And so, the details.

I will try and write this as clearly as I can but it was all so splendid and perfect and special that it could well come out in a mixed up jumbley emotional lump.
We set out on our journey full of both excitement and trepidation because this was me driving..me. If you turn me around 3 times in my own hallway I will get lost on the way to the bathroom, this is not exaggeration.
I went to the AA website and typed in the address of the temple, printed it, reversed journey, printed it..I am so clever, no flies on me.......get lost now Mrs. Even more organised I thought I would highlight the exits and turnings....to make sure. Hmmmmm, weird, not sure why it keeps telling me to head for Manchester but what do I know, I get lost, just do what it says, except Manchester?? Manchester on the way to London, really even I think that's not right, surely? Phew, luckily I worked out that the name of the road the temple is on....there are about 400 of them in England, I was meant to find the right one in Surrey and then click print, did it, am sure we have the right one, off we go.
Beautiful weather, sunshine and happy people and joy joy joy joy down in our hearts etc.
It all went to so well. At lunch time we stopped in a pretty place and ate our lunch, packed by mum, who is grand and never does Peanut butter sandwiches and a packet of crisps, we had chicken and olives, salad and ham and pickle crusty bread sandwiches. Lovely, All finished, boy wee'd in the field and off we went, ow, really OW....when I turned to face mum and eat, I twisted the stupid Texas sized hernia that I am afraid to get fixed and it got stuck, badly stuck and it hurt like a stuck and twisted hernia ( funnily enough) I do have a high pain threshold though and thought that if I just sit really straight and didn't breathe much, it would be OK.
I did that for a while and then we stopped for a ladies wee stop because, even when bursting I think a field is just not for me, seats and tissue please, I am a lady if only in my mind.
I was hunched and retching and thought that I was probably dying, in a painful way. Of course I was the driver and so, tough really, had to do it and try to do it without giving mum a stroke or nervous breakdown. I am magnificent and brave because I did it, we got there without getting lost even once.
I lay curled up on the very comfy bed for most of the evening, mum and Leah had the room opposite us and at around 8ish I went over to see her and tell her that something had sort of moved and that I was OK, just in mere agony now rather than mortal, imminent death kind of pain...and right there was Alex who I haven't seen for a very long time and who had travelled for 5 hours with 2 of her children and husband to be with us when we got sealed.
Don't you just hate it when you bump into someone you haven't seen for years and you are wearing snowman pj bottoms, crumpled grey t-shirt and have hair that looks like you've been curled in a painfilled ball for hours? Yes, I hate that.
At 2 am, I felt that hernia pop back into place, hoorah, agony gone, left with just sore and achey tummy, can live with that.
First thing the next morning, I showered and got a little bit ready and there was a knock at the door and there, with huge grins were Sue and Alan who I have known since I was a young slip of a thing, they had a huge bouquet of flowers for us ( me really, boys and men are so unappreciative of things that are fluffy and nice smelling and girlie) and they said that they were there to look after us, that Sue would be looking after the boys with mum and Leah in the nursery, and Alan would be taking H and I into the temple and making sure we were taken care of.
Everything, simply everything was out of our hands, we were loved and guided, pampered and cherished every step of the way.
Sue told us that in the nursery was every kind of white clothing for little people, that the boys could look and choose and get changed, Isaac, ISAAC looked at me and said " I doe wat to wear my white clothes, I wat to choose new ones" Imagine.
All I can say, is that from the beginning to the very end, every sign of autism was gone from Isaac. He spoke to everyone, he went with mum, he stayed with Sue , he joined in, he held hands he knelt and sat in front of lots of people...it was miraculous, it was beautiful. It lasted while we were there.
When we had been sealed and the boys were being taken back to the nursery, he stopped at the door and said " Mum! You know where the nursery is? It's downstairs, down and along and.....come and get me, I wait there, find me K?" and then he went, without a bit of fear.
When H and I went to get changed we went to hire some clothes and were told that because this was our sealing , I would be taken to the brides' room and be able to choose from any of the brides dresses, which I did and I felt lovely. I am told I looked lovely, by H, fancy that. He became a different man in that building, I saw everything I knew he would / could be happen in front of my eyes, I felt the depression he has had since his heart attack lift. I saw him remembering everything he learned more than 20 years ago when he used to go to the temple a lot. I saw what he is. Who he is. I saw what my spirit recognised 7 years ago when I married him. I felt myself come back even more. I felt that absolute peace, that realisation that all these things that nag at us in the outside world, they don't matter. All the everyday worries and fears aren't important and matter only for as long as we let them.
I didn't take pictures, I'm sorry, the thing is, everything that happened is in my heart, my heart took pictures and we have them right where they matter. I am so thrilled that the people that came with us and for us were there.
I looked around and saw all those people who had travelled and missed days at work, spent hard earned money and sacrficed to share this with us, and I was so touched, so happy and so overwhelmed that even now I am covered with goosepimples and have a gulping lump in my throat. What we all looked like doesn't matter, what we wore is almost forgotten and not important. ( with the exception of Elijah and I would pay great amounts of cash to have a picture of him in his clothes, he came into the sealing room wearing the most divine, most heart wrenchingly splendid white jumpsuit, all in one with a little belt, he was Elvis, aged 3 and 5 months, without the rhonestones. I will hold that picture in my heart for eternity and wish I could have that picture on my wall, because really? It was my favourite heart picture and he will be 20 before I know it and it might be hard to recall just how delicious his little bum looked in that jumpsuit then.)
We had a lovely room with a double bed and bunk beds, I think I got to hate that room because although my sons were reverence personified inside the temple, they were lunatics in that little room. They leapt from bunks to bed, they climbed and jumped and fell and jumped some more and I thought I would go INSANE!! It was so wet outside I couldn't escape and I didn't want to risk driving anywhere in case I got lost and couldn't get back.
H loved the temple so much that I wanted him to be inside as much as possible, I love the man he became, when we had a few minutes totally alone just after we were sealed, when we had stood on a balcony and looked ahead to see ourselves in a circular mirror, he turned to me and said " I am really, really happy" and his face said he meant it. I wanted him to grasp as much of that feeling as he could, so I stayed in our teeny cell and tried not to yell too much.
We did see the christmas lights, I did take some pictures then.














Once we had been sealed I relaxed for the first time in months, with one thing or another I have been stressed and preparing for one thing or another , this was the time to breathe out and relax.

I took the boys to a bookstore and found my way back again....blimey!

At last it was time to leave and we set off for home, I felt confident enough to go back to the church bookstore so that mum, Leah and H could look, after all it was only 4 miles away, there are signs for the motorway, I am magnificent, we can do it, easy peasy lemon squeazy.
4 miles to bookstore, 48 miles to find motorway..back outside temple. FORTY EIGHT MILES in a big circle to get right back to where we started. I have been lost many, many times in my life, in 3 different countries, this time was a doozy.
Mum helped. We were asking for trouble, because I was the driver and she was the direction lady and it is from her that I inherited my sense of direction. She will try and tell you that it sort of wasn't her fault, if you ask her, she will, she will say that she didn't actually have the directions for the first bit of the getting lost, which is true but she so DID have them when she said not to trun off for Reigate. So, I blame her, which is fair because if she had stood back and let God give my my dad's sense of direction we'd have never got lost but she didn't she just had to pass hers on to me. Her fault, entirely.
We got home though, eventually and all in one piece. To a spotless house and Sophie who had missed us. Happy family is what we are right now. Very good.