Lights at Temple square

As the calendar started to fill up for the last 31 days of the year, we quickly realized that there were only going to be a few chances to do any of the traditional Christmas season type outings. One of which was seeing the lights at Temple Square. This was finally accomplished a few days AFTER Christmas! We decided to go on a weeknight as long as it wasn't Monday night--you know cause I live in Utah, guess what? It was still crowded! Crazy.

First of all, I don't know if you know this but we lost our down town parking spot this year...bitter. Actually my husband just doesn't work there anymore, but still, it's been a long time since we had to pay for parking down town. We decided to park at the Gateway mall, check out the scene there and then ride Trax over to Temple Square. The Gateway's Christmas tree was great! I think I remember them saying it was their biggest tree to date...and it was so fun to watch the light display.

I love how the tree would change colors in segments, I found myself just watching it for several minutes..well done Gateway!

See what I mean! I took the video as I was setting up to take a simple picture...I just wanted to catch the animation of the lights! Fun.

Then of course we have to get a few pictures of the train ride...it's one of our favorite parts of down town--the free ride zone. Some times we just ride the train until the end of the free zone, then get off, switch trains and ride back the other way. We are a boring family we like doing the same things over and over again! Although we did do something new this trip to Temple Square. We have never gone to the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building during Christmas time. How fun to see all the Christmas lights from that perspective! We started at one end of the square and made our way over to the temple. We loved looking at all the different nativity sets and the paper bags...those are so neat! Although I didn't take pictures of them this year, I figured I don't need pictures of them every year...they don't change much.Rusty is obsessed with temples. Every time he sees a steeple, whether it be on a temple or a church building he yells out, "I see the temple!" So he was pretty excited that we were able to walk right up and TOUCH the temple.We walked over to the south visitor center and looked at the mini temple model. I love that you can see how the temple is laid out inside and even the details of the rooms, it's quite neat, I didn't know that room on the top floor that I've heard so much about...was that big! Wow. Although that was the most crowded area of the whole night. We decided we'd come back and get a better look at it later. I snagged this picture off the visitor center's websiteMy camera batteries were almost dead, kind a looks cool!Can you believe it? We are Stroller FREE! This is Rusty's first trip down town without it. Can I just tell you how much easier getting on and off the train was? It was awesome. Although like most 2 year old he got pretty tuckered out by the end of the night, thank goodness daddy came to the rescue. Our last stop was over to the "Big Jesus Statue" in the north visitor center. I was happy to see it wasn't as crowded as it usually is, everyone is over at the temple model. My kids favorite part is the winding walkway up to the Christus, every time I walk up it, it takes me back to years when I was little and would come here with my family at Christmas time! We would drive for hours and hours to get to Salt Lake City. The city was HUGE and would scare me a little! We would go shopping at Pick 'N Save and a few other stores that mom wanted to go to, stop off at McDonald's for dinner and then go see the Christmas lights at Temple Square. We would always go see the Christus but there would be a HUGE line that would take a good 30 minutes to stand in. So yeah, it takes me back every time I walk up it. If I have missed a year going to see the Christmas lights at Temple square since I was a baby, it hasn't been very many. The Christmas season just doesn't seem complete without it! Now that I've started blogging I can link up to our past trips: last year, and the year before that! Awesome!

Well, I think that catches me up with my Christmas re-cap..onto the new year!