Manti Temple Open House

I'm starting this post with an excerpt from a Sacrament meeting talk from March 2023. 

"My love for the temple runs deep. I grew up in small-town Ephraim Utah and frequently drove past the majestic Manti Temple. My high school was nestled in the valley near the foot of the temple hill and it was a beacon to me throughout my youth and helped to guide the choices I made and the future I wanted.

As I performed proxy baptisms, I began to understand that the ordinances and symbols of the temple always point to the Savior and His Atonement. That understanding has increased as I have made my own covenants with the Lord in the temple and as I have made the effort to make serving in the temple a priority.

The cornerstone of the Manti Temple was laid on April 14, 1879, some 30 years after they had arrived in the Sanpete Valley. There are many stories that could be told about the diligence of the workmen, who put their very best into the construction of this beautiful temple with only simple tools. Many stories of the sacrifice of the Saints who donated what would now be equal to over a million dollars often in pennies, eggs, and other small increments of sacrifice. President Gordon B. Hinckley said several years ago at the rededication of the Manti Temple, “I have been in the world’s great buildings, and in none of these have I had the feeling I get in coming to these pioneer houses of God.”3

Former United States president Ronald Reagan has been quoted as saying, “I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future.”1 His counsel resonates within me. There is something about reviewing the lessons of the past to prepare us to face the challenges of the future. What a glorious legacy of faith, courage, and ingenuity those noble early pioneers have left for us to build upon."

 I truly love the Manti Temple and it holds a special place in my heart. Not only did it impact my youth to a significant degree, but this is also the temple where I received my Temple Endowment (during a live session, which I loved). It's been a tender place of faith and growth for me. The temple closed in October 2021 for renovation and I have been SO excited for the Manti Temple Open House. I knew that I wanted to take my family to go through the open house. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for us to all go together, but David and I were able to go in March and then I planned to bring the kids in April.

 My family wanted to come down and go through it together on April 2nd, but I wanted my kids to experience it themselves without being in a big group so I scheduled tickets for the 1st AND the 2nd. I reserved a hotel room for us to stay the night for a little mini-getaway and was super excited! 

Something that we did NOT plan on was how long we would have to wait to get inside. The turnout was incredible with hundreds of people who made reservations (like we did) and hundreds and hundreds more who did not have tickets. We never waited less than 2 hours to get into the open house, but some people were waiting 4-5 hours to get in. The lines were incredibly long, but people were generally cheerful and it was a good experience! 

 Day 1 was a success. The kids did great in line and the temple was beautiful. I was so amazed at how much was exactly the same! When they renovated the Logan Temple, which was also a pioneer temple, they basically gutted it and put in a bunch of beautiful but generic decorations. However, there were a lot of people who expressed how important it was to maintain the pioneer integrity of the temple, especially the Minerva Tichert murals. They did an incredible job of addressing the renovation needs while changing very very little. 

After we went through the temple, we ate lunch at The Malt Shop and went swimming at the AC (two of my favorite childhood memories). Then we went back to The Willow Creek Inn, which is the hotel that I worked at when I was in high school. We watched some cartoons and ate ramen for dinner. It was fun to be on this little getaway, just the kids and I, but we definitely missed David. 

The next day we met up with Jenna and my parents at the Manti Temple again. I've talked about how significant the Manti Temple was to me, but it's a big part of my whole family's lives. It was neat to be there with them. We particularly loved the assembly hall on the top floor, the spiral staircases with sealing rooms at the top, and the murals in the ordinance rooms. 

After the temple, we went to our childhood friend's house - the Larsens. Lorna and my mom were best friends and we spent a lot of time with their family. The kids loved the backyard and it was nice to see David and Lauren who came to visit their mom when they heard we were in town. 

I loved this day with my family and this weekend with my kids. 

