Lights on Temple Square

I had this wonderful thought the other night, lets go as a family and walk around downtown and look at the lights.  If any of you watch the Middle, you have an idea how as to how our family night out went.  It all started out by there be no parking anywhere near Temple Square.  I mean No Where!!  None of us can walk very far but we started out by walking a couple blocks just to get to our destination. As we headed toward the lights I realized that we may have just chose the worst night to see the lights.  I'm pretty sure every Young Woman's and Men's group in the Salt Lake Valley was there with us.

While we were surrounded by beauty, we were also surrounded by youth groups that were loud and running wild.  What has happened to the youth today?  I wish I could exclude my own children from that thought but they were soon included.  Before too long, I would have to include myself.  It was so crowded by the manger scene that we were all squished together. Squished together with loud talking and singing youth. After I took my first picture (the Temple above) the batteries died in my camera.  I had forgot to pack extra batteries.  Now all I had was my cell phone, yay.  While trying to get the camera safely tucked away with the lens still stuck out, Kenny accidentally elbowed Taylor in the  mouth.

None of us do well with crowds.  That simple statement could even be an understatement.  As we were walking we had a couple walking right behind us (like, right behind us) and next to Taylor.  This couple was having a conversation about someone they knew and before I knew what was happening I could hear Taylor behind me saying things that went along with their conversation only in his best sarcastic tone.  They would say something and then I could hear Taylor respond with "Reallllly" or "Oh thaat is soooo greeaaat."  I quickly moved us over out of the way and let this other couple get by us and then just gave Taylor that REALLY look.  We were off again.

We headed toward the South part of the Square and Kelton was busy telling us how cool the display is in the visitor's center. It is about the Temple and he was so excited to show us and tell us all about it.  I had said that we would go in there on our way back through so he could show us.  I think we were starting to enjoy and settle down a little while we were in a less crowded area.  It was so pretty looking at all the lights and the Temple and was fun seeing all the families and tourists taking in all the beauty.  For a few moments I was excited to think that we had saved our family outing and was going to enjoy the rest of our night. Haaa haaa haaa, that is really how naive I am.

As we made our way onto the Main Street Plaza I could hear a little comment from behind me (It would be nice if we could just have one normal family outing.  When are we going back to the car?)  That was it!! All that peace, love, and anything else nice crap went out the window.  There were no lights before me anymore, the night was done.  I was done!  I was able to take a few more pictures with my phone and then when Taylor asked me where we were going I quickly let him know that we were heading back to the car.

We slowly made it back to our car safely even though  we timed our leaving with half of the youth groups. More yelling, singing, and general ughhh. My next wonderful thought was to stop and get us all Peppermint Hot Chocolate from McDonald's.  Big mistake. Huge mistake.  We sat for over 15 minutes waiting for our drinks while we watched (not kidding) 10 cars leave behind us with their food.  Kenny finally went in and got us our drinks. I told him we should have got our money back but he just wanted to leave.

In the end, we made it through as a family and enjoyed some very weak hot chocolate as we made our way home.  We did enjoy many beautiful images and some priceless moments together.  No matter what, we are a forever family and it may take that long to figure out how to put together a family night that we can all enjoy :).  I do know that we love each other and can now look back at our night out and laugh hysterically about what happened and talk about all the beautiful things we saw.  I guess that makes this a success.