Temple Trips with Children: How We Do It

Can't go to the temple often because you have kids? It's so hard to find a babysitter . . . and who can afford to pay a decent one for that long of a trip?

Today, I share how we have become more successful (i.e.-more frequent) about our temple trips, even as we've moved farther from temples and had our family grow.

My inspiration came from a family I knew who lived about an hour north of the Seattle Temple. They would drive their whole family down on a Saturday and drop-off one parent at the temple. The other parent would take the kids to a nearby bowling alley. 

That's right: bowling!

Maybe somewhere out there is a kid who would rather sit and listen to conference talks for three hours, but that isn't my kid, and it probably isn't yours either.

When we moved to Charleston, South Carolina, it took two hours to get to the nearest temple. Fortunately, we had some great friends who also had children, so once every 6-8 weeks we would drive up on the same morning. One family would take all the children while the first couple went in. When they came out, it was time to switch. 

We all became pros at nearby activities we could do with the kids. Weather permitting, the nearby park was a good option. Often we would walk there, which would use up time in a good way. There was a small LDS bookstore that opened around ten. The kids would enjoy the play place while one of the adults perused the books. I tried to only go in if I was serious about buying something that day.

When the weather was bad, we would drive all the kids (yes, this took some car seat and vehicle planning) to the nearest Chick-fil-a, where they played gleefully. We would buy them a morning snack to "pay" for the visit.

Then we moved states and found out we were three hours (in ideal traffic - ha!) from the nearest temple. We had to get a lot more intentional about our temple trips if they were going to happen, and even more intentional if everyone was going to be happy about it.

This is the gospel of good news! I want my kids to learn that living the gospel makes our family happy.

We had money automatically transferred to a "temple trip savings account" every pay period to save up for our temple trips (we went about 10 out of 12 months). We needed money for a hotel, a tank of gas, at least one fast food meal, plus snacks and water. For better or worse, the snacks often came out of the grocery budget.

There were a handful of times we skipped the hotel and drove there and back in one day just to save money. It wasn't fun, so usually that was just if the youth were going on a temple trip.

For a while, our exhausting mini-vacation family temple trip looked like the following:

Sample Washington DC Temple Trip Agenda

1. Drive up Friday afternoon
2. Sleep in a hotel
3. Cory wakes early and makes the first session
4. I get dressed then get the kids to dress
5. I take the kids to the hotel's continental breakfast
6. Cory comes back and catches the last of breakfast
7. We check-out of the hotel
8. Cory drops me off at the temple for my session
9. He drives to IKEA and checks the kids into the ball pit
10. He and the kids get back to the temple
11. They wait in the visitor's center for me to get out
12. We drive downtown and pay for parking
13. Visit a Smithsonian museum for a few hours
14. Drive home

Right now, the Washington DC Temple is closed for renovations. That doesn't mean we've stopped going to the temple! Living farther from the temple just means being extra intentional about it. We're still automatically transferring money into our "temple trip savings account." After adding up the cost of an extra fast food meal, more fuel, and some expensive tolls, we have decided that we can afford to go to the temple once every 6-8 weeks.

Next week I'm posting a video of one of our family's trips up to the Philadelphia Temple. I'm excited to share with you what we did and how it went.

Royal Icing Temple Cookies

I'm a serious home baker, but I recorded this video the second time I used royal icing to decorate sugar cookies. The icing was a bit thicker than ideal, but I decided to post this anyway, because I thought it might be encouraging to those even newer to this process to see that the process doesn't need to be perfect to be perfectly beautiful.

Make Sugar Cookies

I used Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe from Food Network. There are several videos as well as the recipe at that link. (I also made a batch of chocolate sugar cookies, but I lost that link. Sorry.)
Then roll the dough between two layers of parchment paper (divide the dough in half and do this twice), slide it onto a cookie sheet or cutting board, and refrigerate until firm, which will be in about 45 minutes.

When the dough is firm, peel back the top layer of parchment paper, dip your cutter in flour, and cut your first shape. While the cutter is still on the dough, slide a floured metal spatula under the dough and cutter, and transfer them together to a cookie sheet. This helps the cookies keep their shape better.

Put the cookies (with tented spires, see below) in the oven for the minimum bake time. Then remove the foil. Leave in the oven for up to a few more minutes, or until the edges of the cookies blush golden brown.

Make Royal Icing and Decorate

Make sure you have meringue powder and icing bags, couplers, and tips available!
Wilton's royal icing recipe can be found here.  Use the "thin icing" variation. Divide the icing among several cups. Cover the cups with a wet paper towel. One at a time, remove a cup from under the wet paper towel and add gel colors. Transfer into an icing bag with a coupler already in place.

 Use a small tip to outline your cookies (like a #1 or #3), and a slightly bigger tip for flooding them with icing (like a #3 or #5). Have fun with this!
I did a blue temple, then added yellow polka dots, and a blue CTR shield, then added yellow letters. If the icing is the right consistency, everything "melts" to the same level. It's part of the magic of royal icing.

Here, I did colorful diagonal stripes. Then I ran a toothpick through the stripes, but only in one direction:

This temple got a solid yellow background, large round white dots with little yellow dots in the middle. I pulled a toothpick from the center of the small dots outward, which gave a sunburst effect. (The lumps are from the icing being not quite thin enough.)

Then my daughter came home:

The cookies are supposed to air-dry for 24 hours before being stacked. That's the professional ideal. At the very least, don't stack them within the same couple of hours as when you decorate them, and then proceed with caution.
We served these as refreshments for our ward's Temple and Priesthood Preparation (Primary) meeting. I show a few more cookies in the video.

General Conference Study Challenge: President Nelson

After the October 2017 LDS General Conference, I wanted to learn more about Russell M Nelson. Each morning after dropping my son off at LDS seminary, I would listen to a talk by President Nelson. I started with his oldest conference talk, which he gave the day after he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and progressed to the present day. About two months into this challenge, President Thomas S Monson passed away, and Russell M Nelson became the new President of the church. I feel like my study of his conference talks prepared me to have a testimony of him as a prophet.
In this video I share how I did my study, as well as some of the things I learned along the way.



By the way: I was joking when I said President Nelson probably knew more Chinese than me. I'm sure he knows way more!

Sustained! April 2018 General Conference

It's a little funny . . . I never know any of these people called as general authorities, but I get so excited about their calls.
This year has taken that to the extreme as Russell M. Nelson has been called and sustained as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In one of my upcoming Youtube videos, I'll tell you all about my personal study challenge of all of President Nelson's conference talks.
Today, I was ecstatic to hear Gerrit Gong and Ulisses Soares announced as the two newest apostles. They were in the Presidency of the Seventy before their call, which means I'd seen their pictures and heard their names recently. Sometimes I've never even heard of them, so I was excited to have a little familiarity built in. It's easier to pretend I knew them.

Elder Gong, who was born in California, got a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, was the special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, and served as the Asia Area President.
Elder Soares (pronounce: Swar-ez) was born in Brazil! Correct me if I'm wrong - but I believe this is the first time since the restoration of the gospel that someone from South America was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Elder Soares got his B.A. in accounting and economics from a Catholic University in Brazil, then became an account and auditor for multinational corporations in Brazil. He had been serving in the Presidency of the Seventy and was serving on special assignment for the Presiding Bishopric at the time of his call.