Winter at the London Temple

When we went to the temple in the first half of January it was really freezing. A statue of the angel Moroni had been added to the top of the spire over Christmas, but we had been too ill to venture out before. We were hoping all the scaffolding would be gone before we went, but it still isn't (I went with the Young Women last night and it's all still there). So here is a first sneaky view of "Roni" as Peter calls him through the scaffolding.




Hannah was too cold to go for a walk to start with - she wanted to be in the warm for a while. The rest of us went to see the water though. It was frozen quite strangely, with sort of floating blocks of ice on top of the normal level of ice. We liked this leaf that was frozen within the water.





The resident duck (there seems to just be one at the moment) was in the not so frozen stream instead and of course came over to say hello on realising there was somebody around. There was a lovely BIG Robin right there too that kept coming up close, and another much smaller one that was flying around the same area.









We were all pretty freezing so went inside quite quickly and the children first explored the waiting room while we had a snack (no eating/drinking in the visitor's centre). There are two glass tables there which some of the girls thought was perfect for a glass case for Snow White to sleep in! Rachel was a little too realistic! Sarah couldn't quite keep a smile off her face. Peter just thought it was fun to lie down with everyone else, and Rebekah decided being Sleeping Beauty on top of the table was a much better idea! Hannah was being a little too grown up for such play, but I thought she looked gorgeous in such colourful clothes and colours all around her so took a picture of her too. Needless to say we were the only ones in the room at the time!!








Once Daddy went into the temple and we got into the visitor's centre (which they all like spending time in), everyone split to do their own exploring. Peter likes to watch the videos of the apostles and prophets best, so we watched a few of those, with him choosing which he wanted to see from the pictures on the wall. He was repeating a lot of the names after told him who they were, and for President Uchtdorf he said "Elder Dorfdorf" which I thought was fun.

Last week when I was looking at a church magazine as Peter came up to me I showed him various pictures inside, and then he asked me "Where's Duff Duff?" I didn't know what he was saying, but after he'd repeated himself the second time he said "Where's Elder Duff Duff?" and I remembered. We did find a picture of him. When I call him by his real name (President Uchtdorf) Peter now corrects me - he knows what it is really!