Destination: Boise

Meridian, Idaho is a short five hour drive from Sunnyside, and it was the last weekend for the new temple open house. The opportunity was too good to pass up, so we made some reservations and drove to Idaho on Friday, taking advantage of the day off of school for Veteran's Day. It was a cold wet drive, and after a pit stop at Chick-Fil-A for my growling tummy, we went to see the temple through the steady drizzle. It was big, beautiful, shiny-new, and crawling with people. I'm glad that so many people took the opportunity to tour the temple, but I have never heard so much noise inside a temple before! It was cold, dark, and rainy on the outside and warm, light, and happy on the inside--thank you, weather, for accentuating the contrast of the world vs. the temple.

Before the temple tour, we were shuffled into the stake center next door for a 12 minute video, after which we were portioned out into bite-size groups led by tour guides. It was too loud in the temple for our tour guide to do much more than steer us from room to room, but the whole experience was still positive. The temple is about FAMILY. It was so special to be inside a temple with all of my kids and my husband. I know that the temple is the house of the Lord, and that families can be together forever through the priesthood ordinances in the temple! I've said it before, and I'll say it again: being inside the temple with my whole family is HAPPY.

I'm thankful for this experience. It was all over in less than an hour, and as we exited to a tent full of sister missionaries, I had three thoughts:

1. That was quick! We drove all that way, and it's over already! 
2. It was worth the trouble! 
3. I hope our kids remember this.

The threads of Life Experiences are woven one at a time into a blanket. The more meaningful experiences we have, the thicker, plusher, and warmer our life-blanket it! The quick temple tour was one of those extra soft threads added to our family blanket as a whole and to each of our kids' personal life-blankets. My goal as a parent is to provide my kids with plenty of enriching, fuzzy experiences to put some loft into their life-blankets so they grow up to be puffy quilts: soft, huggable, warm people with depth and perspective. Maybe that metaphor was stretched a tad thin at the end there, but the point is, our trip to Idaho felt valuable and cozy.

We made a night of it. After leaving the temple, we checked in to our favorite hotel chain: Holiday Inn Express. The staff are always kind and welcoming, the beds are comfy, the rooms are clean, the pool is indoors, and the breakfast buffet is large. It's the perfect family hotel! Step one: unplug the phone and alarm clock. Step two: swimsuits on! We went for a family swim before bedtime on Friday night, then lounged in bed watching Captain America until the kids were drowsy enough to drift off to sleep. We turned off the lights in our hotel room and Amber stopped running laps around the place at last. Jeff and I read on our phones and whispered quietly to each other in the dark while the kids settled in. Listening to my kids fall asleep has to be one of my favorite things to do as a mother. It is such an intimate, sweet thing to watch them snuggle up, let go of the day, trust the night, and surrender to sleep. Their breathing slowed and the room was under the spell of sleeping children. Trust me, sleeping children are the one source of muggle magic. That hotel stay was another snazzy strand in our family "life blanket." Once the kids were all asleep, I went down to the front desk and procured two sets of earplugs to drown out their snuffly noisy breathing.

Something wonderful happened on Saturday morning: my head stopped throbbing for the first time in over two weeks! I moved around, testing it gingerly, before joyfully donning my running apparel. When Jeff returned from his run, I jogged out into residential Boise, relishing every quirky house and every footstep on the sidewalk. I lost plenty of fitness during my illness, but it still felt so good to be back out running again at last! Even better, the sky was clearing visibly as I ran, and patches of blue sky were appearing. Four miles later, I met my family at the hotel breakfast buffet. Secret: we stay at Holiday Inn Express mostly for the cinnamon rolls. Good service, clean comfy rooms, reasonable prices--all good things, but the cinnamon rolls are the biggest reason we keep coming back!

The kids went for a post-breakfast swim (cue family dance party in the elevator!) and then we checked out, loaded up, and embarked on one last Boise-venture before heading home: Table Rock. When I was researching Boise, I came across Table Rock and knew that it would be just the thing. In the interest of time, we did not do the official 4 mile loop trail, opting instead to park half a mile from the top and walk up the rest of the way. It was just right for little legs and we enjoyed blue skies and sunshine on top of the Treasure Valley panorama at our feet. After sufficiently enjoying the view, we swung through Chick-Fil-A one more time and then drove the five hours home again, arriving just after 5pm, completing our family outing in 32 hours.

 Rainy temple visit: good thing families are forever, because we're going to need that long to get a good family picture! Hah!

 This photo station was in the exit tent, and a missionary took this picture and emailed it to me with a labeled blue border.

 It was still wet, cold, and rainy when we left, but darker.

 Let's get down to business! 

 Hotel life.

 Amber got the couch, little wiggle worm.

 Morning swim! This boring mother sat on the sidelines for the second swim. Someone had to take pictures!

Table Rock:

 Saturday morning, the sky cleared and the sun came out, providing us with a dynamic view of the Boise area.

 Such bright sun!

 We peeked at the underbelly of Table Rock, and were rewarded with copious graffiti accompanied by the smell of urine. This little cave was seriously so gross.

 The heart of graffiti! We enjoyed the Moana pun.

 Walking

 Jeff and I basically carried/dragged an overtired Amber down the road. She wanted to go back up top and jump in rocky puddles, rappel off the cliff, lick the graffiti, and roll around in the pee-cave.

Adios, Idaho! It's amazing how simultaneously refreshing and exhausting a quick overnight family trip can be!