A Downtown Family Date

I'm so lucky to have The Becky. This goes without saying, really, and I'm lucky to have her for so very many reasons. But at Christmas time, one of the reasons I'm extra EXTRA lucky is that she always seems to be able to slip me a few precious and coveted tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square Christmas Concert. It is always a wonderful evening out. This year I was pretty darn excited to get a chance to go. Who was the special guest, you may ask? Well, after the show two years ago with Tom Brokaw telling the most touching story ever about the Candy Bomber from World War II, I wasn't sure I'd ever love another show as much. Then I heard that this year's guests would be Santino Fontana (the voice of Hans from Frozen) and the Sesame Street Muppets. The Muppets! As in Big Bird, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, Elmo....the Sesame Street Muppets! Having grown up as a dedicated Sesame Street watcher the thought of seeing a few of those characters live tickled me as much as seeing any star out there. Maybe I'd be more excited to see the Avengers, but I'm not sure. I don't think they'll be singing with the choir any time soon anyway.

It's usually the case that only kids age 8 and older are permitted into the concert so I was pretty sad and felt awfully guilty about having to find a babysitter for little Skippidy. I hated the thought of leaving her out. And actually, Becky told me she might only be able to get me one or two tickets so then we'd have to leave all three kids home. But I was grateful for any tickets at all. Becky called me the week of the concert to let me know what tickets she was able to get. She excitedly told me she was able to get us five tickets. I asked her if she thought we might be able to sneak Skippidy in and pass her off as a very small 8 year old.... chances seemed pretty slim, not to mention not very honest. She then let me know that this year because the special guests were from Sesame Street we'd be allowed to bring kids ages 5 and up. My heart soared. I was so excited thinking about taking our whole family to the concert and it was indeed wonderful.

We decided to make an evening of it. Apparently so did every other concert attender, but that was ok. We tried to get downtown pretty early, and luckily Troy found us some good parking deep in the bowels of the City Creek Shopping Center that other drivers had not discovered yet. We decided to eat dinner in the City Creek food court....along with about 30,000 other people. It was pretty packed. Troy and Bitty found us a table while Gregor (this is Stomper's new online name as per his request - I'll write about where that came from later) and Skippidy and I bought a large amount of Chinese shrimp and noodles.

After our dinner we just walked from City Creek over to Temple Square so we could officially See the Lights at Temple Square. They are so beautiful but due to the crowds we don't always come down and see them. It was a nice walk and we got to the conference center in plenty of time to get seats and settle in for an absolutely delightful evening.

The first muppet to appear on stage was Big Bird. I'm not going to lie. I was totally excited to see him  - way more than my kids were. I loved Sesame Street, and seeing that wonderful bird with billows of yellow feathers floating along as he walked on those massive orange legs was kind of emotional for me. I got a little teary. Let's be honest. I get teary for just about anything. And now we can add this to the list. Big Bird makes me cry.

Thank you thank you The Becky. We had so much fun.