Groundbreaking

Saturday was a BIG day!  For days we had planned on just going to the meeting house to watch the temple groundbreaking via satellite because we knew there was going to be a big crowd -- there were 5000 seats available to the public from all over the Valley.  So we weren't expecting that Saturday morning turned out the way it did.
The kids woke up pretty early on Saturday morning, and surprisingly I was feeling good, too -- so I thought to take the kids to Krispy Kreme to redeem their free doughnuts for getting A's at school while Kevin was at the temple.  But I told the kids they may want to get some Church clothes on before we left so that if we got back late, we could just go straight to the Stake Center.  They obeyed (can't miss Krispy Kreme, you know!), but in the meantime it was 9 a.m. and Kevin had gotten home.  He said there may not be enough time to go to KK and be back in time to go, so we told the kids that maybe we should just quickly eat breakfast and then leave to go so we could get good seats.  Again, they immediately got themselves breakfast, and somehow Krispy Kreme didn't seem too important.  I promised that if we did not make it to KK that day, Kevin and I would take them to lunch after the groundbreaking.
We were all ready to leave at 9:30 a.m. and hung around the house until it was getting close to 10.  It was still a good hour and a half before the groundbreaking.  Instead of driving to the Stake Center, we drove over to the temple site, not thinking we could get a seat at that point.  There were quite a few people there already and traffic was getting bad! Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised to find there were lots of seats left.  I called Kevin's mom to let her know we were at the temple site, and luckily she was almost ready and so she came and met us there.

 

Standing on Holy ground

We were so glad that we got to go.  It was such a great sight to see thousands of members gathered together there - by the time it started, there were many who just stood since there were no more seats left.  Elder Costa of the Presidency of the Seventy dedicated the site for construction.

 Maddie started really feeling very tired, so she slept the whole time

After the groundbreaking ceremony, we made our way to the front and got to hold the gold shovels!  What an amazing experience it was! We explained to the kids that now the ground they stood on was holy ground and we will get to see the holy temple be built, finally.  The temple had just been announced when we decided to move from Provo to Gilbert 2-1/2 years ago, and we have been waiting for this to happen for awhile.

 What the Gilbert Temple will look like

The kids' school is right across the street from the temple site, so Allie is hoping there will be windows facing the temple site to see the many phases of construction. The temple will be so close to us - only 1/2 mile away. We went to lunch at Someburros after and then I was off to do a photo shoot while Kevin watched the kids.  When I got back, Kevin and I went to our Stake conference adult meeting - Allie babysat.  When we got home, we found them all asleep on our bed.  It was one of those amazing, crazy-busy, but wonderful days!