has Manti (other than the baptistry), so we HAD to take them on the only day I had off to do it. So Wednesday we had reservations to take a tour and that's what we did. We drove up to Sandy Springs again and went through the temple as a family. Along the way, I whispered things to help the kids understand a little about what this place was and why it was so sacred. Jared wanted to look into every single mirror in the building. I think he found them all too! He was impressed that he could see so much in those mirrors. They must be special. Morgan was enthralled with the chandelier hanging in the Celestial Room. He thought it was a magnificent sight. Mesa was quite emotionally involved with the Sealing Room. (That's scary, right?) Manti was intrigued with Endowment rooms and is now anxious to go back.

I've been inside the temple before. I've been in several temples now, and each is just as awe-inspiring as the next, so I didn't expect any grand revelations to happen on Wednesday. And yet, they did. Instead of paying so much attention to the temple itself, I paid attention to my children and watched them as they experienced something that took their breath away. I stood in front of those mirrors and saw eternity with my babies in arms...and they were happy to be there. I held my husbands hand as we walked our children through an introduction to their eternity to be. It was an experience I can't describe. I just don't know how.

Afterward, we went back out to the front of the temple and took pictures.

A New Manti

From this...

to this in the blink of an eye, gasp of breath and a lot of tears.

Glad we bypassed THIS phase though!

The Fishermen

My little boys have never been fishing before. Our lives have not been supportive of fun activities like that for them because Tommy's health and my excess responsibilities. I've felt bad about that, but I can only do so much. So when I get a chance to do something fun for them, I really try hard to. I do this for the older kids too,...but their ideas of fun things has changed a lot and doesn't include me nearly as often anymore.
Being in cub scouts has put me in a better position to do some stuff with the little boys, but finances have still kept a cap on that somewhat. Then I was called as a cub scout den leader- which means I'm the one planning and scheduling cub scout activities for Morgan's age group. I decided to plan a fishing trip. It gets some cub scout credit for the boys and some fishing fun for my little ones.
Emanuel Reid was our guide. He has a friend that lives on a big lake. The friend took us all out on a small fishing pontoon and parked us right on a fishing hotspot. Those boys started reeling fish in as soon as bait touched water! A total of 26 fish were brought home. I saw probably 8 more fish thrown back for being a little too small! And because there few enough of the boys, Jared got to come too. It was a great day.. see for yourself...

"Hip Talk"

This week, the Relief Society had an activity combined with the Young Women. It was a mother/daughter focused activity where we shared ice cream, worked on trivia quizzes and enjoyed entertainment. The entertainment was secretly discussed ahead of time, and I was not directly asked to be involved, so my view of it was different. Mesa was asked if she and I would perform, and Mesa said yes. Then she tells me,...and I don't get the "gist" of it all. I emailed the girl who asked Mesa and asked what this was all about. She tells me they just want us to do anything we want and use up about 4 minutes.

No problem! They clearly didn't know my family when I was young!

I asked Mesa what she wanted to do. She asked if I wanted to sing with her. I said NO WAY JOSE! I asked if she wanted to hula with me. She said NO WAY JOSE! So we agreed to do a dance----a unique dance.

She and I sat down with her MP3 player and my great mind and together we thought up phrases out of songs we knew that we could combine to create a conversation between 2 people. Then I get hold of Jamie Davis and ask if he can merge these phrases to create a single song from them. He says he can, so we start downloading music and get it to him. He works magic in less than 24 hours! He calls me and brings me the newly formed song and doesn't ask for an arm and leg! He's a sweetie!

Mesa and I start goofing around with steps. We decide that they didn't say "TALENT show", so instead of doing some choreographed awesomeness, we acted out what the songs were saying. It was so funny to us!

It starts off with a rebellious daughter dressed in black head to toe, black make-up, blue paint in her hair and chains in her pockets.....I'm dressed very nicely with my hair up,...like a mom! The music comes on and Mesa is very cooperative and dances with me to the Chicken Dance. I don't think she smiled at all! Then the music changes and she pulls out a hat to put on her head and starts dancing in a way that doesn't make conservative mom proud. *The looks on my face make this clear.*

The movements Mesa makes are a little too sleezy, so the music changes and I hold my hand to the tune of "STOP in the name of love...." ... she covers her ears and then when I quit pointing my finger at her, she gets in my face with a song that tells me she's tired of being told what to do and that nothing she does is ever good enough. I shake my head and call her to me. She reluctantly comes to me and I put her head on my shoulder---she resists but I win. I pull her hat off and toss it away, then pat her head and rub her hair to the tune of LEAN ON ME. It takes her a second, but then she jerks away from me and acts like I'm crazy,...to the tune of Ozzy Osbournes Crazy Train. Well this mom doesn't take too kindly to being called crazy, and I tell her so by telling her she makes me want to SHOUT, kick my heels up, throw my hands up throw my head back and SHOUT. Then I fold my arms and turn away from her a bit, irritated obviously.

Remember the song Baloo the Bear sang in the movie Jungle Book that goes "oobie doo,...I wanna be like you" ? Well that's the next song and Mesa starts dancing similar to that bear and coming towards me with puppy dog eyes. She bumps up against me, pokes me in the arm to get my attention and my response is to pull the hair stick from my hair and act as though I'm writing while the song "Baby write this down, take a little note to remind you in case you didn't know, tell yourself I love you and I don't want you to go...." plays for her. I get hold of her arm and guide her back in to dancing like me for a couple steps. She (of course) has to think about this, so she side steps away to the tune of "Ice Ice Baby". After she's gotten a short distance, I dance a grapevine step towards, and then her towards me to the song "I start walking your way and you start walking mine. We meet in the middle 'neath that old Georgia pine..." We do a brief couple steps of line dancing together and then I lean towards her and lipsync "Babe I love the way we work it out" and she leans towards me and lipsyncs "Thats what love is all about".

So it looks like we've come to an understanding and are dancing towards our seats in the audience when all the sudden Mesa takes off to the right side while Cyndi Lauper sings that "Girls just wanna have fun". I look at her, shrug and have to agree. So I pull my hair down and dance just like her off stage to the left.

It was fun :)
I tried to upload the video of it all, but the file size is enormous!
I'll have to make a disk and get it to you Mama, and if anybody else wants it, it will be $9.99 plus S&H...BUT WAIT! Order now and get a second copy absolutely free! That's right! Two disks for the price of one and I'll throw in a frog face sticky note with a thank you printed in my own handwriting!