Weekend at Preston

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The whole time Samuel, Harrion and Lara would be "Little Moronis" trumpeting their trumpets. Very cute.

This past weekend was spent in the glorious Lancashire countryside.

After an exciting trek across the Peak District, through the awful traffic of Leeds and Manchester, we arrived at the Preston temple Saturday morning.

While Rebecca and David were not able to get in to the temple together, it was great to be able to spend such a lot of focused time at the House of the Lord.

Since it was a national holiday, another benefit of this past weekend was that we had the opportunity, when the temple was closed, to see the sights and attend to some family history.

Since the death of her grandfather, Rebecca has been unable to locate the burial plot. Earlier this month, after some exciting discoveries and some really helpful people at the Preston Cemetery, we were finally able to locate the spot (after deciphering the enigmatic plot map and identifying the numbering format). Rebecca was quite shocked and upset to find that the plot was completely unmarked. Why her parents felt this was appropriate is a bit of a mystery, especially since there were a number of family disputes surrounding the inheritance all going to her mother.

Regardless of the foibles of family politics, we are now in the unexpected process of identifying cemetery monument regulations, deciding what is fitting and (maybe) finding a stone-mason. Quite unforeseen!

The other activities of this past weekend were much less melancholy. We visited the Blackpool Zoo again- it was good but a bit of the novelty has worn off (especially after the wonder of the South Lakes Wildlife Park).

Harrisons dinosaur roar

Lara had her face painted as a butterfuly. This is her elegant butterfly dance

Much more impressive was Blackpool Tower. While the 3D cinema was a little blah (though the kids loved it, and Lara was terrified of the robot dinos), the jungle gym was excellent (but hot, so hot). The circus was especially good-while we were expecting a quick half-hour show, this was a full-blown 2-hour extravaganza with a not-so-dodgy clown, trapeze artists, jugglers, acrobats and fire-hula-hooping Spanish women(!). All very exciting. Lara was mesmerised!

300-odd feet up inn the air there is a pane of glass that you can stand on. Seriously!

Today we ended the weekend with helping with our ward youth temple trip. Seeing the young men and women of the church remind us so much of when we were young and involved in everything. It is amazing to see their love of the gospel and their budding testimonies. They are doing so well in keeping the commandments and overcoming their difficulties. I hope that our kids stay strong in the gospel.

But now it’s time to sleep. We are so tired!