New Stake Center

This might not be terribly interesting to you, but think it's pretty cool! As some of you may know, the LDS Ward that Mark and I have been attending over the past 3 years have been meeting in an old rented "Tank and Boiler" building in Cambridge. The ceilings were high open rafters; the air conditioning was really loud and dripped on those of us who had classes in the little room off of the "chapel" area; the mother's room had one chair in a shower stall and the other chair (which was practically impossible to stand up from with a sleeping baby without pushing the cushion off by mistake)... don't get me wrong, it was a building that holds lots of fond memories.

However, on June 27th the Cambridge Stake dedicated a brand new building for our stake center. It's about a block away from the old tank and boiler building, and it now houses about 5-6 wards/branches, including ours. It is a very beautiful building, and the Mothers' Room has 4 NEW rocking chairs that don't force our legs to get all intertwined with one another! :) We actually now have a place for the guys to play basketball again (which we haven't had since the Longfellow Chapel burned down). We had a week of festivities leading up to the dedication, and the hundreds/thousands of Saints in the area participated in this glorious fun!

Mark wanted to play in the basketball tournament, but he couldn't get a team together in time. So the only extra event we ended up attending was the free Jon Schmidt concert. I thought it was a blast, and Canon was screaming with excitement through most of it. I think he likes music!! The dedication took place on June 27th, and it was a very nice meeting. People talked about the growth of the Church in the Boston/Cambridge area over the past century, and I always find it so inspiring.

One of my favorite parts of the dedication was that the person assigned to give the invocation wasn't the one who gave it. All of a sudden I look up and see Mitt Romney at the podium saying the prayer. When he finished his rather poetic prayer he walked down the aisle and sat down RIGHT BEHIND US. He even smiled at Canon when he was being all cute. I couldn't help but go up to him after the meeting to talk to him for a little bit...which was a bit embarrassing to me since I couldn't really think of much intelligent to say. :0P He looked over at Mark and said, "This little guy looks like this guy over here. Are you the Dad?" gesturing in Mark's direction. Yeah, we spoke to Mitt Romney, and I thought it was awesome that he was there at the dedication.