Oquirrh Mountain Temple

We have had the chance to attend the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house twice. The first time was for Daybreak residence only and Brian had to work so I loaded up the kids and went solo. Hayden was sooo excited. I didn't know a 3 year old could be so excited for something like this. As soon as we parked and I was getting the kids out of the car, I could hear a song playing. I don't consider myself someone who gets "touched" easily, but when I saw the temple, my kids, and heard the song, I was amazed by the spirit I felt. While we were walking around inside the temple Hayden started to sing "I love to see the Temple" pretty loud. He had some people chuckling. It was so cute to watch him and hear the things he said. I enjoyed explaining things to him and was so glad he got to see what it looked like on the inside. I was very disappointed to learn I had missed out on the whole lunch afterward. I just headed to my car and went home. I didn't know anything about it until everyone started raving about how good it was. He

The second time we went with Steve and Kacey and her brother and sister in law. We lost them inside so it just ended up being the four of us. Teagan fell asleep and I was happy to have Brian there to carry him through. Pretty sure the time before, there were times I was holding both kiddos. Exhausting!

Hayden loves to see Temples lit up at night and is just learning the names of all the local ones. He does call the Oquirrh Temple the "Ogre" temple. I'm glad he went inside so he didn't think it was a place a ton of Shreks just ran a muck. One night he kept confusing Jordan River and Oquirrh so we took him to a spot where he could see Jordan River, Oquirrh, and Draper. It's been fun to have him retain so much of what we teach him.

Here are my several attempts to take a decent picture of my boys:

And finally someone offered to take a picture of all three of us:

Not fantastic but it will have to do right?The night all of us were able to go. It's nice to have a husband every once in awhile. I looked absolutely fabulous since I was given 5 minutes notice to go.

We enjoy being able to see it outside Hayden's window at night (master bedroom doesn't have such scenic views). It will be nice to have the temple so close, but mainly, I love the purpose Temples provide.

Head Obsession

Hayden plays so cute with his brother and I've never had to worry about leaving him alone with Teagan. However, I have on a number of occasions, found him with various things on his head. Here is how I have found him a couple of times:

The first thing is just a little baby toy of Teagan's. What can I say, after lots of practice, this kid has amazing balance!Yeeha Cowboy!

A kitchen bowl and Hayden with his fireman hat.
GO UTES! Now, if I had found a BYU helmet on him, I would have worried and that would have been terms to never leave Hayden alone with him again! Phew, good thing we don't own one of those! Teagan actually got upset when I tried to remove this from his head. Guess he is used to this.

Goodbye Binkie- The Process!

I think I had a harder time with this than Hayden, at first anyways. I dreaded the day when Hayden and the binkie would part ways. I had prepared Hayden for quite some time before it actually happened. We had limited his time with the binkie to just "sleeping hours" and that seemed to work really well. He would ask for it in the car occasionally and sneak it every now and then while kicking back and watching cartoons. He was also very anxious to take naps and go to bed at night knowing he would get his binkie. You can now see why I was not looking forward to ending that certain aspect of it.

I think that "3" was pretty old to have the binkie, but it was my ABSOLUTE cutoff. I had told Brian that being the sensitive mom that I am, I wanted him to be able to understand why we were ripping away his "comfort." I also wanted to do the process in a not so "traumatizing" manner.

A few days after his Birthday, I decided I had made up enough excuses to not get rid of it yet. I made a day of it. We called bff Cooper and asked if they would like to join us at Build-A-Bear, where we would be stuffing all the binkies I could find, into a bear of Hayden's choice. A friend of mine had done this with her little girl (thank you Lindsey). Here is our process:

First you take the binkies and you boil, you boil:

Then you take them out and let them coolNext, Bag em' up

Then, take them to Build-A-Bear Workshop, pick a bear, stuff it, shove in all binkies plus cloth heart, sew it up, and then...go give him a bath.

Last, pose with Binkie Bear in front of store. Look happy because this may be the last smile for a couple days.

He liked his bear until he got tired. He actually hated this thing for quite some time. I kind of expected it. He would chuck it, say he hated it, etc. He still doesn't really care for it, but he doesn't despise it anymore. It took a few days and a few napless days and then things returned back to normal. He still likes nap time and goes to bed without trouble. He does however, like to be "in charge" of Teagan's binkie and let him know when he "needs" it. Funny boy!