Monday, January 19, 2009

Draper Utah Temple

We took our kids up to see the open house of the Draper Utah Temple (actually we just got back about an hour ago) and let me tell you it was so beautiful!

So here's how the day went, we went on Saturday to see it. We got dressed up in our church clothes at the motel around 3pm. Then for some reason Joel calls his sister in SLC, they talk about the temple, and she mentions that most people will probably be in regular clothes, not church clothes....Joel gets off the phone and declares that we should all change our clothes again...and we do.

We then drive to the temple, needless to say we don't have a map or address, but hey it's a huge temple, it cant be too hard to find. True, it wasn't too hard, but we did get a chance to see many houses due to wrong turns.

We then get to the temple and the parking lot isn't too full, naturally we like awesome we totally lucked out, we pull in, where there are two men to great us, the kindly tell us that there is no parking at the temple. They have three stake centers set up for people to park at and get shuttled up to the temple. They give us a map, and we head to one of the stake centers. (Now we notice the hords of busses passing us)

We get to the stake center, finally find a parking spot, and notice that NOBODY not one person is in casual clothes. Dang us for listening to Tawni! Now we have to decide if we want to stay or go back to the motel and change... we opt to drive back and change.

Take two of changing into our church clothes.... and driving back to the stake center.

We decided to call Tample Square on our way back to the Stake Center, to see if they can give us more info....they mention we just need to show up at the designated stake center at the time indicated on our ticket...what a ticket, we don't have a ticket, where do you get a ticket. Now we are stressing about this whole thing, but we do still go to the stake center. We go in, where we notice tons of people sitting on rows of chairs filling the whole cultural hall. They ask us for a ticket, where we explain we are from out of town and don't have a ticket. We were told it was okay and to sit on an assigned row.

They call out about two rows at a time to board the bus, we can tell it's going to be a long wait, we weren't wrong. When we get called, we find out we don't board a bus, but go to another room to watch a movie, then we board the bus.

At the temple we get dropped of at this covered walkway they have set up that leads you to the temple, and it is chuck full of people. More people then could have been imagined, and the line creeps along. All in all it took us three hours to get through the tour....but, it was all worth it!

The Temple was so so so pretty! The kids did great considering it took us such a long time.

This was the first Saturday the tour was opened, so I think others will have an easier time then us, just remember 1.Wear church clothes 2.No parking at the Temple 3. Be prepared to wait

I hope everyone gets a chance to see it, I think the tour is opened until March 14th!

3 comments:

Adam and Robyn said...

That's awesome, I hope we can get there before it ends. Okay, so the late fee. Ours got up to $140.00 The employee asked if I could pay any of it that day and I told him I'd make him a deal if I paid half right then and there would they take the other half off. He said the could do 60/40. So I ended up paying $84.00. Oh the price we pay to rent another season of LOST huh. (PS Ben still scares the pee out me...and Sawyer rocks!) So did you start watching the new season? We have it Tivoed but haven't decided if we can handle watching them a week at a time yet.

Lori said...

I love your dedication to see the temple! I would have given up when I found out we had to get back on our church clothes! Too funny! I really want to see it!

Ryan and Jen said...

I just copied your soup recipe Yum!

I hope I get a chance to see the Draper temple. We drove by it a while back when they were still building and it looked beautiful. the homes around it are priceless too!

I'm glad you got to see it even if it was a long day.