Ho, Ho, Ho Yourself

Paige’s first trip to Temple Square – yeah, complete disaster. We had originally talked about taking Trax downtown, but I figured “No one goes downtown anymore, and certainly no one will be Christmas shopping at the Mr. Mac or the other two stores still in the downtown malls.”

So we drove. Or should I say, so we sat. It took us 40 minutes to get from 600 S to South Temple. There was no way out, no turning around, no alternative routes. Apparently there was a Jazz game, a production at the Conference Center and all sorts of other stuff going on downtown. Boo. Paige was fine with the gridlock. She took advantage of the situation by sleeping the entire hour we were in the car. Thus she was very upset when we pulled her out of her warm, comfortable car seat and she was really upset when we made her wear her hat and gloves. (I love baby mittens – there’s no thumbs in ‘em.)

Once we got to Temple Square, Paige was underwhelmed by the Christmas lights, but her enjoyment was secondary to my ulterior motive of taking the best Christmas card photo ever (yes, I know it’s almost Christmas and that we should have sent the cards out weeks ago). However, in this I was also thwarted. The second I took Paige out of her stroller she started screaming and was not cooperating with any picture taking. Also not cooperating were the sister missionaries. Traci, Paige and I were standing there all cute-like in front of the lights when I asked the sisters to snap a quick picture for us. “Sorry, we’ve got to be somewhere,” one of them replied. Were they late for a date or something? In the end I don’t think it mattered much because Paige screamed until we put her back in her stroller. We didn’t get the Christmas card picture.

Though it took an hour to get there, we only spent about half that time outside of the car; it was too cold and too crowded to spend much time at Temple Square. When we stopped at the Sconecutter on the way home, Paige was as happy as could be. She loves fries and shakes. Her nap in the car gave her the terrible strength necessary to terrorize us until 11 p.m. We're never going to Temple Square again!

The one hightlight of the trip was that we got to see this Chinese Nativity Scene behind the Church Office Building: