Temples, Toys and Shakespearean Parmesan Chicken

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Monday, Day 15. After a protracted departure from the Lambert household (tears were shed), we spent the day in Salt Lake touring Temple Square with the kids. We too in the visitor's center and the Church Art and History Museum. There was a nice pace to the events and we capped things off with the Joseph Smith film playing in the legacy theater. Watching the movie was a little surreal after having visited so many of the places depicted. I'm not always the biggest fan of the church produced films, but I did like the actor who portrayed the prophet even if all of the clothes were a little too clean. It was a powerful film and accomplished quite a bit in its relatively short running time. Although I have to admit that the actor who portrayed Hyrum looked so much like Josh Groban that I kept expecting him to break out into song.

"What do you know about the Mormons?"

After Temple Square we took a short detour down to the Gateway mall to get something to eat and so that I could play with the iPad at the Apple store (It really is as cool as people are saying). Julie wasn't as taken with the little wonder as I was, but that might have had something to do with the fact that she was trying to reign in a wandering James at the time.

We joined Julie's good friend Jill and her husband Will Shakespeare for dinner. Obviously, I'm tempted to play on the whole idea of dining with William Shakespeare, but I can't think of a way to do it in a way that isn't kind of obvious and simplistic. It was a lot of fun to catch up with Jill and I really enjoyed getting to know her husband who struck me as both literate and practical with a shared appreciation for all gadgets Apple.

We stayed later than we had initially intended, but it was so good to visit with the Shakespeares that it was hard to leave (or maybe it was just difficult extricating ourselves from their ginormous bean bad chair). We left Salt Lake at about eight thirty anticipating a leisurely hour and a half drive back up to Logan, but alas there was more of that pesky white stuff, known in some corners of the world as snow. In fact, there were great quantities of the stuff. We passed two major accidents and the mountain pass at Brigham City was closed. In total, the drive took us about four hours from start to finish, but even four hours is starting to feel leisurely.