Mesa Temple Open House

The Mesa Teample temple just reopened after some renovations. The temple is about 100 years old. When we first moved to Arizon 8 years ago, the Mesa Temple was the closest one to us, so we went there quite a bit. Since then the Phoenix, Gilbert, and Tucson temples have opened up which are all closer to us, so we haven't been for quite a while. It was a neat opportunity for us to go back and see this building, but it was even more neat to be able to talk to our kid more about temples and walk through one together. The baptismal font was Elliot's favorite room. 

 

Halfway through the tour we walked by the first aid room. I glanced in the door, and my cousin Savanah Williams was in there! She is a nurse working in the area and was volunteering for the day. She was able to take a break to walk through the rest of the tour with us and take some pictures at the end. Now I'm working on persuading her to come down and visit Tucson. 

Across the street is a brand new visitor's center that had a lot going on!

Coloring on the walls? Yes, please!

More coloring in the kids room. They also had these temple shaped blocks to build with and some touch screens with temple related activities on them.

After that we were hungry so we walked to a nearby burger joint. We passed by a sign that said Pioneer Park and could make out what looked to be a small playground across a field. We decided to check it out after eating. Boy are we glad we investigated!

This is Pioneer Park. Well, part of it- there was also a splash pad, swing area, and roller slide. 

This was seriously the coolest playground I have ever seen. Poor Isaac was so tired and ready for a nap, but we kept him up so that we could play for a while.

After the playground, we hit up the splash pad where the kids got drenched. It was cool because it had a part where rain fell in rotating patterns. Luckily, we had a change of clothes in the car since we had stayed at Mary's house the night before. We are already scheming up excuses to go back to Mesa to see Pioneer Park again!