Spring Break in Utah--Day 2--Temple Square

After the Church History Museum we walked over to see Temple Square.  It was the day before conference--so there were a lot of people there, but it was still so peaceful and the flowers and weather were both beautiful!

I did feel a little under dressed--most people were in suits and dresses, but it was still fun.

Our first stop was the Salt Lake Tabernacle.  We were lucky and a couple of sister missionaries gave us a short tour of the building.  This building is amazing.  To read a little about the history you can look here.  A couple of the things that we pointed out to the kids was how much pride was taken when building it.  The benches were made out of pine, but hand painted to look like oak--the grain was painted on each of the benches by hand.  The huge marble columns in the building are not actually marble, but pine, painted to look like marble--and they do!  The other neat thing is the acoustics that allow a pin to be dropped on the pulpit and the sound can be heard throughout the building--important before the use of microphones.

Next we went to the North Visitors Center and showed the kids my favorite place on temple square--the Christus statue.  I love the way you walk up into the room and it gives you the feeling of heaven, I also love the peace that you feel here.  We have the Lladro statue that was a small replica of this and the kids were excited to see it in person.

We stopped by the Conference Center and wanted to see the gardens on top, but they were closed for Conference preparations--so we settled for this picture

Matt took some great pictures of the Temple--He wanted me to wait to post this after he had touched up the pictures, but he took too long so I'm posting them straight from the camera!

I really love this picture--it isn't the best posed picture, but I love how everyone is laughing at something Aaron said.

I really wanted to get a picture of our family with the temple in the background--when we first got there a couple who had just been married was there taking pictures...we waited 25 minutes with no end in sight.  We finally walked away to go see the behive house and before we had gone 30 steps they finished and 4 other families had lined up for pictures....so we came back after the behive house (but by this time it was past lunch time and the kids were tired and hungry).  I think I need to photoshop the two pictures to get the best faces for each person!

The individual temple shots went better--but Alex refused to have one.

My favorite shot of the temple from our time there.