Temple Trip.

Our first sacrificial temple trip since the Atlanta Temple has been closed for remodeling. Willie says that our temple trip to London was a sacrifice but I think it's just that we planned to attend the temple while we were on vacation. This trip was different though. We planned to leave Friday night and return Saturday. On this trip we made a few discoveries. First, we are grateful that we have always been blessed to have a temple within 20 minutes of our home. Second, the pioneers sacrificed a lot when traveling across the plains; it shouldn't be too big of a problem to travel three hours to attend a temple session.
When we arrived at the hotel I was going through our things and realized that we had left our temple clothing (no rentals at this temple), and my temple recommend (in my temple bag). We had become so worried about other things that we forgot the MAIN thing. We thought that maybe we could see if there was some way we could borrow some clothes and maybe do a phone interview or something to make it all work out, but we couldn't call because they didn't open their doors until 5 pm. Small temple means that you have limited operating hours. Willie left us around 3:30 to head back to Atlanta for our things. He drove six hours total and ate lots of pretzels to keep him awake, as well as listened to sports radio. I took the boys swimming. Kind of scary doing it all by myself. I bought a pizza, which I had troubles in doing. The weather turned dark when we were getting out of the pool and luckily we were inside when the thunder started, Parker doesn't like thunder. The pizza guy came early and the ATM at the hotel was out of money. In the end it all worked out and the boys got a bath and were in bed by 7:45.The next morning we were off to the temple. Willie went in first and I took pictures of the boys. The weather was a bit warm and the humidity was pretty high. I was excited that the boys posed for this picture. I love how happy they are.The boys found a few sprinklers to play in. It was pretty funny. Parker would watch for the sprinkler and move just in time not to get wet. Lincoln wouldn't be watching and he would get hit right in the chest and face. Poor kid was soaking. They had fun together.

The temple was really nice. I always enjoy going to the temple, it's a nice recharge to my life. We didn't realize that we had to go European to get to Birmingham, Alabama. The sign below shows Oporto (the place we lived in Portugal) and Madrid (Spain). The sign brought back some interesting memories.