Christmas Date with Noah

Noah and I planned a great date to celebrate Christmas break in Salt Lake City because we had to drive Abbi and Marlie downtown. Clara and Dad stayed home, we dropped the big girls off and we went off on our own adventure.

The girls were dressed up cute for the Ballet West Nutcracker at the Capital Theater with Aunt Anne. Abbi liked it but thought the men could use more clothing to cover their rears. 

Noah chose P.F. Chang's Chinese for lunch. He loves Chinese food! We tried out the lettuce wraps and loved them. He ordered honey chicken and lo mein and I had sweet and sour chicken. For dessert, we brought home the Great Wall of Chocolate! Noah had such excellent manners and was a great date!

Before going to Temple Square, Noah wanted to go into the toy store we have taken him and Abbi a few years ago. I was letting him lead the way and the first, and only, thing he did was find a toy he thought was great and asked to get it for the Toys for Tots box. I had no idea he remembered when we did that before and was very proud of what he chose to do.

Noah and I had lots of fun looking around City Creek at the window displays, the Disney store, and the fountain. We rode the escalators lots of times, raced to the elevators, made jokes about the parking levels, and were more wild than we had been in a really long time. I think it was the perfect date for a cabin-fevered mom and a new middle child.

At Temple Square, we waited in line to donate to the Light the World vending machine. There were lots of options of things you could pay for in order to donate towards others. Water, meals, eye glasses, baby stuff, goats, water systems, etc. Noah chose to get 100 meals for the Utah Food Bank. The vending machines had nearly 24,000 transactions and generated $469,000 in donations from visitors to Temple Square. Amazing!

We went up to the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and pretended to spy on all the people we could see below. Then, went back to City Creek to buy naughty little gifts for the Hansen Christmas Party.

When we got home, we shared our leftover lettuce wraps and our Great Wall of Chocolate with Dad. He was very nice to stay with Clara and let us have such a fun day in the city.