Temple and Cousins

Shortly after New Years, Elizabeth and the kids came down to Portland for a visit and to view a friend's baptism. It was a quick trip but we were so glad for the extra cousin time. Charlie and Miles LOVE their cousins so much. They talk about them daily and are always pretending that they are going to visit them (In their pretend rockets, trains, cars, motorcycles, helicopters...etc) We met them at the temple in the afternoon so Elizabeth could get some baptism photos of Gwenevere who will be getting baptized in a couple weeks. We met at the visitor center and the kids were able to play some games and go on a scavenger hunt. I had no idea there were so many kid friendly activities there.

Gwenevere made her beautiful dress with her Grandma Thomas! We are so proud of her choice to be baptized and I'm so grateful for the positive example that she is to me and my boys. 

 

We then made our way out into the below freezing temperatures to play around the temple. I had intentions of taking more formal pictures of the kids, and Gwenevere, as well as my cousin and her new fiance who met us there, but I ended up chasing my boys most of the time. That combined with my huge belly and the blistering cold left me with some random photos but great memories!

 And it was hard to get them all looking...but there you go grandparents!

Everett-3, Miles-2, Grace-5, Charlie-5, and Gwenevere-8 (but this was a week or so before her 8th birthday in case we are getting technical) 

We went into the atrium to warm up a bit, but were kindly kicked out on account of our (my) noisy children, apparently the atrium's purpose is for meditation...whoops! (there wasn't anyone else in there meditating at the time)

So much cousin love!

This was a "take my picture mom" picture! I love that he still let's me take his picture!

 5 year-olds!

And here they are again...

 

The goofs!

We then parted ways for a bit, Elizabeth took her kids to Deseret book to pick out Gwenevere's first set of scriptures while I went and picked up pizza for a cousin pizza party. We got home about the same time as Max and Elizabeth came shortly after. We also had received a package of Usbourne books which were meant as Christmas gifts. I had ordered them through Elizabeth so she had added a couple of their own books to the order and it ended up being perfect timing that they were visiting and the package arrived so we wrapped them in Christmas paper and passed out the gifts. It was fun to make Christmas last longer and all the kids were excited for their new books.  Ours have been super popular around here!!

After dinner and book gifts we made our way to the church to attend the baptism of Skye and Olivia. Skye's parents lived in Hawaii with James and Elizabeth and Skye and Gwenevere were both born in Hawaii a couple weeks apart. It was a strange coincidence when Max and I ended up being in the same ward as Skye's family. We were excited to celebrate Skye's baptism with her.

After a short and sweet service we said our goodbyes to our cousins and they started the long drive home. We are so glad we got to have a fun cousin day and that Elizabeth made the long drive down!