Merry Christmas 2017 From The Barretts!

Happy Holidays everyone! 2017 seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye for Nathan and I; the years are truly moving faster and faster for us. I wonder if any of the rest of you feel the same? We hope this Christmas season finds you all happy and healthy and surrounded by loved ones.

We have had our share of ups and downs this year. Starting on New Year’s Day 2017, when our dishwasher broke, it has been one home repair after another for us. This year we had to replace several appliances (and repair several more); paint our home exterior; paint our stairwell; and repair our balcony, which rotted away during our wet summer monsoon! Both our cars were in the shop several times as well. Maybe we can call 2017 The Year When Everything Broke.

But for all these challenges, we have also seen many great blessings. In late December of last year, we gladly welcomed the newest member of our family: Coco Barrett, a beautiful and sweet mutt that we adopted from the local animal shelter. She is very energetic and loves to run as fast as she can; but she also loves being around people (especially kids!), and cuddling up on the couch. She is very personable and sweet to be around. She adores our girls and loves Mom & Dad, especially when they take her on lots of walks 😊 We can no longer imagine life without her!

Even though life in Tucson kept us busy, we found a little time in the summer to travel to Colorado and Utah. In the process we got to visit with most of our extended family on both sides. Even though in some cases we couldn’t manage more than a short visit, it was still wonderful to see everyone! We spent several days in Vernal, UT for the Nash family reunion and had lots of fun. We went speed-boating at Flaming Gorge Dam, visited Dinosaur National Monument, took in a rodeo, went swimming, celebrated the Fourth of July, and goofed off in Grandpa Nash’s old home with aunts, uncles, grandparents, & cousins. We had a great time.

In other great news, the Tucson Arizona Temple of the Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was completed and dedicated in 2017. The LDS church members in the Tucson area have been praying for a temple for many years now, and to have one here is a huge blessing that we are all grateful for. In June, there was a public open house held for the temple; just before the official dedication on August 13th, there was a large cultural celebration which featured thousands of LDS youth from the region.

Nathan and I were both able to help out at the open house, and Nathan and Lorelai both participated in the cultural celebration (Lorelai turned 12 on the day of the celebration, so she was eligible to participate). It was a lot of work, but the spiritual rewards have been worth it!

Here’s a quick recap of each family member, and some of their highlights from 2017:

Nathan has been teaching seminary now for three years.  He still loves spending his morning with energetic and amazing young people.  This year he has a teaching partner, so he only teaches on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and every other Friday.  Over the summer, he was asked to be a Captain of Ten for the Tucson Temple Cultural Celebration.  He had 10 youth that he cared for during the practices and rehearsals, watching for signs of dehydration (this was in the middle of August in Tucson!) and keeping track of costume changes.  The weekend of the celebration was one of the highlights of his year.  His busy schedule has caused him to switch his book consumption from dead-tree format to audio-book.  The audio-books often provide incentives to go on long walks at night, which has helped him to keep off all the weight he lost three years ago.

Adrianne’s biggest news from 2017 is that she re-entered the workforce! In January, she was hired by Great Expectations Academy as a music teacher for the elementary school students. She team-teaches with her friend Shannon and works part-time at the school each week, in addition to still teaching several private piano students (as well as her own daughters) from home. As you can imagine, this has left her with less free time. However, she still considers motherhood her “full-time job,” and works hard each week to keep her girls fed, clothed, and on top of their homework and housework. Things get crazy sometimes, but she is learning how to prioritize and balance her schedule more carefully. In her free time, she still loves to read, listen to music, jog, visit with friends, and watch TV.

Lorelai (our high-achieving, responsible, nerdy-yet-still-cool oldest child) turned 12 in August and has transformed from a kid into a teenager seemingly overnight. Even though she is probably embarrassed by Mom & Dad sometimes, she does a good job of hiding it in public. Besides participating in the temple’s youth cultural celebration, Lorelai also attended our LDS stake girl’s camp for the first time and loved it! She also kept busy performing in piano recitals, voice recitals, jazz band concerts (she plays bass trombone), and on stage.

