Our Night at the Temple

There are few things in life that compare to the peaceful tranquility of spending time in the temple. This week Steve and I were able to take our girls INSIDE, for the open house of the new Calgary Temple. It's hard to put into words just how special that experience was.

Our ultimate goal in life isn't to convert a bunch of people to our faith, although that's a nice idea,

our goal is to be together as a family, forever.

The promises that we make in the temple help us to achieve that goal, through faithful obedience,

and hopefully our kids will want the same for themselves and their future families.

We loved being inside this holy place with our girls. We loved seeing Kalea's face light up as we explained different things to her. We loved watching her grab her sisters hand and walk the halls more reverent than we've seen her in the last 4yrs.

We loved the smiles on their faces as they spun in front of the mirror in the Brides Room,

where someday I'll help them into their "princess dresses". We loved hearing them chat to each other in the backseat on the way home, about how they love the temple, about the "sparkles" aka chandeliers, and hearing Kalea exclaim that she wants to go back.

Brynlee's take on it was a little different, she seems to think the temple is a castle and Jesus fights the dragons. She also thinks that the font in the baptistry is a pool and told us that she wants to go swimming at the temple... We have a little work to do on that one :)

If anything, we hope and pray that the girls remember the feelings they had inside the temple,

at one point I asked Kalea how her heart felt and she said "My heart is happy, Mom!"

It's true, in the temple our hearts are happy, if you haven't gone for a tour, I highly recommend it.

www.calgarymormontemple.org

Thank You!

Kalea had her appointment at the hospital last week so we got to take in her birthday gifts for the Children's Hospital. I kind've spaced and didn't get a picture of her with the GIANT gift bag of toys, but the hospital did! It was really cute to watch her carry the bag up the stairs and put it up on the counter at the Foundation office. The ladies were so sweet and thankful, and when they asked Kalea about the bag she said very matter-of-factly "This presents is for the kids at the hopspital". Then they asked where she got the toys and she told them "For my birthday!", which totally made me a wee bit misty eyed. It was to die for cute. Thank you so much to all our friends and family, your donations are so greatly appreciated by us, but most importantly by the kids at the hospital. We've decided to leave our fund page open until Kalea's next birthday so if you ever have a hankering to make a donation to an awesome cause feel free to use her page to do so! www.childrenshospital.ab.ca/goto/Kalea.Stringham
What was so great about the actual process of giving was seeing Kalea so happy. It's hard to know if kids so young "get it", but this experience has taught me that she does. I was a little overwhelmed at how grown up she seemed and how much she understood. Later on we saw a little girl being wheeled around the hospital by her Mom, she had a feeding tube taped to her cheek going up through her nose and down into her stomach. Kalea asked what it was for and if she was okay, and Mom reassured her that she was just having her lunch through the little tube and that she was doing really well. It's sweet to see little kids so interested in each other, I'm hoping that Kalea learns to follow up with her own story too. Sometimes I feel like because she doesn't look "sick" people get annoyed by her questions, so we're trying to teach her that if she's going to notice something different about another kid there, she can tell them about her "funny eye". She also mentioned to the little girl that she brought presents to the hospital, so I think she was feeling pretty proud of herself.
Our appointment this time was with a doctor in Endocrinology. It was neat to see another wing of the hospital and for Kalea it's a lot easier to be well behaved when she's occupied with something new, so she loved finding the little table and chairs in the exam room. She felt pretty grown up and really, this appointment was a lot of talking amongst adults, so it was great that they had coloring stuff ready and waiting for her. She was weighed and measured and had a head to toe examination. They were really happy that she is in the 90th percentile for height/weight, it's a really encouraging sign that things are functioning normally. We still have to go and get all her bloodwork done which I am not looking forward to in any way. We will have to go first thing in the morning so that they can get an accurate measure of the hormones that they're looking for and to be honest, I don't know if I can stomach it, so that might be a daddy-daughter date. Needles are not my strong point in life. We are still in love with the doctor's at the Children's, they really are so interested in helping kids. They've referred Kalea to a pediatrician so they can make sure that she's being weighed and measured properly every 6mths and who will act as the point of contact for our whole team of physicians, we have a "case worker" who's in charge of referrals and test results, etc... She's the person we call if we don't hear from the doctors themselves and who can give us results, and she was super flattered that Kalea thought she was a doctor too. It's amazing how all these angel people just swoop in and take care of all the details. I leave each visit with about a million pieces of paper, and she noticed that I was kind've shoving everything into my purse and recommended this FREE binder that the hospital has that has spots for all the different info sheets, doctors cards, appointment sheets, test results/requisitions, referrals, etc... Bless her, she has saved my disorganized self from the nightmare of cleaning out my purse :) As a bonus, that day was the anniversary of "Annie's place" where siblings of sick kids can play while mom and dad take the sibling to an appointment, so they had cake and cookies, balanced out with some fruit of course. It was fun to reward Kalea with a little treat, she kept saying "Caaaaake? For my birthday?! Oh boy!" yes, she still thinks it's her birthday a month later :)