Kansas City Temple Cultural Celebration

We had an AMAZING (and incredibly busy) weekend.  Our church just built a new temple in our area.  Before this temple, the closest temple to us was 3.5 hours away (Winter Quarters) and we were actually assigned to the St. Louis temple district so we were supposed to go there (5 hours away).  So we're SUPER EXCITED to have a temple so close - it's now less than an hour away!    

In honor of the temple being built, there was a huge celebration.  The youth from 126 different wards from KS and MO got to participate.  Nathan and Katie wanted to be in it.  Michael said he didn't like dancing and that's not a battle we want to fight so we didn't make him.  He's required to go to church, but he's not required to dance.  Our prophet, President Monson, was there in person to watch the event which was really neat for the youth (and the parents as well).  The youth from our ward have been practicing for the last 2 months and the youth from all over the states practiced on their own as well.  Then on Friday and Saturday, all 3100 youth (crazy!) got together in Kansas City to put it all together.  Blake was wonderful and went with Katie to help her.  They were there from 5pm -10pm on Friday.  Then they went back at 5:30am the next day and were there till it started at 6:pm.  It was a looooong, loud, crazy day for them.  Blake texted me at about 4:30 and said he didn't think they would be able to pull it off and that he thought they bit off more than they could chew.  (I guess I should mention it was all run by volunteers - a lot of them who have never done anything like this before.)  But it turned out WONDERFUL!!!  Not only did they pull it off, but they did an outstanding job!  It was such a good experience for all the youth and all those who came to watch too. The kids went wild when President Monson came out.  And they were on a total high at the end (I have a link to a video below).

Nathan was in 4 singing numbers and 5 dance numbers.  And Katie was in 3 dance/singing numbers.  They had 2 handcarts for one number and Katie got to pull one of them!  It was really hard for Blake to find Katie in the crowd and to get her off the floor on time and not have her get run over by so many kids.  So having her pull the handcart worked great.  Plus it was easy to see her.  Nathan was in the "Mormon Battalion"  march and got to keep his wooden gun.  I didn't know we were allowed to take pics so I have absolutely no pictures.  :(  Blake took this during the practice:

Here's an article and lots of pictures to show how amazing it was.  Check out the picture with a bunch of kids playing fiddles by the hand cart.  The kid that you can barely see (cut off of the picture) is Katie.  

Article

And  this 1.5 minute video is awesome and shows how cool and involved the whole production was!  And one more video - Nathan and Katie were in these 2 songs.  The popcorn song was my favorite with all the fun colored shirts and I liked Cotton-eyed Joe too.  It was all so fun.

Here in the "aftermath video" you can see how much fun the kids had and how hyped they were after performing for the prophet.  They were on such a high and had so much fun.  We'll all remember this forever.

And then we had the temple dedication on Sunday which is what the celebration was really all about.  It was a wonderful, memorable weekend.  And like I said, we are thrilled to have a temple near us!