She played Arista (one of the “mer-sisters”) in our school’s production of The Little Mermaid in the spring, and she was cast as the Mad Hatter for next year’s production of Shrek the Musical. This fall, she also ran for student body treasurer at school and won (as if she wasn’t busy enough!). In her (rare) spare time, she loves to write fan-fiction & short stories, read, & hang out with friends.

Celeste (our good-natured, outgoing, song-in-her-heart middle daughter) has tried a little of everything this year. She was a cheerleader in the winter, and is now a gymnast in the fall. She also tried out a sewing camp in the summer and loved it! She’s also been busy performing…she played a “jellyfish” and a “flamingo” in The Little Mermaid, and is playing one of the Duloc townspeople in Shrek the Musical next year (she will even have a spoken line or two; she’s pretty excited about that!).

This fall, she started beginning jazz band at the school, and has been learning how to play saxophone. She gets better every day and she loves it. Celeste also took voice lessons in the summer and fall, and serenaded us all with “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” last week at her voice recital. She just turned 10 this week, and is excited to have a new bike and (finally!) pierced ears. She is our most outgoing, thoughtful kid, and she has new friends every time we turn around. She lights the mood in our home every day!

Aurora (our intense, hard-working, sassy youngest daughter) has had a year filled with accomplishment and adventure. She took a hula dancing class in the winter and performed in several locations around town, and even went to a festival in Mesa! She also attended sewing camp in the summer and really enjoyed it. After bugging mom for several months, she was able to start piano lessons in the summer and is catching on really quickly.

But her great passion is soccer, and she had a terrific season with her under-8 team this fall. After a great season, Aurora helped lead her team to the league championship in her age group! She is very competitive, but also very generous and loves her family and friends dearly. She is always eager to “grow up” with her sisters; she can’t wait to turn 8 in January and get baptized. We love her “can-do” spirit and her joie de vivre.

We love you all and wish you the best in 2018!!

Lorelai Is Now Twelve: This Girl Will Be A Woman Soon

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, my oldest daughter Lorelai turned twelve years old this summer. With all the preparations for the Tucson Temple dedication, it was hard for her special day to not get overwhelmed. In fact, because her birthday fell on a Saturday this year, Lorelai had entertained hopes that she'd be able to have her birthday party on her actual birthday. Unfortunately, the timing of the youth cultural celebration made that dream impossible. But even if our celebrations on her birthday weren't that extensive, I think we still made a sufficiently big production out of this milestone age.

 

August 12th was a crazy date for our family this year, as I may have mentioned in my last blog post. However, we still managed to get everybody up at a decent hour and dig into Lorelai's presents.

 

 

Present-wise, we didn't get any big, major items...just a few small things that we knew she'd appreciate...including some nerd gifts, like this Harry Potter T-shirt and this Skyrim necklace!

For a few weeks, Lorelai had been repeatedly asking for "waffles with strawberries & whipped cream" for breakfast. While we all find those foods delicious, it is hard to prepare such an fancy breakfast on a school morning. But I got up early the morning of her birthday and decided to treat her. She was very pleased.

We also lit a candle and sang a song; her "full" birthday cake would come at her party a week later. Sadly, her birthday celebrations with the family had to end at this point in the day; we had to prepare everyone for the temple cultural celebration that was taking place on that very day.

Luckily, our ward's thoughtful Young Women's president brought dozens of beautiful cupcakes to celebrate with the youth of the ward. Lorelai was flattered to be remembered in the midst of all the other important goings-on.

I've already spoken at length about the cultural celebration and the temple dedication. Lorelai had a good time at both those events, but also felt that her birthday was "postponed" a bit due to all those things. We scheduled her birthday party for the following weekend; to say that it was "overplanned" is a bit of an understatement!

Originally, I thought the party would be simple enough; Lorelai wanted a "late-over," with pajamas and everything. Unfortunately, the pajama clause meant none of her male friends would be invited. Then, I thought we could add some fun "Minute To Win It" style challenge games, a movie, a gift exchange, and a dinner to the party. And then I got really ambitious and told Lorelai we would make a "mystery dinner."

A mystery dinner is where you give each guest a menu with everything written in code (including drinks, cups & silverware). Each guest has to fill out their entire order form ahead of time; then, the guests receive their meals one course at a time, with everything they ordered, no matter how badly the items clash (for example, a guest may receive spaghetti, a spoon, and ice cubes for one course; then lemonade, a fork, and pizza for the following course; and so on).

