What a weekend!

You will read the next post about last night but today was amazing day #2. How amazing is the gospel that we get to have a prophet of the Lord with such an strong spirit. I don't think you can be in the presence of the Prophet and not be totally sure that he is called of God. I felt that way today while attending the dedication of The Gila Valley Temple. What an amazing thing to get to witness. I will never forget it because the spirit was so strong and I truly believe Pres. Eyring when he said that Pres. Kimball is on the other side rejoicing that the prophesy of this temple was finally fulfilled. What an amazing thing the temple does by making it possible for families to be sealed together forever!

Cultural Celebration . . . . . .AMAZING!

Last night I had one of the best experiences in my life. I was able to go to the cultural celebration (thanks to Randy being the YM Pres. and working at it) and be within 15 yrds of the prophet of the Lord. It was so amazing! Pres. Monson was hilarious! While we were waiting for him to pull up you could just feel the anticipation everyone had to get to see the prophet. It was an amazing experience just to be close to him and feel the love he had for everyone. You could just feel the spirit overflowing from him. It was such a great testimony builder to see him and KNOW that he was called of God. The first thing he said when he got off his golf cart was. "I like big crowds!" And a big crowd it was. Just the youth performing was about 2500 kids. I had to take three pictures just to get all the kids across the field. I am the worst photographer ever so all the pictures are kinda blurry or dark. Sorry I need to learn how to use my camera!

From the moment that the first song started to play I had tears in my eyes because it was so awesome to see all these youth doing such an awesome thing. It really gave me great hope for the future of the church knowing there were so many faithful youth willing to spend so many hours on such an uplifting activity.

This is Elder Holland and Elder Costas waiting for the Prophet to come in.

Pres. Eyring.

This is actually after the performance when all the kids came up to shake Pres. Monsons hand. The guy on his right was his security man and he started yelling at the kids to get back because I guess they started pushing. It kinda reminded me of the Savior when he told all the childre to come to him after his deciples told them to stay back. Pres. Monson just sat and shook hands and talked to the kids that came up.

This is blurry but before he sat in his seat he stopped to talk to the little boy in the red shirt ad wiggles his ears for him. It was so funny. I have never seen anyone wiggle their ears like he can!

We weren't allowed to take any pictures during the performance so this is after it was over. It took about 20 minutes or so for him to actually make it to his gold cart because he kept stopping and talking to little kids. Everyone softly started singing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." It was so beautiful. No one wanted to leave we all just stood there and watched his every move.

I did finally get one good picture! I could write for hours about the amazig spirit that was there last night just because the Prophet was there but I won't do that to you. I keep saying it was amazing but I just can't think of any other word that describes it better. I was in tears for about 90% of the performance!

This video is of Pres. Monson and Eyring singing a little Mexican ditty. It was really funny! I hope I got the right one.

Cartwheeling Tessa . . . .

So I put the pictures backwards but oh well. Tessa had her gymnastics show last week and it was so cute. ( I seem to use that word a lot).
Tessa and one of her favorite cousins, Lucy so excited to see each other after the show.

Tessa and her first medal.

The pictures are all kind of blurry but she is in there right in the middle.

This was all the kids in the show. I had no idea there were so many kids in gymnastics.

This was before the show. Randy is very proud of her buff gymnastics legs. Hoping they will get her to the olympics some day.

This was her part inn the whole shindig. I have never done a video on here so hopefully this works. We had a lot of fun ad she did an awesome job!

Dancing Macie . . . .

I am a little behind as usual but Macie had her first dance performance last week in Pima. She was so excited and she looked sooooo cute!
Waiting, waiting, waiting, is it time to go yet, lets go, come on!

This was her awesome hair do I did that I was so proud of. I did two french braids from the top and two from the bottom and messy buns in the middle where they met. It was so cute!

All ready to go!

The grand entrance. She is in the youngest class so the teacher needed to help out a little with the starting position.

All ready and waiting for the music!

It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. Poor thing has such skinny chicken legs but oh well!

And we're done! SOOOOOOO cute!