The grounds are beautiful and serene and we encouraged our children to be so also.
We spent about 45 minutes to an hour here together.
I tried to get a picture of each of my children and to spend a little time conversing with them individually. Kaitlyn proved nearly elusive; she didn’t really want her photo taken.
My older children could talk about their own experiences in the temple as they look forward to making their own temple covenants one day. My younger children could talk to me about what they do know of the temple and I could answer their questions about why the temple is so important to us. Tristan will be able to go inside the temple in just 2 more years, we realized!
The boys enjoyed time together and Lindsay was contemplative by the fountain as she looked on the temple.
We walked around the outside of the temple and gathered the children at the sign at the entrance for a picture. We found the dated cornerstone. I just missed attending this temple as we moved away from Michigan in 1985. The long temple trips to Washington D.C. from the Detroit area would be no more since Chicago would now serve this need and with so much less distance. I’m sure a childhood friend or two of mine was married here. I wouldn’t come here for almost another 10 years after its opening when my brother David and my husband I came to this Temple in October 1994 for the day. It was my last time seeing David before he went to serve his 2 year mission in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Someday these two young men will visit the temple to make their own promises and covenants as they prepare to serve as Missionaries!!! Tristan thinks about this being just 9 years away as he approaches his 10th birthday.
Sisters sit together knowing they’ve been blessed by the temple. I look on that sweet scrunchy smiley face of my youngest child. LOVE!
We imagined this to be a great place for bridal pictures. Kaitlyn thought it was a good place for a nap. And the brothers stuck together like glue. It makes me think how Tristan always asked where his brother was as a little boy. I remember telling him at one point I wasn’t sure there was ever going to be any little brother for him. Our house was tight and so was our budget but then those things don’t really matter. When Nathan was born Tristan said with a smile “I KNEW I had a little brother. I was waiting for him.” The faith of a child! Brothers and Sisters are the best gift you can give your children and I’m glad I figured out there was “one more.”
My boys held back, on their own I must add, even though this beautiful cherry tree was “a perfect climbing tree… but not at the temple.” For the most part I think parenthood is one of those things where you have to wait for years and years and years to know if you’ve been successful or not. On days like this I catch a glimmer that maybe we are moving in the right direction and not doing such a bad job after all.
Rick and I contemplate having been married in the temple as our 18th Wedding Anniversary would approach exactly one week later! Things change one day at a time and here we are. We were grateful to have this opportunity to show our children another temple on this day. Inside or outside, being at the temple is always a good experience.
