Phoenix Temple Open House

Several pictures by a stranger and the only thing we can get is preston with his eye's closed and porter sticking his tongue out.  A picture worth keeping :)

Matt and I took the kids to the Phoenix Temple open house.  I have not been to an open house since I was a little girl.  My parents took us to the San Diego Temple open house and have always remembered it.  I remember beautiful rooms, and I remember everything being bright and white and just spectacular.  I am really hoping that at least Preston will remember his experience.  Right before we entered the temple Porter started to throw one of his famous, absolutely ridiculous tantrums.  We passed a water cooler filled with water and those amazing cone shaped cups that kids find so intriguing.  Porter was begging for one so I filled one up and caught back up to them to give it to them.  I gave it to Matt without communicating that it was for Porter and he gulped it up.  Porter watched in horror and the meltdown began.  Matt had to take Porter back through the line to get him his water and I thought that things were not going to go well once we entered the temple.  However, to my absolute amazement, as soon as we passed through the temple doors both boys were on their best behavior.  they both had wide eyes and you could see their astonishment on their faces.  Preston was asking Matt so many questions about everything inside, and I absolutely loved following behind listening to Matt explain all of the wonderful things about the temple.  It made me so happy and feel so blessed that we have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.  As we walked out of the temple Preston was telling us about what he loved about the temple and then he stated that "he really felt the gospel when he was in there!"  I asked him if he mean that he felt the spirit, and he said, "yeah, I felt that too!"  At least he felt something :)

And just for fun, Preston -  my junk / treasure collector, refused to take the little shoe covers off his feet and insisted that he wanted to keep them because they were special to him. He wore them on his feet all the way home.  And lucky for me I was able to sneak them into the garbage before he could insist on wearing them to school.

Fall

We have spent that last 2 months celebrating the coming of fall.  That means cooler weather, finally some outside time for these rambunctious little guys!  We decorated the house with bats, made some googley eyed bat cookies to match, carved some pumpkins, and went on a hike up in Payson to find our nature lover (Preston) some colorful leaves.

I love decorating for holidays.  My kids are always so excited to see what decorations go up.  They love to help in the festivities and I love seeing their happy little faces.

We went to a Fall Festival / pumpkin patch with their cousins.  They had a fun time riding the tractor pull, bouncing on the enormous bouncy thing, and going down giant tube slides that went so fast that your bum felt like it was on fire after you went down.  

I love these 2 little goof balls.

We went up to Payson and visited the Tonto Natural Bridge.  I have been wanting to go up here for a while and I had to pretty much twist Matt's arm to get there but I think we all had a fun excursion seeing some fall colors, enjoying the mountains and doing a tiny bit of hiking.

Preston was quite disappointed when he was not seeing leaves on our trees at home change colors.  He has always loved the color changing that happens in the fall.  In fact one day on our way to the bus stop we passed a tree that was dying so the leaves were turning brown and he started jumping up and down all excited that finally the trees were going to change color.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that the tree was just dying and it was not going to be a spectacular show that he is used to.  So of course when we got out of the car the first thing Preston does is point out the trees changing colors and runs right to them.

As we started our hike preston spotted a stick that he wanted to be his walking stick.  It was pretty big branch so matt broke it in half and ta-da we had two walking sticks for 2 boys. Matt had to show them how it was done and before long we were on our way to explore the bridge.

I am not a huge fan of cactus, but I thought they were particularly pretty when they have their fruit on them.  

On the way back up Matt had to rush up to the car with a stinky boy.  Preston and I slowly made our way back as preston pointed out some of his favorite things.  These pictures are some of his favorites.

On our way home we stopped in Fountain Hills.  Where they have this huge fountain that goes off and reaches 330 feet.  Apparently on special occasions they can have it reach over 560 feet.  It goes on for 15 minutes and is quite impressive.  The boys lost interest after about 5 minutes and went about doing what they do best.