Let's Go See the Lights!

Every year we try to go see the lights with Kris's parents and every year sickness prevents it from happening. Last year it was our nephews, and the year before that it was Carol and Errol. This year we had one night open this entire month that we could go so we called up Carol and Errol and asked if they wanted to go. They said, yes."

The evening started out pretty well. However, we went to load the car when we realized we would be short one seat in the Yukon, so I volunteered to sit in the back with the stroller and the coats. If only I'd known what would be ahead. Our adventures started at Carl's Jr. where Kyson played in the play land and we laughed at him. It was nice to help him get some wiggles out.

I insisted on going up to temple square. I wanted some pictures and that was what Carol seemed to want to see with us. Boy, I made a big mistake. There was con- struction on I-15 and they closed the carpool lane and the fast lane, which had traffic backed up to 21st south. We were planning to exit at 4th south in the carpool lane so we had to cross all the way across the freeway to exit at 6th south. That was not an easy task. Downtown, I suggested that Kris go down West Temple so we could go around the temple grounds to find a place to park. Mistake #2 - West Temple was backed up for 6 blocks because they also had construction and made 3 lanes go to one. We sat there for a very long time.

Carol and I tried to make the best of it by taking pictures of lights as we drove by them, or taking pictures of us in the car. At one point Carol pointed out some lit up deer in front of a hotel. Kyson liked them, but Kris's comment was, "Great, I could see those at my neighbors house." We couldn't help but laugh at the clever comment. After sitting in the car for literally an hour and half, by the time we made it up to the temple grounds, we decided it wasn't worth it to try and find a parking spot - we left without even getting out of the car. I found out later that night, I chose one of the owrst nights to go downtown. There was a Jazz game (14,000 people), a concert at Abravanel Hall (2800 people), and a performance filling the conference center (21,000), plus the poor schmucks who went downtown just for the lights - add 6 to that tally.

After getting out of traffic we decided to go see a couple of "sights" that my mom told us about. First we went to Christmas Street. It was okay. I had never been (at least I don't think so) and some of the houses were pretty cool, like the one who had done "Utes." But my favorite was a house in Murray. Once again, we sat in the car for about a half hour to drive 200 yards. There is a house in a circle that has its lights synchronized with a radio station. Unfortunately, people literally park there so people can't see the lights. Once we made it back to the house literally it was like a drive in theater with people parked in the circle to watch the house.

Even though we spent 3 hours in the car and basically saw a couple of houses, it was an adventure that I'll remember for years to come.