Saturday Outing

All week I'd planned to take the kids to the new Portland Temple visitor's center on Saturday. I imagined the sweet faces of my boys walking the temple grounds, their inquisitive minds exploring the visitor's center, and a little trip to Deseret Book afterwards.

However, two boys flatly refused to go with me today.

Really! It's a full week of no screen and they'd rather sit home and do who-knows-what than go on a fun outing with their mom. (Yes, as a matter of fact I do feel like chopped liver.)

But my baby boy stuck by me. Mostly because he was getting his first set of scriptures in anticipation of his eighth birthday and his baptism. So it was just Isaac and me and I decided to make it an outing he would not forget. One that he could use to rub in the face of his brothers, should the impulse strike him. So I threw in Target for a birthday present scout-out and Wendy's for lunch. (That will teach those boys to snub me.)

As it turned out, it was completely awesome to spend some one on one time with Isaac. I got to hear lovely musings like this:

"I'd like to live in an apartment above the library because then I wouldn't have to wait like three or four minutes to go to the library. I could be the first one there."

There were other gems which I wish I could have written down, but alas, I was driving. Besides, Isaac was suspicious enough of my writing madly the above at the red light. I told him sometimes when a good writing idea comes, you have to write it quick before you forget.

We loved the visitor's center. Isaac loved the interactive displays and took them very seriously. They had a little semi-enclosed seating area where you could watch the various videos from the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. The "remote" was an iPad, so Isaac had no problem watching three of those videos right in a row. (I love a unicycle-riding physicist!)

We walked around the temple and into the atrium. Isaac loved it and said he didn't want to leave. Which surprised me because on the way to the temple, he assured me he didn't want to stay very long. I actually had to prod him a little to get back to the car.

The rest of the morning was kind of a series of money spending stops, but we had a good time.

And I encouraged him to let his brothers know how much fun we'd had. He said he didn't want to do that though, because then there would be more sad people.

"More sad people?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you're already sad they didn't come, and if I tell them we had a really good time, they will be sad they missed out."

Where did this kid come from?