It was an idea that was lots of fun in planning, but very tricky in execution. There were a lot of girls here (twelve girls all around twelve years of age) and they were all very loud. To further complicate things, I was the only adult at home that night...Nathan was out until late in the evening! (In the long run, this was probably best for his sanity; I think he would have lost his patience with Lorelai's birthday crowd). And worst of all, our oven decided to stop working that morning...and, my car was in the shop for repairs that entire morning. It was a horrible confluence of events that left me unable to complete my cooking and unable to travel anywhere to get extra help.

Luckily, I have wonderful helpful friends. My next-door neighbor Jodie let me cook Lorelai's birthday cake and multiple dinner courses in her oven. And Lara, a mother of Lorelai's friend Addison (and a very busy woman in her own right) agreed to come and help serve up dinner for all the girls. Celeste and Aurora were helpful too (they agreed to act as waitresses), but I could not have effectively plated & served so many different, complicated food orders without the help of another adult. Lara left soon after dinner, but I was incredibly grateful for her short time there; it made a big difference to my sanity!

The girls were all laughing and having fun throughout the dinner, and they had more fun afterwards playing the Minute To Win It party games. Theses games were very silly but fun to participate in, from trying to eat a cookie off your forehead (without using your hands!) to target practice with ping-pong balls, to wearing pantyhose with a tennis ball stuffed inside from your head and using that to knock down pre-arranged targets on the floor.

It was absolute madness, but it was enjoyable madness. At least the girls all seemed to be enjoying themselves. After I (finally) managed to calm everybody down, it was time for our "white elephant" gift exchange (where every girl brought an unassigned gift, and each girl took turns picking out of the pile of unmarked presents in the middle.

Lorelai ended up with a few unique presents of her own, including this crutch (!) from her friend Anileah, who has tastes & interests almost as bizarre and inexplicable as my little girl's. Lorelai had been at Anileah's house recently and enjoyed playing with the old crutch. She was genuinely thrilled to be getting it as a present!

 

The only big disappointment for Lorelai regarding this party was that she was sick the day of the party! She had missed school the day before, and was still in recovery mode when everyone showed up. She did her best to be a good sport and still had fun, but I could tell she was very tired; she was glassy-eyed and stared off into the distance for long stretches of time. She was relieved to go to sleep when it was finally all over. We had contemplated moving the party to another day, but weren't sure if it would work, given our busy schedules. All in all, I felt a little bad hosting a party when the birthday girl was sick; hopefully Lorelai won't remember her discomfort, and only the fun, as the years go on.

After the gift exchange, everyone (finally) settled down, and watched the movie Into The Woods, occasionally singing along to the music! I was left trying to clean up the house for the rest of the night; these girls had made quite a mess! Overall, the party was a success, but I discovered this age group is truly exhausting, and I will be totally fine with not having another 12-year-old party for a while! They are big enough to make a lot of noise and have a lot of energy, and not quite mature enough to keep their drama in check. I'm not sure if I will survive being a mother to three teenage daughters.

The party wasn't quite the last part of the birthday celebration, though...Lorelai hit a few milestones at church as well. She was awarded the Faith in God award, for completing the Primary program, and she was officially recognized as a member of the "Beehive" class (twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls) in the Young Women's program. It is so hard to believe that I have a daughter in the church's Young Women's program now. It is a great program and I think she will really enjoy it, but I can't believe she is so mature and grown-up now. We are so proud.

One of the most exciting birthday presents for Lorelai was her first trip to visit the Tucson Temple as a patron. She received her limited-use temple recommend, which means she can now perform temple baptisms. For her first visit, Nathan and I attended with her; we were her "dates."

I can't describe how happy I was on this day. Attending the temple with one of my children was an amazing spiritual experience; I hope this visit will be the first of many for Lorelai, and I hope we can visit with her many more times in the future.

Twelve is an age that brings some big changes in a kid's life. In most places, boys & girls are considered able to babysit outside their homes once they turn twelve (in fact, Lorelai had her first-ever paid babysitting gig just a couple of weeks ago; our friends asked for her help and she did a great job!). It's also the age when kids leave the Primary program in our church and enter the youth program. Many people consider twelve-year-olds "teenagers." I don't think I'm quite ready to make that commitment yet; to my relief, Lorelai doesn't seem to consider herself a teenager yet either. And yet, things have definitely shifted in her life in ways that are subtle and complex.

We are still trying to figure out how to deal with some of those changes in a normal, healthy way. She has definitely been moody, withdrawn, and contrary in recent months; she's also been hard-working, responsible, giddy, and ambitious. It is hard to know how to treat Lorelai sometimes; she seems to change dramatically from day to day. I remember how turbulent early adolescence can be; I am afraid for her almost constantly sometimes. I remember being very lonely, scared, and depressed at times. Lorelai sometimes shows signs of feeling that way, but more often she has been in the ironic position of comforting me. She is sure to tell me she loves me frequently, and lets me know that she "has a good life," as she puts it. I am humbled by her desire to cheer me up; I can't believe I have a kid with such a level head. I hope she will keep it as she heads ever closer to adulthood, and I hope I can teach her everything she needs to know, and help her in whatever she needs.

The Time Is Now: The Tucson Temple Is Here

Our children's charter school usually begins the school year during the last week of July or so. As a result, our summers usually feel fairly rushed, especially compared to everyone else's. But even with school starting, we didn't feel like this last summer had truly come to a close until the weekend when the Tucson LDS Temple was dedicated.

Our family, at the temple Open House

That weekend (August 12 & 13, 2017) was the culmination of months and months of hard work by countless dedicated people. It featured a large, complex cultural celebration featuring thousands of LDS youth from nine stakes in the Tucson area. And the very next day after the cultural celebration, apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stood inside the new temple and read aloud the sacred dedicatory prayer, thus officially dedicating the temple and declaring it a House of the Lord. Now, only members of the church will be allowed to enter the temple, where they will perform sacred ordinance work on behalf of their ancestors; study the doctrines and gospel of Jesus Christ; and grow closer to God through meditation and service.

This was a day long awaited by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Tucson area. Our family was no exception! We love visiting the temple, but it has been increasingly difficult to find the time to make the long drive up to Mesa (in the Phoenix area) in order to attend. The temple for Tucson was announced over five years ago now; and after some lengthy planning/designing/red-tape-cutting with Pima County, the ground was broken for the temple's construction just over two years ago. At the time, I assumed the temple building would take between two to three years.

As it turned out, the builders worked quicker than we all thought! In early spring of this year, the open house dates and dedication dates were announced for the temple; June for the open house (when the general public is invited to tour the building), August 12th for the youth cultural celebration, and August 13th for the dedication. Our feelings were a bit mixed: we were all a little wary of holding an open house in June (it would be so darn hot!). Similarly, the cultural celebration would be taking place outdoors in early August...most likely, it would be either very hot or very rainy (August is right in the middle of Arizona's monsoon season). On the whole however, we were excited; the temple would be opening sooner than we thought it would! There was a lot to do to get ready.

Some of the info we had to learn to become open house volunteers; the all-important flow of parking!

We were all eager to help out, in some way, with any aspect of the temple celebration; open house, cultural celebration, or dedication. Nathan and I both wanted to volunteer at the open house (our stake was given two days to staff the open house), and eagerly signed up to work a few volunteer shifts when such opportunities became available. Neither of us had any jobs related to the actual dedication, but we had a few friends who sang in the dedication choir, and I was asked to help out as an accompanist at the choir's rehearsals once or twice (I also recorded their rehearsal tape for one of their songs). We were also excited that Lorelai just barely qualified to participate in the cultural celebration (it actually took place on her 12th birthday. Hard to cut it much closer than that!). Nathan was also chosen to help with the cultural celebration; he was asked to be a "captain of ten," which was basically a "youth wrangler." He was responsible for getting a specific group of ten youth to show up to practices; he was also responsible for these youth and all their belongings during all the rehearsals and the final cultural celebration itself. As a captain, Nathan would be one of the only adults on the performance field with the youth; he'd have a ground-level view of the action! He was excited to accept the calling.

