Donny Osmond and MoTab in Concert

Here's Lindsey and her cousin, Morgan, just before their dates picked them up for the concert. This was on Lindsey's 17th birthday! Michael and Brian jumped at the phone call from Morgan about two hours beforehand, inviting them to join the girls for the Osmonds and Mormon Tabernacle choir free concert.

We rode separately, stopped at Crown Burgers for a quick bite to eat, and to park in their lot for free, then walked to the conference center in downtown Salt Lake City. This is my sister, Julie, and her husband, Tom.

This was taken after the concert, just before sunset. It was a lovely evening.

Here's a shot of me and Julie just before the concert began. We have matching haircuts.

There was a lot of construction going on downtown, but I still wanted to capture some pictures of the beautiful Salt Lake Temple. It's such a recognizable structure.

Kelly and I got married here in 1986, and Julie and Tom did too, ten weeks later.

We strolled through temple square on our way back to our car.

Looking up, close up.

Here's the tabernacle next to the temple.

When I heard that the Osmonds and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would be performing at a free concert the week before Kelly's family reunion, I started planning our vacation around it, hoping desperately that we'd get tickets. We luckily got in, thanks to Julie's brilliant idea to apply for tickets for my mom and my sister in Las Vegas (one entry per household, four tickets maximum). We had eight tickets total, so Julie and Tom, and Kelly and I went. Plus we had four more, so Lindsey and Morgan planned to go and they called two boys to go at the last minute with them, so they could have dates. The seats we had (nose bleed section) were open seating and by the time we got there, it was packed, and we barely found seats together. The teens showed up even later and they were hunting everywhere to find four seats together, so we managed to rearrange ourselves a bit to accommodate them. Kelly sat one row behind us and Tom sat one row in front of us, then the teens sat by Julie and me.

It was kind of odd for me to be in the conference center where I'd been only a couple other times during semi-annual General Conference broadcasts of our church, to hear a pop music type of concert. The sound wasn't very good up in the "cheap seats," but it still totally rocked in my mind and my heart! I have been a big huge Donny Osmond fan since I was a little girl and to see him in concert for the first time was awesome. I'm also crazy about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so it was really a treat for me. They are the best choir I've ever heard and I love listening to their talented combined voices. Donny Osmond even sang one of his early hits, Puppy Love. They talked about how challenging it must have been over the years to be one of the two deaf brothers in a family of singers and paid tribute to their two deaf brothers. It was very touching, and they dedicated a song to them. Then for the last song, they sang He's My Brother, and they had those two up there SIGNING (not singing) with the rest of them as they sang, and it was really wonderful.

I'm so thrilled for the success that the Osmonds have had over the years. Donny and Marie were on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson years ago when I was a kid, and my mom saw them and was impressed, and knew that they were Mormons. We were not, and it wasn't much later that we started meeting with the LDS missionaries to hear what the church was all about. I remember being really critical of some Mormon neighbors down the street and told my mom in a sour tone how disappointed I was with the Saunders family because they had "another Bible." My mom scolded me for being judgmental and not being very nice. Later, I found out that in addition to the Bible being the word of God, that the Book of Mormon was yet another testament of Jesus Christ. That book has literally changed my life and I love it with all my heart. I'm thankful for my mom's openness to other beliefs and that we investigated this church. So yeah, I love Donny Osmond.