I love to spell the temple

I'm not the first person to look for alphabet letters in the architecture of the temple, but I got excited doing it, and that's all the matters. I crave boosts of creativity now and then, along with the restorative effect of actually accomplishing something. I drink that elixir about once a decade.

We went to grounds of the Salt Lake Temple to look for the letters of our name as a  family home evening activity.

See and ye shall find ...

I've walked around the walls of this temple many, many times. Searching with real intent, this trip, made latent letters pop before my view. We frame our thinking. We see what we want to see.

" ... for the Lord seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7

I set out to find HATCH, of course, but the discovery of an ornate M in a fence and P in the leg of a wrought iron bench pushed me to find the other letters to spell my friends' (short) last names. Each friend was also married in the Salt Lake Temple.

We didn't have much time, and the light was fading. T was the hardest to find. Sure, the perpendicular lines were easy to spot in sidewalks or closeups of bricks, but I wanted these images to be immediately identifiable with the Salt Lake Temple.

I chose to frame the door. Eh, it maybe requires a bit more imagination, but I like it. I like how its weight anchors the middle of our name.

My favorite shot, the first letter, came last. Jeff had already retrieved the car from the parking lot and come back to the street, waiting for us to leave the square. It was a bright summer evening when we arrived. At departure, dusk, the temple lit up, and the neighboring visitors center windows framed and reflected the spire beautifully.

But only if you happened to be looking.

This is another H. Or. I. These doors! They are gorgeous. I want to go back when I have lots of time to look for all of the letters. The doors are ripe with possibilities. I bet I could find the entire alphabet in closeups of the door alone, as with this letter r:

I did not alter my photos to highlight the letter outlines, so for some you may have to squint or say, "Oh, yeah, now I see it." I was very deliberate with the collages. I didn't want images adjacent to each other to be too similar. In HATCH, although the C and second H both come from the temple walls, the C is a tighter shot. These two images also came from two different sides of the temple; one in shadow, the other in the bright setting sun, which provides color contrast. When a name had two of the same letter I led with the one that most obviously represented the character. To train the eye and mind, I guess.

This is the picture I gave to my friend, whose last name is DOPP. I wasn't sure if these letter images evoked the Salt Lake Temple specifically on their own, so I included a shot of the famous silhouette.

This one was for my friends the MAIR family. (Or, make that MAIr.) Same door shot as the T and P, different cropping.

I challenge you to look for the alphabet in architecture, too, but with a warning: you'll start to see letters everywhere!

Pineview

I'm throwing these pictures out here for my friend's sake. Click away, Nora!

We had a delightful time at Pineview Reservoir on Aug. 12. We took our neighbor Josh and joined Nora, her six children, and some of their friends. The weather was perfect: warm without being oppressively hot nor eye-gougingly bright. Downright pleasant. We stayed all afternoon. On the way home, we hit strong winds on Hwy. 89 that buffeted the car and sent debris crashing into the windshield. It cracked. The kids laughed and yelled in unison, "Whoa!" It was a scare that thankfully ended as soon as it began. The sky now pouring water, we turned off the highway into our neighborhood and a car pulled sharply out of a side street in front of us. Then lightning and thunder banged into each other. "Wow! Three near-death experiences in one trip!" Josh exclaimed. Glad we're such thrilling company. 

Before that, the most exciting part of the outing was when baby Mckay blew out his diaper, and Nora didn't have another one. She is thoroughly unflappable, that Nora. Samuel, less so. I waded into the lake up to my chest with my camera so I could capture the kids' jubilant faces. Samuel scolded me, "Don't take my picture when I'm almost drowning!" Ok. I love summer's shift on priorities. 

Loose threads? And Ogden Temple

I haven't written very much lately because I find it hard to pull thoughts out of my head. I used to enjoy pouring out the tiny crystals of my ideas, then peering over them as I stirred them into something more connectedly spacious. The results sometimes surprised me, like the jolt of dry, wispy cotton candy turning into liquid on your tongue. I liked that.

Now, I'm beset with the irritation of flyaways and stickiness -- sugar everywhere but where I want it. I'm not good at making confection connections anymore. To me it's a messy process.

Or maybe I'm just out of practice?

This cotton candy metaphor is intriguing to me because I set out to write this post about our trip to the Ogden Temple open house on Aug. 4.  There was no cotton candy there. I haven't seen cotton candy in months. Why did I think of that?

I wanted to write about how much it meant to me to go to the temple, how much it meant to share it with my children. I learn so much in the temple and feel of Heavenly Father's love there. (Once the temple is dedicated, only patrons with a recommend may enter. This was a special chance for James and Samuel to go inside.) Samuel loves temples. He had been so excited, but the morning of our reservation he and his brother were so ornery we almost didn't go. That is why Samuel and James are not in Sunday clothes in these pictures. I felt it better to concede the battle of clothing rather than not go at all. In the end, it was a good experience.

Yet, one which I can't communicate very well. Hence, my opening sentence here. That, unexpectedly, made me think of the Pensieve in Harry Potter, and of Snape using his magic wand to pull sticky, thread-like memories from his head to the bowl. Harry plunged his face within the swirling fibers to see the memory as Snape's mind shaped it.

I don't have a magic wand -- or a cardboard stick in a cotton candy machine. So I'll skip the creation of the memory and go straight to what melted me once complete. As we walked back to our car after the tour, Samuel took my hand said, "Mom, you know what I like about the temple?"

I turned my face to his. "What, sweetie?"

"It touches my heart."

The mess of getting there was suddenly worth it.

Afterwards we went to the Farr's ice cream factory, like most of the crowd. (Mom! Don't take pictures of my ice cream!) The peanut butter chocolate flavor was divine.

Then we stopped at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum. Our favorites were the hair lace and feather flowers. Elise couldn't believe a bride was small enough to wear this dress.

 This cabinet was made by the prophet Brigham Young.

Different times!