But while we were excited to serve, we were also (not so secretly) glad that we weren't put into leadership positions, or on heads of committees, for anything related to the open house, cultural celebration, or dedication services. We had many friends who were appointed to such committees, or who had leadership positions, on the ward, stake, and even regional levels. My friend Shannon, whom I team-teach with at our charter school, was appointed the regional music director for the entire cultural celebration. That's a nine-stake area that includes more than 3,000 youth! She spent many many long hours listening to auditions, writing or commissioning original songs, running rehearsals, recording over a dozen songs and editing and mixing them on her computer, and coordinating her efforts with all the other committees. Whew; even writing about it makes me tired!

We must know a lot of talented people, because we ended up having several friends serve on the cultural celebration committees. Our friend Diana (the same lady who has directed all of our school's plays) was the stake dance instructor; the youth in our stake had to learn two large-scale dances that would be performed at the cultural celebration (each stake would be responsible for a separate dance, and then there was a large combined hip-hop style "missionary" dance as the finale. It was actually way cuter than it sounds). Our friend Elizabeth was the stake props & costume director. In our stake, that luckily wasn't as stressful a job as it sounds. Since the Sahuarita Stake was doing a "hoedown" dance, all the kids needed was a cowboy hat & vest, to be worn on top of their celebration T-shirt & jeans.

We also had many other friends who helped out in MANY other ways. Some were captains of ten, some provided medical or security support for the open house and cultural celebration, some were volunteer shift coordinators, some were ushers at the dedication...we really must know a lot of amazing, hard-working people, because there were a lot of man-hours put into this project. We are grateful to have so many wonderful examples of hard work and service living among us!

What was most impressive about all this work was the short turn-around time involved. At many other temples, these committees have nine months to a year to make their plans & put them into motion. In the case of the Tucson Temple, everyone only had about four to six months, so everything was on a greatly accelerated schedule. The fact that everything turned out as well as it did was a testament to the hard work, ingenuity, and spirit of everyone involved.

The temple open house lasted through most of the month of June. The first couple of days of the open house were for VIPs only; presumably, this included a variety of community leaders, government officials, businessmen, etc. Our stake asked for its musically inclined members to sign up to provide background music for these VIP guests as they exited the temple into a small covered pavilion just outside the temple following their tour. I was happy to oblige. My friends Tabatha (on flute) and Julie (on violin) formed a trio and played a half-hour set featuring several songs that used our instruments in various combinations. We met about once a week for a month leading up to this date to practice our numbers.

When we finally arrived to perform our pieces, we were slightly amused to find that almost no visitors were currently touring! We ended up playing through our set twice (the next half-hour time slot after ours hadn't been filled), and we only saw a few youth go through the temple (we were playing in the late morning; I suspect the crowds were much heavier later in the day). Also, our music was a little hard to hear, due to the loud portable air conditioners that were right next to us in the pavilion. But honestly, we didn't mind having a minuscule audience! We played our music happily, giving glory to God. For all of us, this was the first time we'd come within touching distance of the temple, and we were giddy with anticipation for our turn to enter it. That alone made all the practicing and playing worthwhile.

Just a few days later, our family got to take the open house tour ourselves. Nathan and I were overjoyed; not just because we were getting to see the inside of our new temple for the first time, but because we got to share that moment with our children...all of whom I hope will be visiting this temple regularly as they grow older!

Our open house visit was in the evening; it was hot (obviously; it's June in Tucson!), but we still loved to stand outside and admire the view. Our temple's blue dome is relatively unique among LDS temples; most of them are built with spires. We were a little surprised by the design at first, but it has quickly grown on us.

The next week, it was volunteer time for Nathan and myself! Our stake was assigned to completely staff two days of the open house; Tuesday, June 13th and Friday, June 23rd. We signed up to help on both days, but doing different jobs on each day. At first, we just signed up to be on temple usher duty on Friday the 23rd. That sounded like a dream job; we'd be inside most of the time, away from the hot weather. Secondly, we'd get to hang out inside the brand-new beautiful temple for a few hours and all we'd have to do is smile & direct the crowds from room to room. So easy!

Then we noticed that our stake was having real trouble filling its assigned volunteer positions on Tuesday the 13th. This is probably because it was on a Tuesday, in the middle of summer, and lots of families were either out of town or unable to find babysitters. Nathan and I prayed about it and decided to sign up to help as parking attendants on that day (parking was the area that was by far the most understaffed!). What's more, we each ended up signing on for two consecutive parking shifts that day; I would be doing the morning & afternoon shift, and Nathan would take the afternoon & evening shifts. We were worried about our kids, but trusted them to take care of themselves & be responsible. Luckily, our faith in them was rewarded!

