Draper Utah Temple Open House

I got to spend some wonderful time with my family this last Saturday attending the public Open House of the Draper Utah Temple. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as LDS or Mormons), Temples are a very important & sacred place for us.

This Temple is built high up in the hills above the city of Draper, which is south of Salt Lake in the Salt Lake Valley. The snow was pretty, but extremely cold!

The views are quite expansive from the Temple lot area. Here's Daughter V waiting for the bus that took us up to the Temple grounds. The Open House runs for about 6 weeks, which translates into about 60,000 people going through the tour

Saturday when we were there, the air over the Valley was a little hazy...not as clear as in this photo

After a ten minute introductory movie, we walked thru various parts of the Temple. Nothing is closed to the public before the Temple is actually dedicated. I loved the use of the Sego Lily flower throughout the building...it's the state flower of Utah. The windows of the dressing/restrooms even had log cabin patterned panes in them. Here are my kids who went...left to right...daughter V, daughter E holding baby Tayge & son-in-law B. Husband doesn't like his picture taken. Afterwards, you went back into a church building next to the Temple for refreshments & a visitng area where church members could answer any questions.

I am so glad I have the knowledge of the Gospel in my life, and that I know for sure that I can be together Forever with my family!

Welcome Spring...under the snow

Daughter V-2 more months of Senior Year!

I looked out this morning and thought "What a beautiful sunrise!" I stepped out into 26 degrees of bone chilling cold! We have a couple inches of snow on the ground, covering all my pretty Spring bulbs as they bloom their little hearts out. Oh well, there's always next years blooms.

My machine class ended up being cancelled, so I stayed home and cleaned my sewing room. What a scary mess! I really can't believe I do all that damage....I'll blame it on the dogs! I never did sew all weekend, which is wierd for me.

We had a wonderful day at the Temple Saturday. I wish I could go there everyday. I leave with such a peaceful feeling that everything is going to be okay and that I can accomplish anything.

We had Ward (Church) conference on Sunday. I sang with the choir again. For the longest time our choir was made up mainly of men with a few strong sopranos thrown in. Now we altos dominate the group...yeah, altos! In fact, we went to sing and realized we had no tenors. One man ran up at the last minute and sang his tenor notes as loud as he could. I got a little teary eyed when we sang the song "Families can be together Forever", especially since Tayge was just added to our family. Here's the words:

I have a family here on Earth.
They are so good to me.
I want to share my life with them through all eternity.

Families can be together forever.
Through Heavenly Father's plan.
I always want to be with my own family.
And the Lord has shown me how I can.
The Lord has shown me how I can.

Words by Ruth M Gardner 1980
Music by Vanja Y Watkins 1980

Today has been the usual Monday errands. I am making dinner for the new mommy and her husbands family (since they live with them). When I had E my mom came for a week and cooked and cleaned and took care of me and E and began to teach me all the tips new mommies need to survive. I don't get to do that with E, which makes me a little sad, so I thought I should at least do one dinner to give them all a break. And while they are eating, I'll steal baby Tayge and nibble on his toes!

Babies, quilting and more

Tayge at one day old...cute, huh! I promise, I won't be posting a new baby photo everyday. I just couldn't resist....he's so beautiful! I actually heard him cry yesterday. The little family of three are settling down at home.

I have done other things beside gaze at the most handsome baby boy. I worked on a art quilt...I used the background that was going towards the scripture quilt. It now has black circles and half circles added to it.

I also went to lunch yesterday with two of my brothers and Dad. We went out for a fish lunch, then went and decorated my Mom's grave for her (what would have been) 85th birthday. My brother R bought beautiful pink roses. We also put tulips on our Grandparent H graves-right next to Mom and some of the roses on Great Aunt G's grave. The cemetery has taken down a building and some plantings, so it took us a while to find the graves.

Today, I am back to house cleaning, a sewing machine class this afternoon and getting ready to go to the Temple tomorrow morning. I have been working on my bio families genealogy for about 12 years now. There is about 4000 plus people in my bio-father's file. Lots of Temple work to do yet!