I loved this temple open house, although I feel like there was a missed opportunity at the temple open house to share about the pioneers who built the temple, to share about the faith/spirit of the temple, and to utilize the time that people spent in line. It felt a little more like the parade of homes - just looking at a pretty building - and less like a temple open house, but I think part of that was the massive amount of people there and the other part was unmet expectations on my part. But I tried to bear testimony to my children and I enjoyed the experience knowing the history and faith of this temple as I do. 

Staycation 2015

Rather going somewhere for a vacation this year, we decided that we would stay home and do some of the fun things around here that we don't normally get to do. We had some big plans for our stay-cation but halfway through we ended up getting sick. It was super lame. No one should get sick on their vacation. David and I got the worst of it. Austin had some goopy eyes a couple of days but seemed fine otherwise and Lydia seemed to avoid the bug altogether. I'm glad that they didn't get sick, but I felt bad that we weren't able to do all the fun things we had planned for them. Not that Lydia was complaining; we let her watch videos on our phone and play puzzles on the ipad, both of which are usually strictly off limits when we are at home. 

Manti Pageant

Saturday afternoon we headed down to good ole' Sanpete County. On our way down we stopped at Maple Canyon and hiked a little way up Box Canyon. It was so beautiful and I'm super excited to go camping there in a couple of weeks! Michael and Susan Barclay had a 40th Wedding Anniversary/Missionary Farewell Party that evening and we didn't want to miss out on wishing them the best. They are so wonderful and have been such an example of goodness to me in my life. I love their whole family, and they hold a special place in my heart. We were grateful to be able to spend the evening with them before they leave to be Mission Presidents in the Sofia Bulgaria Mission. 

Afterwards we went to watch the Mormon Miracle Pageant. I have special feelings towards the pageant from my years participating as a cast member and I can't watch the production without having the feelings of the testimony that I gained while participating continually wash over me. I was excited to be there with David (we've only been once before) and especially to be there with Lydia and Austin for their first time. We wondered if we might have to leave early if the kids weren't able to handle it, but they both stayed awake the whole time and did fabulously! Lydia alternated between watching "the show on the hill" and playing on the ground and Austin was content the entire time to sit on the ground and play with our frisbee, then stand by the chair and play with the seat, then sit back down and play with the frisbee. It was amazing and I'm SO glad that we went! We drove home afterwards, and although it was a late (late, late, late) night - it was definitely worth it.   

Family Movie Night

I already blogged about this HERE. But, after planning the rest of our vacation in the morning, going grocery stopping and then stopping at the library, we had a special movie-night before bed. We picked up Paddington from the Redbox (it was the best choice available for Lydia), pulled our couch up close to the TV, made popcorn, and let her eat dinner while we watched. It was fun to make it different and special by pulling up the couch and even though we didn't finish the movie that night, it was still a great kick-off to our Staycation week. 

Enter Sickness, stage left. 

Tuesday David, Austin, and I woke up with sore throats and goopy eyes. We didn't feel well and basically spent the whole day laying around the house while we let Lydia watch TV on my phone and play puzzles on the iPad. Fail. 

Wednesday, Lagoon Day! 

We had been planning to go to Lagoon for months, and were meeting up with several family members so we realllllllyy wanted to go. Luckily we were feeling better, and with the help of a little ibuprofin and some dayquill - we had a fabulous time. Amy took the day off of work to come with us, and David's parents, Cal & Sue, also came. Matt & Julie were in town from Indiana and were planning to go to Lagoon that day so we coordinated the day we were going with them and we made it a Peaden Family affair. It was fun to be able to go on some rides with Olivia and Ryan and spend some time with Matt and Julie while we were there. And it was great to have Amy, Cal, and Sue there with us because we were able to take turns going on rides and watching Austin. Lydia could actually go on a lot of the bigger rides and she loved them! Our collective favorite ride was Bombora, which was a rollercoaster that Lydia could ride. She loved it, even though she was always a little nervous about it. She'd grab tight to your arm and squeeze while giving a solid "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!" the whole time. She had the roller-coaster-yell down pat. We definitely rode Bombora the most, but we hit all of the rides in the kiddie area and most of the adult rides, too. Austin's favorite was the Log Flume, his least favorite was the Tilt-a-whirl. 

