L.A. trip

We went to Los Angeles last weekend for the stake temple trip. A stake is a group of congregations from our church, and several times a year we all have a special session at the temple. Since it's about 3 1/2 hours away (closer to 4 with stops), we like to go down the night before and stay at the temple apartments. Then Dave and I take turns watching the kids and going to the temple. This time Dave took them on a walk around the beautiful temple grounds and visitor's center while I was in the temple. As I was walking back to our apartment after my session, I noticed a young dad with a baby on his back and several young children walking with him. I thought, "Oh, how nice. That sweet dad is watching the kids while the mom is in the temple." Then when I got closer I realized it was DAVE with Chloe on his back and our boys all around him.   I tried to put Chloe on my back later, but she kept pulling my hair. So Tyler offered to carry her for me.

My boys LOVE the temple apartments. They were built in the 50's, and they're nothing fancy. But they like to play on the stairs (they drop pennies from the 4th floor and pick them up from the bottom floor), play telephone through the garbage shoot, and ride the elevators. I heard one of them say, "Who wants to go elevatoring with me?" Apparently that's when they ride the elevator up and down until someone comes in, and then they chat with them. They love to talk to adults. They're so funny!

There's also a little park right outside the temple grounds. On one side is an LDS church, and on the other side of this fence is a Catholic school. Apparently they were having a school carnival, and my kids were amazed. 

It had a bunch of full-size carnival rides plus tons of food, games and music. We thought our school carnival was fun last year - we just had a bounce house! They really wanted to go, but it was just for the students of the school.

So we just played at the park and enjoyed the music.

They always want to play on the luggage carriers, but we only let them do that when we're loading up to go home. This is their tough kids pose. On the way home we stopped to eat dinner at Olive Garden in Bakersfield. It was a little bit out of our way, but Dave really likes one of their soups, and the boys had never been there before. Then Chloe screamed for about an hour in the car, and we were all very happy to get home.