Cleaning The Temple

Today at work I was able to find plane tickets for Utah for Mom, Dad, Nate & I for a good price.  But, only if we flew Saturday to Saturday.  So, I called Mom and she said Nate & Dad could get off of work and to go ahead and book the tickets.  That started a whole Friday frenzy. I had to send out a bunch of emails to my YW Counselors so they could help me w/ our ward Christmas party on Saturday, I had to cancel our Johnson Family Christmas party that was going to be at my house on Saturday, etc. Then as if that wasn’t frenzy enough, work was CRAZY BUSY today and I didn’t even get everything done that I needed to before I am gone all next week.  I wasn’t ready for 5:00 to get here today.

I went over to Mom & Dad’s and we ate dinner and then I said good bye to Autumn b/c she was spending the night there.  I came home and started a load of laundry so that I could pack all the stuff Autumn & I would need for next week.  Some AMAZING friends offered to take Autumn all week for me.  Aunt Sandy had originally offered to take her, but that would mean Autumn would miss a whole week of school.  The friends Autumn will be staying with will be able to take her to school and pick her up in the evening.  I wish Autumn could come w/ me, but the tickets are too expensive and I don’t want her to miss that much school!

The reason Autumn spent the night at Papa & Mimi’s is that I had volunteered to clean the Dallas Temple tonight from 10:00 pm – 12:00 am.  Nick got off at 9:00 pm, but he wouldn’t be home in time for me to leave to get down to the temple by 10:00.  2 Young Men leaders from my ward were carpooling down, so I just got a ride w/ them.  There were 7 of us from my ward who got to clean.  I didn’t realize that the temple is cleaned every night, and that they have someone at the temple 24 hours a day. 

Anyways, we all got to change into white scrubs and put foot covers over our tennis shoes and we got to work cleaning.  There were 5 of us vacuuming and it took us the whole 2 hours to vacuum the whole temple!  The Dallas temple is a pretty small one, so I can’t imagine how long it takes to clean the bigger ones! Anyways, I finally got home and fell into bed (after switching out another load of laundry) at 12:57 am!  I’m so glad I got the chance to serve in the temple tonight, especially since I won’t be able to do a session tomorrow like I usually do.