Family Downtown Evening

This year we bought a family pass to the Utah Children's Museum at The Gateway. The kids have been there a few times, but I've only been once so we decided to go downtown and make a visit for Family Home Evening. They had a special Robots exhibit that was pretty cool.


They had robotic toys, statues, and these really cool robotic arms you could control. It was a big hit with the the kids. We spent almost two hours there and we didn't even hit half of the place, so we decided we need to go more often. I had forgotten how fun it is. It was great because they're open later on Monday nights, and there was hardly anyone else there. Plus it's such a great opportunity to play with the kids.


On our way to the museum I took this shot of Temple Square through the car windshield while we were waiting at the light. It looked so inviting that we made a whole night of it and wandered around the temple grounds admiring the shimmering lights after the museum.

The Assembly Hall looked stunning with all of the vivid orange, yellow and purple lights all around it. I'm usually quite the Grinch, but even I can't help feeling a little jolly with all the Christmas lights up.

The temple of course looks very majestic and inviting behind all of the brightly lit trees. Somehow it's always so comforting and peaceful to me. Of course it was Christmastime 1995 when Melinda and I were married in this temple for time and all eternity. I was going to say that was the best Christmastime for me, but when I honestly think about it, they keep getting better; especially with each of the children.

I loved Melinda then, but I love her so much more now. Now we have Lisette, Miles, Ian and Saffron, too. My love hasn't been spread thinner now that we have them; my capacity to love has grown more than I could have ever imagined.

They had nativity scenes from different countries and cultures around the grounds. Lisette made sure we saw them all. We really liked the New Zealand one, with the lamb and the kiwi. It's always a good reminder that Christmas is about Jesus Christ and not Santa Claus or the Christmas Monkey.

We finished the night off by getting cinnamon rolls and egg nog from Harmons. Yum. We made hot cocoa with little marshmallows and sang some Primary Christmas songs before we prayed and went to bed. It was a very nice family evening.

Downtown dust

Ten minutes before I was supposed to go home from work tonight, I got a phone call (which usually means trouble.) Our downtown clinic was switching DSL and phone providers, and their install tech couldn’t get their network up. So at the last minute I got on the freeway and drove downtown.

I got the problem fixed fairly fast. The DSL router had the same network address as the internal wireless router. After I changed one of the network addresses it came right up. I took a little longer there because my former technician (who has since left) setup the router without any security. I wonder how many neighborhood people have been using their Internet for free? They will be sorely disappointed tomorrow morning.

So it was interesting being downtown today. Even though our mailing address says “Salt Lake City” we don’t actually live in the city. They have these 2 massive malls right by Temple Square that are being demolished. The Crossroads Mall is almost all rubble now, they just need to implode the Key Bank tower. Next they will tear down the ZCMI Center. The whole place is a massive destruction zone and they have these banners of Downtown Rising. It sure doesn't look like it's rising, it looks like it's being brought down to the dust. There are construction walls and rubble all over the place.

So since I was downtown already, I thought I should go to the Family History Library and finally get some ordinance cards printed out. I've had some ancestors flagged in PAF (Personal Ancestral File) to get their missing temple work done for a while now. So being downtown I decided that there's never been a better time than right now.

The library there is great, and the people are very helpful. They steered me in the right direction and I got exactly what I needed. It's exciting to get that step done and go on to the next; to go to the temple. It feels like I'm taking my ancestors names out of the dust.