Another Christmas season arrives and it it time to do our yearly activity of looking at the lights on temple square. This year with Dallin having Jr. Jazz games every Saturday in Magna, we decided to spend a little extra time in Salt Lake after the game and then go see the lights. After the game we drove to Toys R Us and had the kids get a gift for each of their siblings. I know my kids our not very old, but I thought that to make it easier for them to give to their brothers when they are older I had better start now. It was hard because both Dallin and Isaac were focused on what they wanted and not what the other one wanted. We split them up and off it was a little better.f jeff then joked about that the gifts cost too much so the boys would think that they didn't get anything. I know it is a little mean, but it has made it so that either of the boys isn't tellling the other what they got for them.
We then had a little more time to kill before the sun set, so we went and parked at the gateway and went into Clark Planetarium. They boys love to look at all of the toys in the gift shop and then they go explore the exhibits on the second floor. Since I didn't want to climb the stairs(I was sore from my workout on Friday) I stayed downstairs with Kaden and Jeff and the boys went exploring. It took up just enough time and then it was time to go get on the TRAX train and see the lights. 
The train ride was a little crowded, but we made it work and the boys loved having to stand up while the train was moving. We had fun looking at all of the lights. We did the rounds and I took a couple of pictures. I took a little bit of time trying to figure out the best settings for my camera. I had read an article earlier in the week about how to take good christmas tree pictures and I thought it would apply nicely to the lights. I was excited that I was able to take a lot of pictures that looked really nicely all without the use of the flash, and yes it was at night. Just for knowledge I had more mishaps than good pictures this year. It will take me awhile to get the use of taking pictures without the auto settings.
Here are the rest of the pictures that I took. The green picture to the left was just a test to see if I had the settings right and it turned out to be really pretty. The temple had a lot of mini christmas trees in different colored lights in two of their flower beds and I loved the color and was trying to get those, when I discovered that it was perfectly set with the conference center so I took that picture and loved how it turned out.
There was also I lot of red on trees that made it look like the trees were on fire. I took this one while the boys were walking ahead of me. I just have to say that I was left behind a lot this time because of all the time that it took to get the settings on my camera just right to take a couple of pictures. My family was very patient with me. The boys loved it because it gave them more time to run around I also saw this star that was hanging from the tree and thought it was pretty. I know it looks like I took it when there was still light, but it was just the exposure on my camera was turned up to make everything a little brighter. I love that feature.
I am not really a fan of having blue for christmas. I don't really know why I just don't think it goes really well, but when I saw all of the blue trees that they had I thought they were really pretty with the reds, greens, yellow and clear lights that they had. So I had to a pciture of 2 lonely blue trees that were next to the church office building. Just to show you that I do make mistakes I put in a picture where I moved the camera and made it blurry, but it turned out that the design that came out looks pretty cool to me. I think I might have acidently made a bokeh effect. 
It was fun to spend some time together while our drywall is being put up in our basement. I love that Jeff and I try to do this every year. There were times that we were a little frustrated, but on the drive home we all had a good time and it was a good day.
