Temple Open House

The LDS temple here on Oahu has been undergoing a renovation for a while and was just completed a few weeks ago. They are currently having an open house so the public can come and tour the newly renovated temple. Parker and Penelope LOVE temples, in fact, any spire they see, they start yelling 'temple, temple!!' So I thought it might be fun for them to go see the inside of a temple (once a temple is dedicated, its only open to adult members of our church.) We went last weekend. The drive up was ok (its about an hour and a half away), Oliver isn't a huge fan of the car and he's getting over being sick so he wasn't too excited to spend that much time in the car but we survived. We started watching a movie about the history of the temple but we didn't quite make it to the end, the twins were trying every chair in the little tent where they were showing it and I'm sure the rest of the people had a hard time concentrating on the viewing. So we headed up to the entrance of the temple. They have booties to wear over your shoes (think shower cap but on your feet) that everyone wears to keep the carpets clean. Well Parker took one look at those things and would have nothing to do with them, he was totally freaked out and nothing was going to cover up his 'Car' shoes. One of the nice tour guides tried to take Oliver as we sorted this out which in theory would be great. However, he is still quite the mama's boy and immediately let everyone know his displeasure. So I took Oliver back, got Penelope and my booties on and told Tory he was going to have to carry Parker for the tour. The tour was just stressful, Parker wanted to be put down so he was not happy the whole tour. Penelope decided it was a great time to sing 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" at the top of her lungs and she wanted to climb on everything. We were VERY glad to get to the end of the tour. The best part (for the kids) was the cookies after the tour. I wanted to take a couple pictures after but Parker and Penelope were just too excited to play around a fountain to hold still for a photo so it was just me and my Ollie:

The drive home was long, ending with Oliver screaming for the last 20 minutes. So my kids saw the inside of a temple but frankly, I think they would have liked going to Target and hanging out in the toy aisle better and it would have been a lot easier on me. You win some and you lose some.