Mo Tab

It's the Christmas season which -- for revellers that live within driving distance to Salt Lake City -- means it's time to make the annual pilgrimage to Temple Square to see the wonderful display of Christmas lights. Most of my readers... all two of you... know what I'm talking about.

It's been a tradition of ours for the past several years. We freeze, but we love it!

This year, our usual excuse for going -- to listen to Buttercup's choir sing in the Assembly Hall and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building -- wasn't there. Darn it. The girl thought she had to graduate from high school, which means we couldn't listen to her sing in the choir... blah blah blah. Sheesh. Personally, I think it's selfish of her. After all, we enjoyed going and listening to her choir. Shouldn't be all about us and what we want to do... ? SHOULDN'T IT?!?!

Just kidding.

Kind of.

:)

Buttercup's graduation aside, this year we found an excuse to go. We are looking into starting a business in Florin or Guilder and we needed to do some research on comparable businesses. (I'm not quite ready to disclose what the business is... sorry.) This was the best weekend to go.

We spent an enjoyable two evenings with Red who, incidentally, offers THE BEST lodgings this side of the Snake River. Seriously. I haven't had chocolates put on my pillow in a hotel in YEARS, but Red always delivers. And... can we talk about the absolutely delectable cookies she baked for us? No. I won't talk about them. You'll just feel jealous. And I don't want anyone to feel bad when they read my blog.

Thanks, Red, for putting up with us!

This year, however, we didn't stand in the cold looking at twinkling lights. And that's okay. It's okay to change things up every now and again. Right? This year we did something BETTER! Early Sunday morning we got up early (I was out of the house before 8 a.m.!!!) and headed to Salt Lake and the Conference Center (we call it the Supernacle). We decided to take Inigo to his first live performance of Music And The Spoken Word, which was also his first live performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Let me tell you about Inigo and Mo Tab. He might be getting too old to admit it, but he has always loved listening to them. When he was a baby, while our family watched General Conference, he would crawl all around the room, getting into EVERYTHING. But when the Choir would start singing, he would stop what he was doing, sit up and watch and listen intently until the song was finished, then he would go back to the mess he was making. He loved the choir!!

So this year, we decided that instead of looking at the lights, we'd let him listen to the second best choir in the world sing Christmas songs! It was a great decision! He LOVED it!!! We loved it too! Yeah, sure, we would have preferred to have Buttercup with us (she had school so couldn't come along) and we would have preferred to listen to HER sing, but Mo Tab is a close second and did a fantastic job!

As always, the music was stirring and inspiring. I found my eyes welling with tears several times throughout the program... as usual. And what's even better, Inigo's heart was touched too. The minute the program finished, when I asked him what he thought, he said, "Mom, that was AMAZING!! Can we come back? I don't think I can ever listen to them on TV anymore. It's so much better IN PERSON!" He actually made the request to go back next weekend so we can listen to them again!

Or new family tradition now is: the first weekend in December we will travel to Salt Lake so we can attend a taping of Music And The Spoken Word.

Yeah, we'll probably look at the Twinkling lights too!

God Be With You Til We Meet Again from Witch Valerie on Vimeo.