FHE at Temple Square

I don't know if any of you are like me, but I've lived in Utah my whole life and I often take for granted the wonderful sites we have to go and see here. Such is the case with temple square. It's been years since I've taken my family there, except around Christmas time to see the lights. But a few weeks ago we went for Family Night and it was one of the best we've had in a long time.

First we went to see the Joseph Smith movie, which is fantastic. If you haven't seen it yet I highly recommend it. Frankly I had hesitated going because every Joseph Smith movie I've seen shows the same scenes that I always see and since I had just done six months of research on church history for my latest book, I figured I knew it all. But I was wrong. There were several little scenes and facts I had not known of and even though I knew a lot of what took place, I have not seen a Joseph Smith movie so well done. And I have never seen an actor play Joseph Smith so well. I think he portrayed Joseph wonderfully and showed the many different sides of such a complex man. In a nutshell, it's a great movie and if you haven't gone yet I highly recommend it. We went to the 4:30 pm showing and there were only about 30 people there. And did you know that you don't need tickets or reservations anymore? Just show up and enjoy.

After the movie, we headed over to the visitor's center and walked around. My eight year old daughter stopped at every (and I mean every) picture and plaque and TV and read them all! It was so fun to watch her go around and excitedly read each one. Needless to say we were there for quite a while.

Once we finished the first visitor's center we took our picnic dinner and sat at the tables between the Joseph Smith memorial bldg. and the visitor's centers. It was nice and shady and quiet. We enjoyed eating and talking about the things we had seen.

It was a wonderful evening and a great family night. We were there for 3 1/2 hours and still didn't get to see and do all that is available. I think it would take 2 or 3 visits to do that. You can visit the church history museum, go on a tour of the conference center, and take a tour of the beehive house.

If you haven't been to temple square in a while I recommend you take your family, no matter the ages, and go. Now, if you don't live in Utah I can understand how this might be a lengthy and costly family night idea, of which I can understand you not being able to do at this time. However I promise to post a cheaper, more available idea next time! Enjoy!