Topping off the Temple

SO hopefully I will become a little better at blogging, but I am having computer woes, so we will see...
Anyway, about a month ago, we were able to participate in the topping off of the temple. They lifted the HUGE steeple onto the building first ( it was estimated to weigh just over 17,000 lbs and ended up actually weighing over 30,000), which was a little stressful because they were a little nervous that the crane wouldn't hold it after all. I guess the superintendent hadn't slept in about a week because he was worried. It was really neat to see it go up and be a little nervous until it was secured. We headed over at about 7:30 in the morning and set up camp looking like this...
a bunch of the families of the workers were there and so I had some company, which turned out really well when by 10:00 they still hadn't finished securing the tower into place. By the time they finally started lifting the tower, most of the workers had come over to sit with their families and watch (pray). Unfortunately, Kent was no where to be found. I was watching out for him when I saw this...

You may have to enlarge it to figure out why I posted this picture... there is a tall man with a cream, black, and red shirt that is standing on the left corner with a white hard hat on. Yup- that is why Kent hadn't come to watch... he wanted a closer look and decided he should help bolt down the tower. I know it doesn't look that huge from the picture, but he is just standing on steel beams about 200 feet in the air with no harness or safety on at all. All of a sudden I recognized that shirt and then I was REALLY nervous! Kent thought it was so cool to be up and part of that, and he has a rip in his jeans to remember it by.
It took another 2 hours to finally get moroni ready to fly. By that time there were people everywhere outside the gates and the news helicopter was flying around. It was really exciting. I took a really cool video of it happening, but I didn't know you can't rotate video from our camera so it is worthless. Plus it took forever. Sorry not to share. but we got some great pictures...up he goes....

and here he is! It was an amazing feeling and even got a little more emotional about it than I thought I would. What a great experience!
Some of the funny things about the thing...

I was amazed at how detailed moroni is for being 200 feet in the air... His hair is perfect! He even has dimples on his cheeks from where he is blowing his horn. Tyse and Emitt know that his name is moroni, but I don't know how to explain much more about his role on top of the temple than that.
Kent took a picture of his fist next to Moronis to try to get a scale type shot. It turned out that it just looks like they are bumpin knuckles. I guess Moroni is now our buddy.

Imagine driving down the freeway one day and passing this....
This is how they brought Moroni to the jobsite. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect to see him tied down to any old flatbed being towed behind a joe schmoe truck. Just a 12 foot moroni. Crusin down the freeway. Hmmm.