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.