Family Night!

We had a little family night today! In the Gateway (an outdoor shopping mall) was hosting a concert featuring Kurt Bestor and a children's choir and doing their annual Christmas tree lighting. It was going to be a date night that turned into a family night and it wasn't super cold (until the very end) so Riley was happy in his little bear snuggle suit.

We got to the Gateway early and found parking and then window shopped...Dick's sport store, Aldos, Forever 21, Berkenstoff toy store while we waited. As the children's choir started to sing it also started to pour rain! We hung out under the eves of the toy store along with some other people, but that only allowed us to listen, not see the choir. Nonetheless, they sounded so pretty! Security started handing out free umbrellas about 20 minutes into the concert and those went pretty quick, but luckily it stopped raining about 10 minutes later! I think there were a lot of prayers that it would stop raining! We ventured out and got some hot chocolate and cookies that they were handing out and listened to the end of the choir and then to Kurt Bestor. He played beautifully...something not easy with the cold I'm sure!

The most exciting part of the night was the lighting of the Christmas tree! they had a synchronized music and light show including the tree. The tree itself was donated by a family in Utah. KSL (a local tv/radio station) starts looking for a tree in September and came across this certain tree in the front yard of the family's house. The family had decided the tree was getting too big for their yard (it is huge!) and generously donated it! The music and light show was so fun and they will have it replaying on the hour in the evenings during the Christmas holiday season. Riley loved the lights, the people, the music...everything! He is very observant and was taking everything in.

After the show we scurried on back to the car because we were starting to really feel the cold! Pictures and video are on my facebook and hopefully soon on the blog! It was so nice to have a (Saturday!) family night out. In the past these have been sadly close to non-exsistant but now that we have a different schedule we have plans to have more family outings and more date nights!