~ part 2: Temple Square & SLC

We stayed two nights at our favorite hotel-that's-really-just-a-little-motel in Salt Lake City,

the City Creek Inn.

It's quaint, clean, affordable, has big rooms and is a short walk to Temple Square. Driving by you'd totally expect it to be a roach motel, but it's totally not, and we like it. 

The flowers outside our room. What hotels have cute little flowers like this anymore??

Walking to Temple Square.

Our first stop was the new Conference Center. We first visited it two years ago, but wanted the kids to get to see it again. It's an engineering miracle, and it was a labor of love by dear, dear President Hinckley.

The feeling when you walk into this room is just... amazing.

 Huge. Powerful. Solid. 

It still blows me away that these balconies are not supported with visible pillars. President Hinckley wanted everyone to have an unobstructed view. It's crazy to stand in there and turn slowly around and take it all in. I can't wait for the day that we can go there as a family to watch General Conference. I'll never forget the feeling I had the moment I felt President Hinckley enter the room when he came to Houston and spoke to us at the Astrodome. I literally felt his presence before I saw him, and cried uncontrollably as we all rose as one and began to sing, "We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet." I still get choked up thinking about it. There may be things that I don't understand from time to time (or all the time), but there are some things I'll never doubt. Knowing that President Hinckley was a prophet of God is something that I know without a shadow of a doubt. 

I can't begin to capture a fraction of the beautiful artwork in the Conference Center, but I had to include this piece. It's all made of the same stone. The color variation is only there because parts of it were rubbed more than others and so the inner, hidden color shines through more deeply. So many gospel analogies in that one piece of stone...

Okay, I can't even say anything or I will start to cry. Only that when President Hinckley passed away, I felt like I lost a true friend. 

Jonathan stood in front of this painting for a long while, and silent tears began to roll down his cheeks. 

I began to see what he was seeing. Do you see it too?

Only the little child was unafraid to approach the Savior without hesitation or fear.

And her mother was the reason why.

Okay, there I go again! (*sniff*)

Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty!! I love this story, and I'm grateful for the talks by John Bytheway that help me to appreciate these war chapters even more...

The 2,000 stripling warriors... another deeply moving story from the Book of Mormon that reminds me time and again what a HUGE responsibility I have to raise my children well and teach them TRUTH.

Our sweet tour guide took a lot of time to explain things to us and especially to the kids. 

Looking down at where I took the earlier photo.

.

Again, it blows me away at what an incredible feat of engineering this Conference Center is. Seriously... a huge water feature, evergreens, and a TWO ACRE wildflower field on top of a building like this...???

The triangles (pyramids, really) are skylights that let beautiful prisms of light into the Conference Center auditorium.

A beautiful little girl, and some beautiful wildflowers growing on the Conference Center roof. 

Seriously though. TWO ACRES??? 

And of course... the Salt Lake Temple...

so amazing.

This photo had to be included simply because it cracked us up. Jonathan kept coming up with funny captions like "oh no, we shouldn't have made them eat those chili dogs!" Really they were just loving the water and Calvin was wishing he could kipe the coins!

On our way to the Lion House for lunch.

(this is actually a photo from two years ago, but I HAD to include it because of how beautiful the flowers were!!)

View from the north side of the temple (above).

So... some fun trivia for you... 

and I'm curious to know if any of you have noticed this before... and if you think it's as mind-staggering as we think it is. On the south side of the temple, on the very top (seemingly blank) section... did you know that there are dark spots that form the Big Dipper, and that they are correctly placed so as to 

accurately point the way to the North Star? 

"True North"? 

AND, did you know that what we see as the North Star is not one star... but THREE...??? 

Look it up for yourself. Look up "Polaris" on Wikipedia.

("... In January 2006, NASA released images from the Hubble telescope, directly showing all three members of the Polaris ternary system.")

Okay, well... on to more trivial matters... 

After soaking on the complexities and wonders of the Conference Center and the temple, and stuffing ourselves at the Lion House, 

we hopped on a tram to rest our barkin' dogs (and mooing calves, lol) and have a quick tour of the city. I liked the statues of the seagulls (below) on the tram station. If you don't know the story about the pioneers and the seagulls... well... ask me or look it up. It's very cool.

I like this shot a lot.

And then we took our weary little selves back to the motel and had a little siesta.