Mormon Tabernacle Choir/David Archuleta

One of our annual Christmas traditions is to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert, if we can get in. For those of you reading this from another state or country or are not familiar with this tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sponsors this unbelievably fantastic, wonderful concert every year for four days (including Music and the Spoken Word broadcast on Sunday), and it's absolutely free to the public. The tricky part is getting tickets. They are given through a lottery system on line. We were told by a choir member that 1.5 million people requested tickets this year. Of course, the guest singer this year was David Archuleta, which really added to the frenzy of attempts to get tickets. The Conference Center seats about 21,000, so about 80,000 lucky people get to go into the Conference Center to see the concert firsthand.

Our family never even requested tickets because there's eight of us, and only four tickets are given to each lucky lottery winner. We have always had good luck getting in through the standby line, but we knew this year would be different because of the overwhelming interest in David Archuleta.

With little hope of ever getting in, we headed downtown about 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, parked at the KSL Building, and walked to Temple Square to get in the standby line a little before 5:00. There were already about thirty people in line. We had a two-hour wait ahead of us before they would even think about letting anybody from the standby line in.

Here we are patiently waiting in line, drinking hot chocolate, playing games on the iPod Touch, and just generally having a good time on Temple Square. Gradually the line in front of us got smaller and smaller as passers-by with extra tickets handed them off. By about 6:30, we started getting tickets handed to us, two at a time. Marissa and Zack went in first, then Gage and Emily, and finally Quinn, Alex, Michael, and I had tickets in our hands!!!!!


Here's the view from our seats. Sorry, but no pictures of the choir or David. We were asked to turn off all electronics after this point. All I can say about the concert is: Oh, my goodness!!! it was so good. The decorations, the dancers, the choir, everything was magical. David Archuleta was so charming, and let's face it. That boy can sing!!!! To me, nothing brings the spirit faster than Christmas music, especially sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Jazz Game

Yesterday afternoon our next-door neighbor called to see if we wanted four Jazz tickets in the lower bowl. My answer? "Heck yeah." She said she didn't know where the seats were, only that they were in the lower bowl. (Their son-in-law works for the Jazz.) So we proceeded downtown to see the Jazz game, only to encounter a wreck on the freeway, which delayed us 45 minutes. We arrived just at the end of the first quarter, and here we are on the NINTH row!

I almost had as much fun watching the Jazz Bear as Michael did watching the game.

Incidentally, the Jazz solidly whipped the Indiana Pacers.

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!