Weekend Adventures: Temple, Beach, and Beyond

It was a busy weekend, starting right off with Friday. TRC and I headed down to Boston to go to the LDS temple and perform baptisms for the dead. (I was going to write up a big post all about what that means and what it involves, but then I remembered that I already had. So if you’re wondering, head on over and check it out.) This was part of a youth temple trip, so there were a number of other families who headed down with us. It’s a 3.5 hours trip (well, technically I made it in 2 hours and 55 minutes. But who’s counting?), so not exactly a hop skip and a jump, but it went very well.

One of the highlights of it was the fact that TRC was able to be baptized for his great-great grandfathers on Denisa’s side. Again (if you didn’t read the post I just linked to), Mormons don’t believe that being baptized as proxy for someone removes that person’s ability to choose. It’s more a “now they can accept being baptized or not” kind of thing. I have only ever been baptized for people I don’t know. My family’s genealogy was done long before I was ever born, since I come from a long line of family history ninjas. Denisa is the first person in her family to be a Mormon, and so there’s a whole lot of empty space in her family history.

Most importantly, TRC had a great time. I try to be very careful not to pressure my kids into doing things they don’t want to do. He wanted to go on this trip, and he took it very seriously. I’m glad he felt so richly rewarded. We had hoped to have Denisa come with us as well, but the lice issue with the kids sunk that plan. Bringing them over to a sitter’s just wasn’t an option. So she stayed home with the girls and took them blueberry picking and swimming. (We had debated driving everyone down, but again, that didn’t seem fair to the girls. Seven hours of driving so they could then stand around and wait outside the temple for two hours . . . not the formula for a happy time.)

Especially since we’d already planned another trip for Saturday. We headed out to Old Orchard Beach and had a very nice time swimming and lying around for the day. It was fun to see MC have so much more confidence with the ocean. Last year, she’d burst out in tears any time we tried to have her get in the waves. This time, she happily ran around and splashed for hours. She still didn’t want to go too far in, but it’s much easier to have fun at the beach together when you can all actually be near the water without one of you screaming bloody murder.

TRC and DC had a great time building wading pools and searching for things to put in the pools. Once they found out that seaweed has creatures living inside it, it was off to the races. Of course, MC really just liked jumping into the pools and splashing around in them, which did lead to a bit of conflict of interest . . .

Sunday, we were off to Bangor for a church meeting. The leadership was changed for the area, so it was interesting seeing who would be at the helm for the next decade or so. Some very good talks given, as well. But it’s a lot of driving, especially after we’d just done 7 hours one day and 4 the next. So it’s nice to be at work today and not have to drive anywhere.

What did you do on your weekend? Anything fabulous? Do share.