Winnie at General Conference

 Traditionally we have taken each girl to a session of General Conference in Salt Lake after she has turned 8. Unfortunately, COVID prevented us from taking Winnie to her session of Conference until she was 9 1/2 years old. (Conference was not open to the public in the duration.) So as soon as we heard that the Church would be issuing a limited number of tickets for the April 2022 Conference, we asked the stake to be put on the list of interested members. We were the first ones to do so, so when they received tickets, we got our pick of sessions. 

We left Idaho Falls for our hotel in Salt Lake on Friday, April 1, after I had volunteered at D.I. and driven the 6th grade band carpool. We spent the night at our Hampton Inn in downtown Salt Lake (Winnie was excited to get an entire queen bed to herself), then enjoyed breakfast before packing up and heading to Temple Square. The Salt Lake Temple is going through a major overhaul, so it's completely surrounded by scaffolding, and most of Temple Square is torn up and inaccessible. We walked around to take it all in, then tried to find a suitable place to listen to the Saturday morning session. 

Winnie taking pictures of the statue in front of the Assembly Hall while Seth watches. The Assembly Hall and the Tabernacle are the only parts of the west side of Temple Square that aren't completely torn apart.

Winnie and Andrea at the fountain in front of the Assembly Hall.

The three of us with the temple in the background.

Seth lifting Winnie so she can see how far down they've dug out next to the temple.

In the past, we've listened/watched it on Temple Square, but with the scarcity of grounds right now, we ended up going across the street to Brigham Young Historic Park. I've seen the park many times before while driving/walking past it, but this was the first time we'd actually gone inside it. It is a beautiful little haven in downtown Salt Lake, and we enjoyed listening to this session in this idyllic setting.

Winnie spent most of the time during the session coloring in the book I got for her from Deseret Book or the packet she received from her Primary presidency.

But she also spent time snuggling with me on the bench.

And snuggling with Seth on the grass.

We tried to visit Brigham Young's grave, but that entire little park is under construction as well, so this is as close as we got:

Then we went to the City Creek Mall where Winnie chose Sbarro pizza for lunch and Seth and I had Indian food. After eating, we drove to the Salt Lake Cemetery to do our prophet and ancestor grave scavenger hunt. In the past, Seth has brought a GPS that has all the gravesites marked. This year, we didn't think to have him bring it. We were ill-prepared, and I was despairing at the amount of time it was taking to track down just the first few graves without the proper maps. Seth worked his tech voodoo (he had dumped everything from his GPS to the cloud a few years ago, so he found that and two websites necessary to convert that information into something usable for us) and saved us. Once he had all the coordinates available on his phone, we had a much easier time.

Winnie enjoying the cookie she got with her pizza at City Creek Mall.

Winnie at the prophets' graves.

Winnie's at her ancestors' graves.

After the cemetery, we went to Tucano's for dinner. In the past, we've taken the girls to the restaurant at the Gateway, but when we tried to get a reservation for that one, we found they were pretty well booked that night. We learned that they have another one in Farmington, so we made a reservation there instead. Winnie loved the fried bananas, Brazilian cheese bread and bacon-wrapped pork. Seth and I drooled over the different varieties of beef.

Eating a quail egg at Tucano's.

The next day (Sunday, April 3), we got dressed and ready and emptied our hotel room. We put everything in the van, then walked down to the TRAX stop. When we got off at the Temple Square stop, a random man loudly told me I shouldn't let my daughter were her Puma hoodie because that animal is evil. With all the other shouting and protesting that goes on around the Conference Center around Conference, it just kind of blended in. But it was an interesting and noteworthy experience.

We got to listen to Music and the Spoken Word, then the Sunday morning session. Afterward, we jumped back on TRAX, walked back to the hotel, then drove home and listened to the afternoon session on the way. 

Riding TRAX Sunday morning.

Exterior Conference Center selfie.

Interior Conference Center selfie.

Our view from the balcony.