I grabbed our new camera and we headed Christmas evening to see the Festival of Lights at the LDS Washington, D.C. temple. Amazing lights, an outdoor nativity, a creche room in the visitors' center with 80 nativity scenes from all over the world donated by collectors for the month, and a theater of performances going on every night. The outdoor tree lights are put on by volunteer members of the church that start putting them up in August, and it takes them until April to take them down. Quite the effort, but definitely worth it. The days before Christmas and after, they were averaging about 8,000 visitors per night, and for the month a total of 100,000 visitors. Amazingly the special spirit and calm of the temple was still there despite the crowds. I couldn't get enough of the lights with the temple in the backdrop all lit up beautifully as well. I'm glad we were here to take advantage of the festival! Briant and I got to enjoy everything again when we volunteered to help usher in the visitors' center a few days after Christmas. We both commented that it was probably one of our favorite volunteer service opportunities that we've ever had!
We got to the temple just before the sun had completely set so I quickly grabbed some pics while the sky was still light and had some sunset color on the horizon and then had fun taking pics in the dark.
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