Weekend Wrap-up

I have always thought those stories about girls swooning and screaming when they listened to Frank Sinatra were silly and highly exaggerated. No longer. I, along with Mom and Dad, Grandma Shipley and the four oldest kids, attended the O.C. Tanner concert at the Conference Center this past Friday. We had such a good time. I was worried that the kids would get bored and restless, but they loved the whole thing. The concert consisted of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Utah Symphony (with guest conductor Eric Kunzel), and two soloists: a woman opera singer (too lazy to get up and look for her name), and Brian Stokes Mitchell, who was the reason for the "swooning".

Seriously. This guy had THE VOICE. I restrained myself from screaming and throwing myself at the stage, but listening to him made me smile... and want him to keep singing. He is a Tony award winning Broadway star, and has such great stage presence. I loved the whole concert. The Tab choir, Utah Symphony and the other soloist were wonderful, too, of course. But "Stokes"...... Wow.


After the concert, as we made our way out along with tens of thousands of other people, we had one of those "tender mercy" experiences. We ran into our friends, the Pateys, who we met in the Azores. They are still there... in fact, they are leaving tomorrow to return after a 6 week vacation here. It was wonderful to see them, and I felt just a little wistful afterwards- because they are going back and we aren't.

I didn't take my camera out much that night, except for these two times: Price and Ethan in front of the Conference Center waterfall,


and walking past the temple on our way to the car. I love temples at night.


In other weekend news, we took a couple of hours today to drive up into the mountains, where the trees are turning wonderful, bright colors. My photos don't show the colors very well, but here they are anyway: