In light of yesterday's post....

In light of yesterday's post, this post seemed, well... appropriate.

In early December Darrin and his kids came down from Idaho to spend the weekend with us and do some fun Christmas activities, including seeing the light on Temple Square. We loaded the kids in the car, loaded the hot chocolate in the car and headed to Salt Lake City.

Now if you have ever tried to park in downtown SLC during Christmas, it is in one word, DIFFICULT, especially if you are wanting to park anywhere near Temple Square. So I devised a plan of action. Mark LOVES to ride tracks, (the train in SLC) and once in the downtown area, they have a free fair zone. My plan was to park by the courthouse and hop on the tracks to temple square, and avoid parking nightmares. Upon exit at 6th south traffic was backed up. Again not unusual during Christmas, but it was more backed up than I expected. It was clear getting to the courthouse parking was going to take a while.

Plan B. Head over to my office and park in the parking lot there and catch the university tracks line at the library. My office is by the city/county building, which has metered parking on three of the four sides and is adjacent to the university line. I thought "great, parking is free during Christmas, we can park there and its closer to the line than my office parking lot." As I approached I noticed there were no cars parked in the metered parking, which seemed a bit unusual, but it was the weekend and this area is prime real estate Monday through Friday. As I parked the car a car pulled up next to us, blocking my view of the meter.

We hopped out, grabbed all our coats, hats, gloves, and headed for the tracks station. Caught the train, saw the lights, had a great time. Took the train back to our car. I have to admit I was patting myself on the back for my slick parking trick, and actually thinking it was smarter to be on the university line, because the Sandy line was full with people like me trying to avoid downtown parking. The university line was empty. Upon arrival at our car I found this in the windshield.

That's right a parking ticket.

How could this be I wondered? Then I looked up.

Apparently the reason no one was engaging in my neat parking trick and the reason why the metered parking was EMPTY, is because on weekend the City of Salt Lake does not want you to park near their building. A small fact I overlooked in my haste to get five children out of the car with all the appropriate winter attire on, plus I like to blame the other car that pulled in the same time we did, hence blocking my view of the meter. So my neat parking trick wound up costing me a cool $25.00.

But we did have a great time!

Again, a sea of blonde hair and blue eyes. I swear we look like Sweden threw up on us.