"Temple Trip"

I was born in the small desert town of Barstow, California. As the youngest of seven children, I remember when my older siblings were teenagers and they got to go on annual "temple trips". The purpose of these trips, I knew, was to give the youth opportunities to perform vicarious baptisms for the dead, a vital ordinance that is performed in latter-day saint temples. However, since the nearest temple was several hours away, and going there often required a hotel stay in a big city, these "temple trips" often involved going out for ice cream, or seeing a show in addition to the actual temple visit. I could hardly wait until I was old enough to participate in these fun events.

When I was 10 years old, my family moved to Utah, where temples are in nearly every town. By the time I was old enough to start participating in temple baptisms for the dead, our youth "temple trip" would involve nothing more than meeting after school, driving ten minutes to the closest temple and getting back home in time for dinner. There was no hotel stay involved, no going out for ice cream, nothing like the cool "temple trips" I remember my siblings participating in.

Now I am grown and have a family of my own. We live in a small Missouri town, and the closest temple is three hours away. Although none of my children are old enough to participate in temple work, we still took the opportunity this past weekend to take the whole family on a truly uplifting & fun "temple trip"...hotel stay and all!!!

We left Friday after school, drove to St. Louis and checked into the Marriott Courtyard Hotel just a few blocks away from the temple. We then met with our good friends from the Lake who watched our kids while Justin and I attended an endowment session. Afterwards, we picked up the kids and headed back to the hotel.

After spending one very long night with all six of our family members in one hotel room, I've learned that it's definitely time we start getting two bedroom suites when we stay away from home. The three boys slept sideways on the fold-out couch and kept wiggling around and waking each other up all night long. Eden, sleeping next to them in a pack-n-play, didn't sleep very well, and between the four of them each waking up every few hours, Justin and I got very little sleep at all!

Saturday morning, we were all tired & grumpy, but we did our best to put on a happy face as we headed out to breakfast. The hotel breakfast buffet was $9.95 per person, so we decided to save a little money and go someplace cheaper to eat. We drove around until we saw Einstein Bagels and thought that sounded good. We headed in, ordered kolaches for each of the boys and a couple of breakfast bagel sandwiches for Justin and I. We each got chocolate milk to drink and a couple of pastries to share. When everything was wrung up, the total came to over $40!!! If we weren't already a little bit grumpy due to lack of sleep, we were certainly grumpy after our $40 bagel breakfast!!!

Once breakfast was taken care of, it was time for the fun part of our trip...the zoo!! We met back up with our Lake friends at the beautiful St. Louis Zoo.

After spending so much on breakfast, we certainly couldn't bring ourselves pay for parking, so we parked a mile away and walked to the zoo entrance. Look how excited Brock and Brandon are!!!



Why wouldn't they be excited when they were about to get their picture taken on a giant toad?!



Yes, I admit, I did dress all of my boys in bright orange t-shirts so that I would be less likely to lose any of them while at the crowded zoo.



Here's a great shot of Eden's uni-toothed grin. She fits in great here in the Ozarks!



At one point, Austin tripped and skinned his knee (surprise...surprise). He spent the rest of the day walking around like this:




Look. He's still holding his shorts up even while chasing the geese!



Here's a shot of almost all of the kids...Austin was still too busy nursing his wounded knee to bother getting in the picture with the rest of the kids.





The weather was absolutely perfect all morning, but around noon, it started to get cloudy and cool, so we decided it was time to head to our next destination...COSTCO!!! (Better than Disneyland). We stocked up on all of the necessities...diapers, toilet paper and Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownie mix...and started the drive back to the Lake.


Needless to say, the kids slept great all the way back home:



Even though the main purpose of us making the trip to St. Louis in the first place was to attend the temple, we didn't get a single picture of us actually at the temple. THIS is the only picture we did manage to get of the temple:



I took it Saturday morning as we were passing by on our way to the zoo. Sad, I know.