Swimming and the DC Temple

This is from our first trip to Washington D.C. about 6 weeks ago, not the one we are currently on. The day started out ok, changed to pretty much awful, and ended up being the best!

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with the pediatrician and pharmacy to get Nathan a prescription for swimmer's ear. We also did a little driving to get our bearings of the area and found the grocery store and metro station. Then we planned on swimming the rest of the day until Ken was finished working. That is until we found out that Fairfax County, VA has some weird law that you can't swim unless there is a lifeguard on duty and our hotel doesn't have one on duty until 5 pm.

It was terrible, the kids were bouncing off the wall and bugging each other all morning. They really needed the physical outlet of swimming. That was especially true 2 hours later when the pool finally opened. I'm used to my kids bouncing off that walls but I seriously felt like my head was going to explode. And then Ken came back to the hotel from being onsite at a clients all day to say he has to jump on a 90 minute emergency conference call immediately. Seriously, you could have shot me right then and I would have been happier!

Well, at least we had the opportunity to try out our new underwater camera. Here is Ginger, our newest underwater swimmer! She is so proud of herself! So am I!!!
Nathan diving under. I think this camera takes clearer pictures then our last one.
Rose, mid-flip. She has started to do alot more tricks when she dives under.
Darin was more interested in trying out the new features on the camera then swimming. This is a normal picture, then below he changed it to a drawing.


These two had fun continuing their fake fighting into the pool. I pretty much listened to their fake fighting, complete with sound effects all day. However when I'm swimming I don't really mind it as much.
This is our 3-d picture effect of a sand bucket. Again, this was Darin's doing. I don't really see what is spectacular about it. Can you see a difference?
Our pool was slightly bigger then a glorified hot tub. It totally stank of chlorine, like enough to burn your throat, and was way too hot and stuffy. Thanks to our lifeguard we were all kept safe from drowning. It was amazing how well he paid attention, don't you think? That is unless my kids made a loud splash and he would say, "No Diving!" Forget the fact that the splash came from my kids sliding off the side into the pool or pushing off from a wall. It was completely irritating! Needless to say we didn't swim in the pool the rest of the time we were in DC.Thankfully when we got back to the room Ken was finished with his conference call and we were able to go ahead with our plans for FHE. It's a good thing Ken was in a good mood because I was ready to call it a day and hide under the covers and would have missed out on the most wonderful experience.

We visited the Washington D.C. temple for FHE and had a wonderful time walking around the grounds and talking to each other.
Not all of it was super spiritual. In fact, some was quite light-hearted. Like for instance when Darin found this snake slithering by. We spent the rest of the evening alternately scaring each other by gasping and saying, "Don't move, there's a snake!"
It was also very uplifting. I am still amazed at how quickly my frustrations from the day melted away when we arrived on the temple grounds. It was almost instantaneous. Instead of being bothered I was filled with overwhelming feelings of love for my family. Our temples are truly the most sacred place on earth. I feel that everytime we visit one of the temples whether we go inside or not. But something that came to mind during this visit was something I read in the Bible Dictionary about a month before, "Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness." What a humbling thought to have when I was clearly not relishing my role as a mother for much of the day. I am so grateful for this experience and the clarity it has given me.



We walked all around the temple grounds. The DC temple is very beautiful. There is stained glass ribbons on two of the corners going all the way up. It also has temple stones on it doors. They depict certain beliefs of our religion (like the creation) all of them have an eternity pattern in them.
Something very interesting that we learned after the fact, because we were very curious as to what the temple stones (door panels) meant was that the Washington D.C. Temple was architected to be a modern image of the Salt Lake Temple. It has 6 spires just as the Salt Lake Temple does, it also has temple stones, many of them identical to the Salt Lake which is rare. What a gorgeous temple!