Temple Open House

Whenever our church builds a new temple they have an open house before it is dedicated. During this time it is open to the public to take a guided tour through it and ask questions. We were able to make it up there this afternoon and it was such a treat.
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It is in Langley right across the border, which is so nice because up til now we have had to drive all the way to Bellvue to attend the temple. This new one is only 24 miles from our house! You can read more about it here.
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We were explaining to Olivia on the car ride up what a special place we were going to, how it is "Heavenly Father's" house and how we need to be reverent while we are there. She was being so cute. As we were getting close she saw a big office building and exclaimed "look Mommy, the TEMPLE!". I had to explain that it was a Doctor's office, not the temple.
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She was so cute on the tour. She would say Wow every time we went into a new room. When we got into the Celestial room she looked up at the beautiful chandelier and said
"Wow Mommy, pretty lights. It's so... It's so.... AWESOME!".
I about died it was so precious! Awesome is a new word for her this week (courtesy of DJ Lance of Yo Gabba Gabba, her latest favorite show). It was so beautiful to her that she was trying to find the right word to tell me and the first thing to come to her head was awesome. She was even saying it in her "inside voice".
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We were waiting to take pictures until after the tour, and low and behold it started raining cats and dogs, so no pictures. I even had the girls in their first matching dresses, it would have been nice to get a family picture there. Bianca was really anxious to crawl around so she kept wriggling around in our arms the whole time. We eventually released the girl and now her white pristine tights are all dirty.
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After the tour we ate some cookies, said hi to people we recognized and got ready to head home. There was a line by the door to leave, so as we were waiting for a break in the flow of people, I was giving Olivia a run down of events to keep her occupied (no naps=no patience). How we were going bye bye, how we were going to take the shuttle bus back to our car. There was a white porcelain figurine of Jesus holding a little child on a shelf right beside us. I had stopped talking and Olivia was looking at the figurine. Then she said :
"Bye, Bye Jesus Christ".
I couldn't believe it. It was such a precious moment. She is getting into such a fun age where she is able to express so much and understand so much more than before. It was so neat when she said that because we don't have that figurine in our house, she had just seen enough pictures of him at church and at our house to recognize him. In her perfect childlike innocence she understood the spirit that she felt there. It just reinforced to me that even though it was quite the production to load us all up, wait at the border forever and be in a sea of people that it was important for us to go. Important for our family to have these kind of experiences together. I know living the gospel blesses my life, but now I am seeing how much it is blessing my family's life, my children's lives. It was such a wonderful day!