Our Fun Family Week, With A Baptism At The End!

Once Christmas was over, we had two weeks left before school started up again. The first of those two weeks was the only one in which the whole family was home together; after that, Nathan had to return to work and to seminary (and my parents came to visit from Colorado; more on that later). It was a week filled with this, that, and the other, as it often is. It's nice to have several days of unstructured good times! And the week's ending was all the more satisfying, because it saw the baptism of our beautiful daughter Celeste.

But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Here's a short rundown of our fun family outings at the end of 2015:

We went golfing (or mini-golfing, take your pick). Despite the rest of the country being trapped in a white, cold, wintry prison, the sun continued to shine in beautiful southern AZ. And we decided to make the most of it by going golfing! Nathan went out and played 18 at the Country Club of Green Valley; as for the rest of us, we decided to take advantage of a coupon Celeste had received for her birthday. It gave us four free games at Triple Play, our local mini-golf course/family restaurant. It was a lot of fun (and we got to eat fried food afterwards to celebrate, yum!).

We took our annual family post-Christmas day trip to Phoenix. I've blogged about this trip many times before; however, we always look forward to this fun day. In the past, we've stayed the night at a hotel; this year we decided instead to head up early and just make a long day of it. And a long (but fun) day it was!

We ate out for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Phoenix area. That's right; we left early enough in the morning to catch the tail-end of the breakfast rush at Rudy's, the Texas BBQ restaurant in Chandler that is one of our family's favorite restaurants. Mmmm, barbecue brisket-filled breakfast tacos. They were mighty tasty (and filling! It almost killed me to eat mine).

After that, it was off to the Arizona Science Center, one of our favorite museums in Arizona. Since this was late December, the museum was holding their annual "snow week," where they haul in a bunch of snow, dump it onto their front lawn, and let visitors go crazy. And go crazy our girls did.

Celeste even went barefoot through the snow! Crazy girl.

There was even a little snowfall going on in the main entryway of the Science Center, thanks to a snow machine over the walkway! It made our day feel much more "wintry."

Besides the snow, we got up to our usual shenanigans at the Science Center...

Building towers...

Learning about centrifugal force...

And experiencing an indoor interactive weather system!

 Even though we have been there several times now, it is still lots of fun.

After finishing up at the Science Center we took a trip to IKEA, where we had a delicious lunch of authentic(?) Swedish meatballs, and did a little window shopping.

My "kid" certainly enjoyed this station.

Not long after that, Nathan and I were able to take a trip to the Gilbert Arizona LDS temple, where we did some sealing ordinances (proxy marriages). It was a nice reminder of our own temple marriage 14 years ago (wow, it has been a while! Happy Anniversary to us).

 

 My wonderful generous friend Yulia was able to watch our girls (and she even did it with a sick kid!) so that Nathan and I could have a date in the House of the Lord. I am so very grateful for good people and kind favors.

Because of Yulia's sick child, we didn't linger at the temple this time around. Perhaps in a few months, we'll be able to make a longer visit. But at any rate, we enjoyed our afternoon there. And when we picked up our kids, we were able to go see the lovely Christmas lights at the other nearby temple, the Mesa Temple.

 

I posted lots of beautiful pictures from the Mesa temple trip here.http://grinninbarretts.blogspot.com/2016/01/christmas-lights-all-over-place-2015.html It was a great way to cap off a fun--and busy--day in the Phoenix area.

After that long day, we were a bit tuckered out, so we scaled back the activities somewhat for the next couple of days. However, we did still go out on a few post-Christmas shopping sprees. We went to Bookmans and cashed in the girls' Christmas gift certificates. We also had some gift cards from my brother Ray to use up as well...

 

...at The Cheesecake Factory! Yum. We decided to just get one dessert each; Aurora was happy with vanilla ice cream, but the older girls each tackled their own piece of cheesecake.

They loved the dessert, but afterward Celeste said, "I've never felt so fat in my life." Ha!

But my favorite part of the day came early, as we took our kids to visit a very special place...

...the future home of the Tucson Arizona LDS Temple. It's been a long time coming, and at long last work has begun! The kids were very excited to see the temple site at first...then a little disappointed it turned out to be just a big hole in the ground. They also wanted to get in closer to the action, but all we could do for the day was take a peek through the fence.

 

 

We plan on taking the kids back to the site every few months or so to watch the work progress and to watch the temple taking shape. Just seeing all the workers bustling around was a huge rush for me. I'm incredibly excited that a temple is coming to Tucson!

 

Another day or so after that came New Year's Eve. We celebrated the usual way...with board games, friends, food, and fireworks! It's fun to have our neighbors the Gillespies over to ring in the new year; what will we do when they leave?

 

This year, two of our three girls made it to midnight! Celeste barely survived (we kept having to shout in her face as she dozed off), but she did it! We were happy for her.

We celebrated the New Year by eating our monkey bread (of course), playing games, and sleeping a lot. That night, Grandma and Grandpa Nash arrived on a plane from Denver. They would be staying for a whole week, and the we were all very excited about it!

Our happy family week ended with an even bigger spiritual "rush" than our temple site visit. Our beautiful daughter Celeste (who turned eight in December) was able to be baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Guess who got new scriptures as a present?

Celeste had been excited about getting baptized for several months, and would talk excitedly about it every chance she got. Celeste is definitely the most "bubbly" of our three girls, so I somehow knew she would be the most excited about a big upcoming event like a baptism.

More than that, though, I know Celeste has a strong testimony of the gospel. She has a great memory for what she reads in the scriptures; often, when we do family scripture study, Celeste will recall a gospel topic we discussed weeks (or months) ago that is relevant to our current discussion. She is a believer in the power of prayer, and I have seen her pray for friends and family unprompted many times. She loves the gospel of Jesus Christ and is very mindful of her blessings.

I am so proud every time Celeste stands up in church and bears her testimony (without fear) to our large ward. I know she isn't just repeating talking points; she means what she says!

Celeste is a great kid and I know she has many great things ahead of her. She is a beautiful girl, inside and out, and I am so lucky to be her mom. We are so happy to have her in our family!

Celeste was able to share her baptismal date with a friend of her from our ward (and one of my piano students), Ava. It was so adorable to see how cute they looked and how excited they both were.

 

Yay! Grandma & Grandpa Nash made it in time!

 

Everything went smoothly for both baptisms and confirmations, and we were able to celebrate with a nice dinner with our family afterwards.

 Most of our extended family aren't able to attend our kids' baptisms...we all live so far apart from one another! But we still felt a lot of support and love from both family and friends on that day. I am confident Celeste will remember the date of her baptism happily, just as I will. What a great end to a great week.

We sure do love this kid!