texas trip day 7: houston temple

I told my mom that I wanted to go to the San Antonio temple while I was visiting, so we set about making plans to go.  We realized that Timothy needed to go soon in preparation for his mission, so we thought that it would be really neat to all go together!  On Sunday we learned that the San Antonio temple was temporarily closed for annual maintenance, so we decided to go to Houston instead.  My Aunt Sharla and her family live in Houston, so we thought it would be nice to do dinner with them afterward.

We left at 8am and arrived just in time for Timothy to make is appointment.  Since it was Timothy's first time going in, he had to go early and meet with some people.  The rest of us got lunch while we waited, then left Jed outside with Daniel - who was gracious enough to watch him - and went in at about 12:30.  Afterward we snapped a few pictures before we drove away:

We headed to my Aunt Sharla's house, which is in Houston and not incredibly far from the temple - but really far in rush-hour traffic.  By the time we arrived at her house we were all tired of being in the car, and hungry!  She ordered us some Chinese take-out and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  After eating and chatting for a while, we went on a walk around the man-made lake near her house, and enjoyed the nice evening air.  Sharla showed us her newly-decorated bedroom before we left, and Jed found (and loved) the wooden shoe collection from when they lived in Holland:

We drove away around 9:30, which was SO late for poor Jed (but he did surprisingly well!).  Jed had a hard time sleeping in the car with all the people in it, and by the time we got home, well after midnight, he was so glad to go to sleep that he didn't put up a fight at all!  The rest of us were pretty exhausted too, but it was totally worth the trip to be able to see Timothy take another step toward becoming a great missionary and priesthood holder.  Some girl is going to be very very lucky when he returns home from Ukraine in 2 years!