Beautiful Christmas Lights

I love Christmas.

I love the music, hot chocolate, participating in anonymous gift-giving or service projects, and the lights.

I especially love when it is not too cold, so you can actually ENJOY the lights!!!

The LDS Temple in Mesa, AZ always puts up some BEAUTIFUL Christmas lights. I have spent the last several Holiday seasons in Salt Lake City, UT. Although they do have beautiful Christmas lights and snow at the temple.... the snow makes it difficult to truly enjoy the evening.  This was the first time I have truly been able to take my time and enjoy walking around and taking pictures of the lights!

The reflection pool added so much to the pictures. I also loved having the opportunity to truly use my nice low Aperture (f-stop) lens that we purchased earlier this year. It makes taking pictures so much more enjoyable when you begin to understand how to truly capture them.

There was a couple walking around with TRUE "Christmas Sweaters" that the lights would flash on and off..... had to document this moment.

Capturing of the Nativity Scene, which is the true reason we have this wonderful opportunity to celebrate this season every year.

We LOVED that the Palm Trees had these "icicle" style lights.  Jason and I spent quite a while staring up at them to figure out how they worked. We discovered the lights aren't actually attached to the palm fronds, but are attached to metal arches designed to look like palm fronds resulting in perfect placement..... Clever.  Someday we will have our own palm trees and will need to invest in these contraptions.