A couple of free spirits: Visitors!

Hey Sister Fife,

I haven't been very good at keeping up on my blog lately. But at least I am still writing you letters! In my last letter I wrote you about how Chris's Dad Kurt and our nephew Caden came for a visit! Well here are some of the pictures from the fun we had while they were here!

It was an eventful week. On Tuesday my friend offered to watch Ayla so Chris and I could go volunteer at the temple. It was such a great experience. We signed up to be Tour Guide Ushers, but when we got there, there were Parking Lot ushers that got to drive people from there cars to the temple in golf carts and Chris really wanted to do that. Lucky for him they were short staffed that night in the parking lot so he volunteered to fill in. :)

I was inside the temple. We did a usher rotation. There were about 20 of us and about every 5-10 minutes we would rotate positions through the temple. We just stood in various rooms, and halls and helped guide the people in the tours so they stayed with there group and knew where to go. I got to meet some really nice people, and since we were in each room for quite a while we really got to take in all the beauty and detail in the temple! It was also very fun to see the reactions of non members, some of them would get so excited, like they had never seen anything so beautiful! I also enjoyed listening to each tour guide as each one would have different details, facts, and testimony to share about the temple. This volunteer experience has given me a whole new appreciation and love of the temple. I think the Ft Lauderdale temple in particular will always have a very special place in my heart from this experience.

When I got done I went to find Chris and got to ride with him in the golf cart as he continued to give people rides for a little while longer. Oh man, he had so much fun! He was just beaming with happiness, and Chris doesn't really beam very often. I commented on how this was the happiest I had seen him in quite a while as he just couldn't stop smiling and he agreed, and said that March had been a really rough month since non of his teams played really well in basketball this season. Haha. It always continues to surprise me how much sports really mean to him and affect his mood.

He even took the above picture of himself and posted in on instgram! Yep my husband posted a selfie. Seems so funny to me.

Then Wednesday morning Chris's Dad Kurt and nephew Caden (who is 6) came to visit. We had very long full days full of fun. We went to the beach on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So we got our fill of beach time in! Ayla loved having Caden here! She called him "kid". She always wanted to hold his hand everywhere we went, and loved that he would build her towers and color with her! She just absolutely adores him. Caden was a really good sport and played really well with Ayla the whole time. It was really cute and sort of made we wish she had an older brother. But since that is not going to happen so hopefully she will play just as well with a younger brother or sister. :)

Isn't Ayla's swimsuit the cutest thing ever!? I think she pretty much stole the hearts of everyone at the beach. Thanks Aunt Courtney!

Nothing like sandy donuts and warm milk at the beach. Haha! No they were actually really good!

Dunkin Donuts does it right!

I think all the liberals here started to make an impression on Kurt, and he wanted to fit in or something cause next thing we knew he had tried to squeeze into Caden shirts. By far my favorite photo of the week. He wore it the rest of the day. (heehee)

Something else besides the beach that we did was go on an airboat ride through the Everglades.

We saw a live Aligator out in the wild.

And a dead one.

Poor guy got hit by a car and all these happy vultures were enjoying his insides!

Nasty right!?

They also had a little animal exhibit with Pathers, Bobcats, Leopards, fox, alligator, snakes, and various other animals. Ayla has been talking about "Pant"(panthers) and "Lep" (Leopards) ever since. I think they really made an impression on her.

We all went to the Temple Open House as well on a tour. Which was awesome! I have a bunch of pictures but they are on my nice camera (all of these are from my phone) so I will need to upload them and post a few later on.