An Historic Day

We are so blessed to have a new temple being built about 2 1/2 miles from our house. I'm SO excited! This weekend we got to be there for the first big step, the groundbreaking. Below is a pic of what it should look like when it's finished.There were literally thousands who came for the groundbreaking. They set up 5,000 chairs and they were all filled (if anything like we were) with more than 5,000 people and then there were probably another thousand that came with blankets & chairs from home. They also broadcasted it at the church buildings in our area, but we considered this a once in a lifetime event and we felt like we had to be there in person no matter how little we could see. We decided to park about a mile away and walk cause we didn't want to get stuck in the traffic trying to get out at the end cause I had to rush to work for clients that couldn't be moved as soon as it was over. It probably took pretty close to the same amount of time, but I felt less stressed about it so that's what we decided. Plus I thought it was cool that it was close enough to walk so I figured we had to. We got there about 2 hours early. Some friends from our ward and her neighbor (she & her family are investigating the church) saw us walking and offered us a ride. When we declined they decided to save us seats. They are so sweet. It was really fun to have a whole row full of people from our ward. It made it fun to experience it together. Here's our view from our seats.Here's our row full of ward friends the Wienbergs & Alma (our new investigator friend) and her children.

The missionaries also sat with us. We love these guys. Because of Klint's calling we get to see them often & they are great guys & awesome missionaries.

Since we had LOTS of time to kill we brought lots to entertain ourselves and took walks. One thing I brought was the book I made of our blog from last year. The boys LOVE to look at it. Jameson sat for almost 45 mins "reading" it while we waited. Here he is reading it.

Here's our fam waiting for it to being. Something cute was that Alex kept saying we were at the "temple breaking".

We did have a couple of extra seats on our row so we decided to call Stacy & Derek and have them join us. It was a tight squeeze with kids piled everywhere, but totally worth it. We're so glad they came. Jen & Marvin and all 6 of their kids were there too, but they sat somewhere else cause they got there later. We were glad we got to see them there though. It was awesome to know we were all there since it will be all of our temple.

Here are the 4 boys waiting for it to start.

Cute Isaac (Stacy's 4 year old) with his program.

It was nice weather (in the mid 70's) but it was VERY sunny. Here's Isaac lying on the ground trying to keep out of the sun.

Alex wanted to borrow my sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Here's Elder Walker during the program. There were a few speakers, who were all wonderful, but I didn't get a pic of them all.

Elder Costa, from the Presidency of the Seventy, was who gave the dedicatory prayer and the actual groundbreaking.

Jameson decided he would join Isaac in trying to hide from the sun. They were so cute snuggled up on a blanket on the ground.

I love that they were holding hands. They had a great time and were so cute.

Alex hung in as long as he could, but he eventually fell asleep during the dedicatory prayer with his program in hand.

These pics aren't great, but they were as close as we could get to seeing them do the physical ground breaking.

It was a totally amazing experience and it made me even more excited (if that's even possible) to watch the temple be built.