Payson Temple Open House

On January 26 we decided to take the kids out of school and head up to Provo for the Provo Temple Open House. I was really excited about this because we all had a really great time at the Payson Temple Open House.

It's a beautiful temple and I love that my kids get to go in and see it and hopefully want to go in someday to make sacred covenants with our Heavenly Father.

There were a lot of people, and you know how much Dan and I love crowds of people...not so much. I was also expecting the tour to be like the Payson Temple where they stopped us in a sealing room and explained different things about the temple. So, when they didn't do that I was slightly disappointed. I later found out that most people that went through the Payson Temple didn't get stopped like we did. Oh, well now I feel pretty special :)

One of these days I'd like to go through a session of these temples. We will probably have to wait until the kids are grown though. It's hard enough finding babysitter's for the Manti temple let alone a temple that's 1 1/2 away. Aren't we lucky though? I can't imagine having to go to a completely different country to attend the temple. This is something that I totally take for granted living where we do.

Harry Potter Party

 So, it's been a REALLY long time since I've written, and there are so many posts I need to do...but we'll start with what happened yesterday, since it was...well, yesterday :)  And what happened yesterday you may ask? Well, Caden's friend birthday party happened. It was two weeks later than I originally planned, but every weekend was filled up with something, so yesterday was the big day. Caden decided that he wanted a Harry Potter party, and I'll admit, I was excited. I had a lot of fun with this party.

We sent out invitations that were an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Telling them to meet at Platform 9 3/4 (or our address) and we attached a balloon with an owl drawn on it, because we wanted it to be delivered by owl post. Those were kind of fun :)

When the kids got there, they had to go through the brick wall at Platform 9 3/4. I didn't realize my door was so big, and I thought I had painted/sponged enough bricks and was going to have to cut some off, but low and behold I didn't do enough...oops. Good thing I'm not a perfectionist, huh :)

 

They went through the brick wall to Diagon Alley, where they went shopping for their school supplies. They were given a shopping list and they went around to the different stores to get their items.

Shopping List

Things like Floo Powder:

Floo Powder

 A Wand from Ollivander's. I'll admit I had a lot of fun making these. I used bamboo sticks and hot glue, and it was quite therapeutic.

You can see some of the ones that haven't been painted...loads of fun. Seriously.

They picked up some potion ingredients (and a mini cauldron that I forgot to take pictures of) that were crushed dragon bones (baking soda), worm guts (dish soap), and basilisk venom (vinegar). Dan let me have those cute vial thingies. 

They got a quill...oh, and a dueling wand that I forgot to take pictures of too. That was just a straw with some paper to go over the top.

 After they picked up all their supplies and put it in their Diagon Alley shopping bag (which was their treat, take home bag) they went to the great hall to be sorted. I read the sorting hat song, and then they chose a colored marble from a little bag. It worked out almost perfect. I cheated on the last kid to make sure everyone had two people in a house, but everyone was okay with what they got.

The sorting hat before I Clear Coated it....if you look close you can see a face on it.

The Great Hall

Caden being sorted. He got sorted into Huffelpuff House.

The badges they got after they got sorted. I had Griffendor and Hufflepuff too, but my kids took those before I could snap a picture :)

After the sorting they all went to potions class, where they made exploding polyjuice potion. I think everyone enjoyed that, and I with I would have done more experiments. I found all sorts of stuff on Pinterest they could do, but I only did one. We had tons of extra time, so in hind sight I would have done two more potions things.

 

 After potions we went downstairs to Charms class. Here I got a whole bunch of blown-up balloons and they had to keep them afloat with just their wands and using the spell "Wingardium Leviosa". We broke into houses to see who could keep their balloon up the longest.

Then we moved over to the dueling club. I had a lot of fun with this one too. I hung up a poster of spells/curse/jinxes they could use. They bowed to each other and then shouted out a spell and blew on their straw. If they actually hit each other than the person that got his had to do whatever the spell did to them.

When the boys started to get a little crazy "Winky the House Elf" aka Kember ran down with a scroll from Professor McGonagall saying that all the Care of Magical Creatures had escaped and they needed to find all of them. 

The list of creature they had to find

Because they were such good helpers and found everything they got to go to HoneyDukes and get some sweets.

They got to have Gilly Water, Edible Broomsticks (pretzels and cheese sticks), Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Lemon Drops, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Licorice wands, Acid Pop's, Chocolate Frogs (complete with chocolate frog cards) and Pumpkin Juice.

 Then we just opened presents. Because everything went way faster than I was expecting there was still a half hour left to the party...so we turned on Harry Potter and waited for their parents to come get them. 

Caden said he had a lot of fun, and honestly, I had a lot of fun putting it together.  So I think that's a success :)