Temple Lights

I was totally spoiled growing up in Mesa, AZ where every Christmas we would drive 10 minutes and see the beautiful Mesa temple lights! I didn't realize (until a few months ago, actually) that there are only a handful of temples around the world that do lights. And surprisingly both Michael and I had never seen the Salt Lake lights! So Sunday night we bundled up and blasted Christmas music and headed downtown, along with 3 million other people! Haha. It was packed but so gorgeous.

How many hours do you think it takes to put all these lights up?? Literally every branch is covered!

Speaking of the temple, a friend in our ward is going through for the first time on Saturday! We are so happy for him and can't wait to leave Lydia with a sitter for a few hours and worship in the temple :). Michael and I used to be so good about going frequently, but since having Lydia it's been tough to get sitters and school schedules lined up, but selfishly I need to go more often! I always love the joy and clarity I find there, and I leave feeling so much peace. To learn more about our temples, see  here. 

One of the four different cultural representations of the nativity!

My favorites. 

Thanks random stranger who took our picture! We rarely get shots of all of us together, so it's fun to have a few. Speaking of photos, I'm starting the hunt for a newborn/family photographer for a week or so after this little guy is born, and possibly a birth photographer? Part of me would love to have really high quality pictures in the hospital to look back on, but another part of me still thinks that having some stranger in the room with you and taking pictures of one of the messiest and simultaneously most sacred experiences of your life is a little weird. Ha. But I'm sure I'd get over that pretty quickly! Basically I only have a handful of shots from Lydia's birth and I regret not having more. And I definitely don't want Michael to have to worry about taking pictures, and I don't want to slap that responsibility on my parents either, so hiring someone sounds like a good way to go. Thoughts? Has anyone had a photographer in the hospital before, and did you like it? Any great (and decently priced!) Utah photographers you'd recommend??

Jacket: Target, old

Denim: AG maternity 

Boots: H&M, old

Beanie: Anthropologie 

Lydia's Jacket: Gap

Lydia's Beanie: Target