Vancouver BC Temple

Ever since I heard about a Temple being built in Vancouver BC I was excited and wanted to have our family go up for the open house. I love that the kids can go in the temple and see and feel the spirit of the temple. We got to go to the Tri-Cities Temple open house a few years ago, but the kids were too little to remember much about it. I also got to see the Portland Temple open house when I was a youth and it left a lasting impression on me. (Click here if you want to know more about temples) This is what we planned our mini vacation around -

The weather was beautiful for us!
And the temple is gorgeous!!!

Moroni

At first I didn't like this picture, we were goofing around, but then my sister told me, look at the picture, you can tell how much he loves you when he looks at you, after 17 1/2 years! That made me feel good that she noticed it and then I liked the picture. That's better! ;)

My sis Cindy and her daughter Aurora

The flowers were gorgeous too!

My mom & Thom

Cousins!

And Keagan being his usual silly self!

It was very nice we got there on the first day of the open house and didn't have to wait in any lines! We waited for Ray to get off work and drive up to Birch Bay, so we got a late start, but we made it!

My sister and the girls

What was very cool was that we went the first day it was open and the next weekend the youth in our ward got to go. They had to meet at the church at 5:30 a.m.! And they willingly did it. We had to give them notarized permission slips and copies of birth certificates to go, but it was well worth it!! I only heard good comments from our youth and I know they enjoyed going. Another great thing about Melissa having been there the week before - When the youth went there were a lot of people and they didn't have tour guides in every room like they did with us, so Melissa had heard what they were telling us the week before and she could share that with the others. Here are the Lacey 2ND ward youth a week later at the temple.

Vancouver Canada

After we were done seeing the Temple grounds and open house we went looking for the Olympic cauldron. Vancouver is such a beautiful city. The sun was getting ready to set so you can't see the mountains as well with the camera settings, but it was gorgeous! All of couldn't keep commenting on how beautiful it was.

We had directions to get to the cauldron... but still got lost. At least this time is was Grandpa Thom we were following and he was the one getting lost. We stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. The man was so nice there, he came out and drew us a map and told us which way to go. He told us it was funny hearing our accents. That made us all laugh (later not in front of him..)

When we going to the cauldron we went through a bad section of town. It was really sad. I have never seen so many homeless people in my life. They were lined up 3 & 4 rows deep along block after block. It was very humbling! There were police every half block or so. A little scary, but I'm glad we got to see that so we know and can appreciate how much we have!

It was a little strange, we were driving along in the "homeless" section of town and then all of a sudden... we arrived in a nice part of downtown. I even asked the rest of the family, was there some invisible line that we don't know about, or is it just me? Weird, not even a kind of inbetween, just from scary homeless part of town to BAM nice part of city!

It was sooo cool to see the Olympic cauldron for the Vancouver Winter Olympics!

You can't see it because it is so dark, but across the water are some of the skiing venues for the Olympics. The blurry spot in the middle is a gas station.. a gas station in the middle of the water, with nothing around.

We love teasing Melissa about these 2 pictures. On the computer we go back and forth between them really fast so it makes look like shes going back and forth from these 2 faces.

Birch Bay, WA

For Spring Break we went up to Birch Bay WA, which is just a few miles from the Canadian border. We got to stay at really cool condos with Cindy & Aurora & my mom & thom. My mom has timeshares with Trendwest. We have gotten to stay with them few times and they are always a lot of fun! This was the view from the top floor by the elevator.

Of course the most important part.. it had a heated pool. It was pretty cool, 1/2 of it was inside, 1/2 outside. Still to cold for me to go in... but you know how kids and pools are.

Aurora having a great time!

This is our view from the deck, looking out the front.

Birch Bay really is beautiful!

Here is back view, we can kind of see the pool and look there is our van.

We got to stay 2 nights(Thursday/Friday) and go up to the Vancouver Temple open house and see where the Olympics were and see the Peace Arch Park. I will blog those later.

Easter

Coloring Easter eggs. Always a fun thing to do, nothing special with the eggs, but we always have fun coloring them together. This year we even did it before Easter eve, we made it a Family Home Evening night. The funny thing about this Easter egg activity was when I went to go use some of the eggs...

we accidentally colored the raw ones and some hard boiled ones not knowing which was which.... oops!

Our beautiful colored regular eggs. Not all hard boiled. I thought some of them felt weird.