 

 

 

 

Sick Day, Again

Thursday we spent recovering from Lagoon. None of us felt great and all of our fun plans for the day got set aside for just hanging around the house. No hiking, swimming, or museum attending for us. Oh, I guess David did take Lydia to the Alpine splash pad this day. She's the only one who didn't catch the bug that the rest of us did. She felt great and we wanted her to be able to have a good vacation too, and the splash pad and ice cream cones afterwards went a long way there. My dad also came down and visited us for a while in the evening. I love spending time with my dad. He's the best. 

Friday-Fun Day

As I said above, Matt and Julie were in town with their kids. It was Avarie's 8th birthday recently, and they decided to come back to Utah to have a birthday party and to hold her baptism. They were so sweet to invite Lydia to come to Avarie's birthday party even though there is quite an age difference. It's a tradition in Julie's family that when you turn eight, you get to have your birthday party at the Lion House. They do fun pioneer games and other pioneer things and it looked really awesome. I'm almost completely sold on making that a tradition in our family, too. Such a fun and special thing. We picked up Lydia's other cousin Aubrey and took her to the party with Lydia, then dropped them off and went exploring around Temple Square. While they were at the party we went on a tour of the Beehive House, Brigham Young's house, walked around City Creek and got some super yummy ice cream.

After the party, we finally went to do the one thing that Lydia had been looking forward to all week. We went to the "Balance Houses"! When we were planning out our vacation, we asked Lydia what she would like to do if she could do anything and she said that she wanted to go to the bounce houses (which she loves). So we looked to see if there was something like that around and actually found a couple of places. Because we were already in Salt Lake we ended up going to Bounce Around Utah and Lydia was in Heaven. We had an unfortunate incident at the beginning of the summer where we were on a big inflatable slide when it tipped over and it was super scary. I had nightmares for a while about it, and I was worried that it would taint Lydia's love of her "balance houses" - but it doesn't seem to have affected her at all. She was definitely in her element - running, jumping, and sliding. 

We ended the night by going out to dinner with Jeff and Kaylee and then attending Avarie's baptism. The baptism started at seven, which is bedtime for our littles, so I spent most of the time in the hall trying to contain them. Lydia did get to go up to the font to watch the baptism and she was very reverent and interested in what was happening. She's talked about it several times since then. 

Lehi Roundup Parade

We ended our little staycation on Saturday with some of the Lehi Roundup festivities. David was still feeling pretty crummy, so he opted to stay home - but Lydia, Austin, and I joined the Rencher family to watch the parade. We love spending time with the Renchers and we love parades - so it was basically the best of all the worlds (except missing David, of course). 

After the parade, I tried to take the kids to the booths at Wines Park - but Lydia was tired and hungry and wasn't super thrilled about being there. She kept asking to do the bounce houses, but I'm pretty sure you have to pay to get a pass to do the bounce houses there and I couldn't figure out where to buy the pass. There were tears on her part and a smashed finger on my part when I tried to pull out a folding chair by the tables for us to sit on for a minute - so we didn't last long. But, we did convince David to come with us to an Edge Homes grand opening where they had a couple of little bounce houses for Lydia to jump on while David and I ate the free food that they were handing out. (Can't pass that up!) It wasn't the most stellar end of our vacation, but it was nice and we did enjoy spending our time together. 

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It was kind of a bummer to not be able to do all the things that we wanted to do for our vacation. When we reached the end, I was definitely sad that our bit "staycation" involved basically hanging out at home with just a couple of days of fun things and I was dreading having to go back to real life without another break in sight. However, I'm choosing to just be super grateful that we were able to go and do so many fun things and not worry about the things that we weren't able to do. We really did have a nice time. It's always good to be together and even better when there isn't anything that we have to be doing. I love my little family and loved spending time with them.