Rexburg Temple Open House

Last Friday, my kids and I went with Nat, Pete, and their kids to the Rexburg Temple open house. Pete had the day off, but Ben had to work, unfortunately. It was so neat. The ride up was hilarious. Pete has some sweet tunes on his i-Pod, and his kids love to rock out to certain favorites. Jake loves listening to "Mr. Roboto" and doing a little robot dance. And, according to Nat, Jake and Brock can sing the two different parts to "Take on Me" by Ah-ha. Nat has yet to catch it on video, but I can't wait to see it. Anyways, I took a little video of all the kids rocking out on our way to Rexburg. Don't judge me that my kids aren't in car seats. It was too squishy in the back, and we were running late. But I always put them in car seats. Except for that one time. :) Here's the video:

I'm so sorry I didn't get a shot of my kids and me, or Nat's family, in front of the temple. They have you watch a video in the stake center that is next to the temple, and then you walk through this heated tent tunnel all the way into the temple. So there's no photo ops on the west entrance of the temple. (And they have you check your camera when you arrive to the church.) Then, after we were done, I was too shy to ask Pete to pull over so I could make them move Brock, move the seat of the car, help me pull my kids out into the freezing cold, and take a picture of me and my kids. But I downloaded some stuff from the net and from the brochure we got when we went. So here is a pretty picture of the outside of the temple:

First, they took us to the basement, where they have the baptismal font. Dylan really wanted to take a swim in it. I've explained to Dylan about baptism, and he kind of gets it, but then I tried to explain baptism for the dead, and he was lost. A little too advanced for a four-year-old. After I told him about baptism, he goes, "But Mom, I've been baptised a lot of times. Every time I go swimming." I told him that Daddy has to say a special prayer and dunk him in a special way. I want to do a family home evening on it. We used to beg my Dad, when I was growing up, to show us how he would dunk us in the water when we got baptised. It's one of my fondest memories. So we need to do that soon. The font:

Then we went up one level to the main entrance and waiting area. I really liked the decor in this temple, because it had a wheat motif throughout. Kind of a "holla" to the agricultural origins of this region. There was wheat in the stained glass, some wheat etchings in other glass, wheat carvings in some of the carpet, and some wheat bronze carving thingeys in the bannisters. So here's the waiting area:

Then we went up another level, which had the ordinance rooms and the celestial room. Something interesting in this temple - there are two seperate ordinance rooms. Maybe that's to keep from having a back-up, like if the session in front of you is going too slow or something. The two ordinance rooms have murals painted in them of nature scenes. These murals were painted by Del Parsons, a local LDS artist who is quite famous. I didn't get to see the one with the trumpeter swans and the Tetons, but I saw the one with elk, aspen trees, and pines. I love that Del Parsons captured nature that is specific to Idaho. I just love the nature in this area. So here is the ordinance room I didn't get to see:

Here is the celestial room, which was gorgeous and had a beautiful spirit about it. I love celestial rooms. I was struck with a memory of the celestial room in the San Diego temple. I miss that temple. Soooo gorgeous. But this temple is just as pretty. The celestial room:

Then we went up one more level to see one of the sealing rooms, where couples get married. I think there are seven of them. It was fun to show the mirrors on either side of the room to Dylan, how your image goes on and on forever in the reflections of the mirrors. I told Dylan it was like being married in the temple - if you're married in the temple, your marriage can last forever. I think he understood that. One of the sealing rooms:

It's always difficult to deal with two kids when your husband isn't there, but I'm glad I took this chance to teach my kids a little bit more about the gospel.