I worked in two different parking lots for my two shifts; the morning shift I spent at the temple parking lot, and then switched to the LDS stake center (Sunday meetinghouse) for the afternoon shift. Nathan spent both of his shifts at the stake center. This meant that we got to work together for the afternoon shift. It was definitely hot, but mercifully ours was a "mild" June day of "only" 96 degrees. The following week saw each day topping 110 degrees; I legitimately feared for the brave volunteers who worked the open house on those days!

My morning shift at the temple was fun and drama-free. Our friend John was the shift coordinator, so we had a brief orientation from him first before manning our stations. We rotated positions every half hour or so. We were mostly responsible for directing the tour buses into the proper drop-off spots, and for politely but firmly directing visitors to park at the stake center, not the temple. Most temple open house tours begin with a presentation at a stake center; since this stake center is located a couple of miles away from the temple, and because parking at the actual temple is limited, the visitors needed to be bused to the temple after the presentation. We got a couple of confused looks when explaining this to people ("In order to visit the temple, you have to leave the temple and go to this other place!"), but most did so with no complaints.

Plus, our intrepid volunteer coordinators supplied a bunch of big umbrellas to all the volunteers, so as to keep the beating sun off our heads. I got to look like Mary Poppins and keep cool at the same time.

After finishing my work at the temple (with crowds steadily increasing in size throughout the morning), I hurried over to the stake center to begin my next shift (and to meet up with Nathan). The stake center parking attendants were responsible for directing visitors to empty parking spaces, and also for directing the large tour buses as they entered & exited the parking lot.

Nathan got pretty good at directing those buses! We spent most of our time near the south exit of the parking lot. It was hot, but we had good company and it was fun to see so many familiar faces visiting the temple. We had regular breaks and lots of snacks & water to keep us going. At the end of our day, we were hot, sweaty and very tired, but also very excited to be part of the open house. It was a very positive feeling. All the visitors were kind and polite, and all the volunteers equally so. It's nice to participate in such a "busy, hectic" event and come away feeling so positive about the whole thing!

After the open house finished at the end of June, everyone with a teenager in their home turned their focus to preparing for the cultural celebration. All the usual youth activities for the summer were suspended, to make way for song & dance practices. Besides the two dances our youth needed to learn, they also had a few songs they had to memorize as well. Adults from each ward were called to teach the youth how to sing the songs, and still more adults were called to teach the kids the dance choreography. Some kids with performing arts experience (like Lorelai and many of her school-play-alumni friends) were just fine with all these practices. Many other youth were less impressed, and struggled to come week after week. A few really frustrated kids also dropped out and opted not to participate. I was kind of bummed on behalf of those kids; I thought they were missing out on a great experience! But overall, participation was high and all the kids were patient and happy to be a part of this rare opportunity.

For Lorelai, it was a weird, transitional summer. Even though she didn't turn twelve until the day of the performance, she needed to attend all the rehearsals...so she essentially had to stop attending Activity Days, and start attending Mutual activities a few months ahead of schedule. She was in an in-between stage that made her feel a bit out of place; she wasn't quite a "young woman" yet, but she felt she didn't belong with the Primary girls either. Nevertheless, she was a good sport throughout and prepared diligently for the celebration. She did feel some burnout, particularly in the final few weeks, but overall she was happy to be a part of it.

The Saturday before the cultural celebration was an all-day outdoor activity with all the other youth of our stake. They spent hours dancing outside in the hot August sun, going over their parts again and again. The kids were all good sports, but they were also exhausted. Nathan was tired, too...he attended all the rehearsals in the final month of preparation, and he was right there alongside the kids throughout that day. Lorelai and Nathan were both red-faced, sweaty, and tired by the day's end. As a consolation, the youth all got to participate in a pool party after their long hard day of work. It was to be a brief reprieve before the long challenging weekend that would follow.

