A never ending chain...

Those of you who have read my blog for a while may remember my mentioning a song about forever families and temples. The song is called "A Never Ending Chain." Well, on Saturday, April 19, 2008 Andrew and I were able to go to the Portland Temple and forge our never ending chain. The whole morning/day was quite surreal for me. This is something that we have been looking forward to for so long and it was finally time. Due to a series of unfortunate events (details not to be rehashed at this point) it took us longer than we would have liked to get all the paperwork lined up so that we could go. With all those hurdles cleared though we were finally able to do it!

The morning started off with a nice little trip down to Oregon City so that Luke could play in his 8 am basketball game. What a cute kid. He is a kindergartner playing on a team with a bunch of second and third graders. He is kind of funny to watch, but he tries really hard :)

Then Andrew's sister came to take over for us so we could make it to the temple by 9:30. We got there just in time, it was perfect. After we met with the recorder to make sure all papers were in order Andrew was off to do his thing as he was also taking out his endowments that morning. I had some time to kill and was starving so I went down to the cafeteria and had myself some eggs, bacon and hash browns. Can I just say that I love the fact that I could do that? It was way better than a granola bar! The endowment session was nice and it felt really good to be in the temple with so many family and friends. I am always amazed at who I run into when I am there. Saturday was no exception. After the endowment session we were able to be sealed. The sealer was a sweet man who joked a little in the beginning about whether BYU was the "Lord's university" or not. I was a bit surprised at his sense of humor but his point was good. He said that BYU may be one of the Lord's junior colleges, but the temples were his universities. He then asked if anyone in the room was perfect. Of course no one raised their hands, but then Andrew started to lift mine up. I quickly pulled it down and gave him one of those looks. The sealer laughed and said "Andrew, you are a smart man. He already believes that his wife is perfect. You just made a lot of points at home today!" The thing is though that Andrew was more trying to be sarcastic and try to say that I think I am perfect. P.S. just for the record I do not think that I am perfect! As Andrew and I were able to kneel across the alter from each other I was overwhelmed with how blessed we are. Not only just with ourselves personally but as members of this church. The power that we are blessed with through the priesthood is amazing! I am so grateful for my membership and my testimony of the gospel, as well as for temples and the blessings we receive there.

The Weitzels (missing Paige and Chloe)

The Stotts (missing Ryan and Victor)

After the temple we went out to eat lunch with my family at The Olive Garden, I of course had my favorite: manicotti. I had been thinking about that lunch for a while and it was every bit as good as I hoped it would be :)


From there we went off to Andrew's brothers house to have a get together with them. All 10 of his siblings were in town and so they wanted to get together for pictures. I was so tired I didn't sneak any with our camera, but I will post some if I get copies of any. All in all it was a wonderful day and one that has impacted our eternal lives.