December 18, 2010: David Archuleta and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Every year, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir puts on a concert with a well-known singer and actor. It's a lottery process where you enter your name and hope to get 4 tickets to one of their four performances. This year, we were chosen. The guest singer was David Archuleta, a home-town boy who was the runner up in American Idol several years ago, and Michael York was the actor. The night before we were supposed to go, one of the lead stories on KSL was that people who had been there 45 minutes early didn't make it in because, while they usually oversell the performances based on a certain percentage of no-shows, David was a big enough draw that people weren't skipping the show. We decided to go very early, spend some time at Gateway Mall, look at the decorations downtown, and then head to the conference center.

Well, we got there around 2 and were told that we couldn't get into the parking structure until 3:15, so we went to the Gateway first. It was a lovely afternoon, quite warm, and we enjoyed going to some of the stores--none more than Bath and Body Works which is the girls' favorite. We stopped for some cookies and hot chocolate, and then, noting the time, we went back to park. From there, we walked through the temple grounds and decided it would be good to see "Joseph Smith: The Restoration" again. That would take 90 minutes and then we would have plenty of time to get in line.

I love that movie. As Emma Smith remarks to Joseph, "Do you ever think the Lord asks too much?" I thought about the Empty Nester's dinner again and thought, "I'm such a dork! I haven't had to bury a child or cross the plains." It's such a great production. I looked at the sister missionaries who were bearing their testimonies and thought about Ian, who was doing the same in another part of the world.

When the movie finished, we walked over to the Conference Center only to see the line going all the way up the hill, approaching the Capitol Building. I told the girls that we didn't have a prayer of getting in, so if we didn't, we would head to dinner instead. I think they were secretly hoping we didn't. But after being in line for about a half hour, they opened the doors and we made it in. In fact, when we got inside to our seats, we couldn't believe how much of it was still empty! That's a lot of people in there.

The concert was great. He can certainly sing! He needs a little maturity behind him before he addresses crowds, but the music was superb. The girls really liked Michael York as well and thought he would have been a great Dumbledore.

These were the best parts of the day. From there, it all went downhill. Of course, it took a while just to get out of the parking garage. Then to get to the freeway. And then, traffic wasn't terribly bad, but we knew that they were shutting down I-15 at Pleasant Grove to work on bridges, so we had a time crunch ahead of us. And then, there was an accident that shut down the freeway about five miles ahead of that. I screwed up the detour and ended up in this horrific traffic situation. I can't believe I wasn't arrested because I was FULL of road rage. I had an 18-wheeler ahead of me that was just NOT cooperating; a police officer who was letting everyone ahead of us (and that's when I yelled). And I had to go to the bathroom. I kept posting status updates on Facebook, venting over and over. (Mandy was very helpful in updating me on what was going on.) And I couldn't get anywhere. Man, I was dying. Ellie put on Brian Regan so we could at least laugh a little. So once we got back on, we decided to get back off and find somewhere to eat. We stopped at the Sonic in Pleasant Grove and they were out of food left and right.

Needless to say, I was SOO happy to get home. I found the bathroom first, then took many deep breaths. (It ends up that three pedestrians ran across the freeway and were hit. They had run out of gas and decided to cross the road. The mother died and the others were in stable condition.) I apologized to my girls for losing control and decided to just remember the good parts of the day and evening. In fact, as I write this a couple of weeks later, I had forgotten about the traffic until I was looking at my FB posts.