The weekend of the cultural celebration and temple dedication was crazy hectic at the beginning. That Friday night, all the youth in the region, and all the adult leaders convened at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium for the celebration's "dress rehearsal." They were thankfully allowed to wear casual clothing, but they were still there for many long hours.

These two had so much fun that weekend.

Saturday, August 12th was The Big Day. It could also be called The Long Day...but The Good Day as well! We had just enough time to celebrate Lorelai's birthday (more on that in the next blog post), and then it was off to Kino Stadium again, this time for the main event!

Luckily, the thoughtful youth leaders remembered that it was Lorelai's birthday and brought cupcakes to celebrate! It was a nice break in the action. Nathan and Lorelai were pretty tired by this point, but still excited for the show to start.

You may ask, "What were Celeste & Aurora doing this whole time?" Mostly, they were hanging out with me! We missed Lorelai and Daddy a lot during those last couple of weeks. We hoped we'd be able to attend the cultural celebration in person (it would also be televised--poorly, as it turned out--at local meetinghouses), but we were almost afraid to ask for tickets. Luckily, our stake ended up with quite a few extras, and we were happy to request a few. That night, we drove to Tucson and braved the crazy parking lot, but we were all very excited to see the results of everyone's hard work.

It was definitely a night to remember! Being in a stadium with thousands of super-excited youth was energizing. Their joy and eagerness to perform was almost palpable. And the atmosphere in the stadium grew electric when President Dieter F. Uchtdorf (a member of the First Presidency of the LDS Church) showed up to preside over the whole thing.

For months, Lorelai had been asking me if she would get to "meet" President Uchtdorf...he is her favorite LDS General Authority. He is charismatic, loving, and witty, and his talks are fun to listen to. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't able to arrange a private meeting; but Lorelai did get to see him live and in person. Uchtdorf shook the hands of several youth; sadly, he never quite made it over to our stake. But I think they all got a good look at him.

These are probably my favorite two pictures of the whole weekend (thankfully, the photographer shared them on social media & I was able to borrow them); Lorelai looking on in excitement as an Apostle of the Lord walks by. I certainly hope this is a memory she will cherish for a long time to come.

Uchtdorf opened the ceremonies with a short address. He lived in Arizona for several years as a young man, so he has a lot of affection for the state and its people. We were happy he was able to come and help dedicate our temple. After his remarks, it was showtime!

WARNING: LOTS OF VIDEOS AHEAD. Each stake had their time to shine. I didn't have the best seats in the house, but I was able to get snippets of video from many of the musical numbers. These performances evoked many different things; the Hispanic heritage of many of our youth; the dramatic and intense weather patterns in Arizona; the courage and diligence of the early saints who lived in the area; the importance of family togetherness and history; and finally, at the end, the love of missionary work and spreading the good word of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All week, we'd heard reports of the storms that were going to hit us that night. All week, we waited and sweated and worried. On performance night, though, the clouds kept their distance, and the lightning we saw was far far away. The rain didn't start falling that night until almost everyone had gone home to bed. Nathan said the cultural celebration was one of the most uplifting spiritual experiences he's had in years. I think everyone who attended that night knew they were witnessing something special, and it was an amazing event.

The next morning (Sunday, August 13th, 2017), everyone got to sleep in. Hooray! But this day was the day we'd been eagerly awaiting for five years; it was dedication day for the Tucson Arizona temple!

I don't have any pictures of the dedication. We attended it via satellite in our local meetinghouse. On the video feed, I saw several friends singing in the beautiful choir. I saw our stake president (who is a member of my ward) give the opening prayer at the dedication. Seeing all that made me quite emotional; it was a powerful reminder that this temple was our temple, for our city and our families. I have been so happy to attend temple dedications for the other temples in Arizona over the last few years, but none of them have hit me as hard as this one did. I am so grateful the church was able to build a temple in our area; I hope I can visit it often and teach my children to do so as well.

The theme of the youth cultural celebration was "The Time Is Now." This summer, all the members of the LDS Church in Tucson felt that our "time" had at last arrived. I saw so many people who wanted to be a part of this great moment, and I am so glad for the small part our family had in it. I know the temple is the house of the Lord here on earth; I am so grateful for the lessons we learn within its walls, and the work we do to strengthen eternal family bonds. I can't wait to visit our beautiful, unique, sacred temple again and again.