The Draper Temple

So Alesha lives in Draper, Utah and they have just finished building the Draper Temple. Sooo, what do we do ... go for a visit of course. The Spillane's and the Thompson's went out for the weekend filled with FUN.

We first had to wait our turn to go through and see it. They had us park quite a ways away at a chapel and then shuttled us up to the temple. They showed a quick video about temples. The cousins were so excited to be together for the festivities.

The chartered buses they used were a huge hit with the kids as well. They were big WHITE buses that were marked a certain color on the windshield so that they coordinated with where people parked. Well, the lady gets on the bus and goes through this lengthy talk about not getting on the "blue" marked bus will mean hours on getting back to your car. At the end she says, "Now what color is your bus?" Everyone is quiet as Ashley very loudly states "our bus is white!" Everyone laughed. She was technically right. Poor kids probably constantly wonder what adults are talking about.

The temple was beautiful with woods from Africa and limestone from China. The bride's room had sconces on the wall that resembled crowns. Rebecca and Karley were in awe. The paintings were gorgeous. They had the carpet all tarped and instructed us to stay on the plastic. Of course once again Ashley was trying to pull bark out of the tree pots and rearrange the vases on tables. I just kept thinking, "Why can't she stay on the path!?!?" I think I will be thinking that the rest of my life. She is too curious! We were allowed to have JUST our family (well there were 20 of us) sit in a sealing room together. Someday they will be sitting there for each other's weddings.

They ended the tour at a chapel right by the temple. There were cookies and bottled water in a little reception area. We took turns taking pictures of the Hills, Spillane's and Thompson's in front of this gorgeous painting of Christ. I wish the camera wouldn't have caught such a glare.

Alesha told us of the lady who was in charge of the reception's food. She was told that the first week she would have 6,000 special VIP guests come through before it was opened to the public. She had special apricot walnut appetizers and mozzarella balls. Anyway, they had an incredible number of guests come through and each time they thought that they were out of something, they would find another tray of food. At the end of the weekend they counted up the number that went through and it was 12,000. She was in disbelief because she had just planned for barely over 6,000. It seems like those stories of food always happen except in my pantry!