a gift and temple lights

will surprised me with the best early christmas present... a piano!

it is so beautiful! we had talked about maybe starting out with a keyboard,

because the price tag on those are much smaller...

but will went above and beyond and had this beauty delivered right to our living room!

i came in from a photo shoot and he quickly blindfolded me and led me in to see it.

i was so happy! he is the best gift giver, always blows me away with his gifts!

i've been playing christmas music on it everyday since the beginning of december.

i can't wait to teach our kids to play someday and sing songs together on family night. :)

earlier this month i was downtown when they turned the christmas lights on at temple square.

it was packed but such a pretty sight so i walked around and took some pictures.

if you live near salt lake or are just driving through, make a stop to see these!

you will be happy that you did. :)

grandmas and a date night

in our ward, i work with the young women (12-18 year old girls).

this past wednesday the girls put on a "grandma appreciation night"at our church building
and they invited some of the elderly women in our ward.
i picked up one of the women who was absolutely adorable.
she has lived in this area for over 50 years and is the original owner of her house.
(that's amazing because in our area most of the homes were built in the early-mid 60's.)
talking to her during dinner i found out that her husband passed away in january...
she told me how they fell in love at a church dance, were snowbirds in arizona every winter for the past 18 years, and how she is struggling to put up her christmas tree this year
because it will be her first one alone.
my heart just broke. i can't imagine the pain of losing your spouse,
especially after so many wonderful years together.
she was so open and honest though about the things she has experienced in life.
i love that our ward is full of a lot of elderly people. they have SO many stories to tell!
it was a great night and the soup and brownies we were served were delicious!


last night, i surprised will with a night out on the town.
he is going to be in san fran all weekend with his dad so I wanted to do something special before.
he was working so we met downtown at CPK for dinner then grabbed some hot cocoa. YUM!!!
then we tried to hunt down the "jingle bus" which goes through downtown during the holidays.
(it's a free trolley bus that picks people up and drives them past the big light displays.)

 while we were waiting for the jingle bus, trax stopped in front of us.
we were so cold that we just decided to be spontaneous and hopped on.
it took us through downtown, past temple square and the malls.

we got off at the "Off Broadway Theatre" in downtown salt lake and picked up tickets to this play.
it was called "It's a Wondrous Life" and was a comical version of "It's a Wonderful Life".

they performed in this cute little theatre that even had balcony seats.
it brought back so many memories of the high school play and musical i was in.
drama is such a fun thing to watch and participate in. i would love to do it again!
it was such a fun date night!