Temple Square in Spring

I have lived here a little over 7 1/2 years now. I have always like Spring. Even while living in CA. Something about Spring. I always wanted to be married in Spring. It actually worked out perfectly so I could up here. But Spring in UT is just gorgeous. Especially after all the snow. It hasn't been super green but then everything comes to life and there are bulbs springing up everywhere. I just love it. Especially Temple Square. I cannot let a Spring go by where we don't visit Temple Square. It is just gorgeous. All the bulbs are in bloom and its just really amazing.

Scott now is off on Fridays. Minus the occasional one where he will have to work. It's a blessing and a curse. It will be so awesome to have more time with him. We usually only get Saturday morning as our morning together. Then the whole day. Friday afternoons we'd get to see him since it wasn't a full day. And Sundays were mainly devoted to church so when one of us isn't at meetings or at church then we get some time together. So now I get most Fridays to have him home. The downside is the pay. The reason Scott had to start working 5 days a week was to keep up with bills. We couldn't even make our house payment before. We've refinanced now. So that helps. But that means he's going to have to make up for those lost hours somewhere or we're in trouble. We're pretty bare bones as it is. We're down to one car which actually helps. Can't really afford registration anyway. Can't afford to get it fixed. We're actually thinking about just taking his car off our insurance right now since I don't know how we'd pay for both anyway. I did set some tax money aside but we just used some of it to pay off a credit card to free up $25/mo. So I wouldn't be able to pay for it in whole like I planned. We don't have tv. Our "extras" are just our $40 internet which I really would hate to lose because of everything I do on it for church and paying bills. If I can't pay my bills online then I have to pay for checks and switch everything to mail delivery. We also pay for Huluplus and Netflix. I might drop Huluplus but we'll see. Our phones are on our parent's plans and we try to make up for those costs by doing stuff for them and helping them in anyway we can. Hopefully by next year once more bills are paid off we can pay them each month. I might consider a phone upgrade then but we'll see. So for the next little while it is going to be hard. As long as these dr bills are here and his hours are a little less it will be tight. We'll be eating a bit differently. But it should all work out. It won't be easy but we can only learn and grow from it. We are super lucky to have gotten a free upright freezer from my old YW pres who lives in Sandy. They had one and the house they moved into had one that  worked and they didn't need it. It is manual defrost and about 15 years old but I think will save us money in food so I can do freezer meals. Which I've already started. I just hope our power bill doesn't go up too much.

So anyway, now that I've totally gone another way, back to last Friday. It was Scott's first Friday off. We had planned to go visit his dad at work anyway and since he had the day off it made it even easier. We headed out that afternoon. Scott's dad has such an amazing view from his office. It's a corner office on the 12th floor of the church office building. Such an awesome view of Temple Square. It's neat to see all the stuff he's doing work on too. Charlotte was being super shy and it took her time to warm up. Jackson wanted to be everywhere. It got kinda crazy so we couldn't stay long but it was fun to pay him a visit at work. Hopefully we'll be able to do that more than once a year. Afterwards I wanted to take advantage of being down there and walk around Temple Square. It was such a gorgeous day. The grounds are perfectly manicured as always. I could walk around there a million times and never get bored with it. I just love it there. So we took lots of pictures.

Some guy that works there and was walking around offered to take some pictures for us. Take 1.

 Take 2. And so it is.

 The flag at half mast after the Boston Marathon Bombing. So thankful my in-law's weren't there this year. Horrible for all those that were and were affected by it.

I love seeing all the trees that are blossoming right now. I didn't really understand the Popcorn song until I lived in UT. I don't remember having trees blossom the way they do here. Our crab apple one kind of did but not the same. It was just nice to be there as a family. I want my kids to love being at the temple as much as I do. I want that to be their goal. I am looking forward to my Fridays with Scott and also being able to go back to the temple as a couple since we've kind of slacked because of the kids. It was harder before but now this can only help us to get through the tough time. So although we are going to struggle and it won't be easy the next little while, we will be able to grow more spiritually which I think is what we need more anyway. This will be good.