you know it's cold when...

... you bike to school in -9 degree weather and find this on your beard... the wind chill brought it down to the -30's!

a whole lotta' ketchup

Okay, huge blog coming up. Here's a rundown of our Christmas vacation in Utah visiting Ben's family. We were able to spend almost 2 weeks out there and had SO much fun. So here is a quick snippet of our vacation. **Below you'll find pictures about skiing with Ben's sister Jenna, visiting Temple Square, snowshoeing with Ben's dad, visiting Kristen, my old roommate from BYU, a taste test of 23 cola products that lasted until 5 in the morning ( I bailed out around 2 am with a tummy ache ), at church where Jenna and her high school ladies choir sang, at a hockey game with Ben's sister Caitlin, her boyfriend Tony, and Ben's dad, Ben wrestling Jenna in the snow, opening presents on Christmas morning, working out with cousins on Christmas Eve, going crazy on Christmas Eve, re-enacting Jesus' birth with Jeff being a sheep and Ben an evil looking wise man, and playing NHL Live for about 3/4 of the time there. 

 

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We also got to eat at Cafe Rio (holy cow!), see A Christmas Carol on stage, visit Body Worlds, walk around BYU's campus and buy chocolate covered cinnamon bears, visit our friends/cousins Alan, Jenny, and Amanda, and see many many movies (A Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, Yes Man, and Australia). It was hard to leave! =(

Happy Anniversary to Us!

We decided to celebrate our third anniversary early this year. The weekend before we went to Utah for Christmas, we celebrated here in the good ol' midwest. We started out the weekend driving north to the Wisconsin/Michigan border for a snowshoeing trip. We backpacked everything in to camp out around these frozen lakes. Beautiful! Then we came back and stayed at a sweeeet hotel downtown and went to a Monday night Bears vs. Packers football game. The next morning we had to leave at 4 am to catch our flight and Ben surprised me with a limo ride to the airport so we wouldn't have to take the "L" train. =) (not a stretch limo thank heavens)

At the football game.. I've never been so cold in my life - the stadium is right on the shores of Lake Michigan. I kept running to the restroom to warm up next to the dryers. You can see ice on my face mask - yikes!

Warm ups.

Ben was thrilled!

The view outside of our suite of the Chicago River.

Just about to begin our 10 mile hike!

We were the only ones around for miles.. kind of creepy... here are our tracks as we trudged along.

Here was our cozy sleeping location for the night. It snowed a few inches before we got up the next morning.

No, Ben is not snortin' some fumes or smokin' the doobage - but making our "delicious" dinner. Actually, we've found some very yummy dehydrated meals from REI if you'd like any recommendations!

Oh so cozy.. I actually thought I was going to lose a few toes that night because it took awhile to set up our tent and my body temperature plummeted - I'm glad to report that I still have all 10 toes.

The first day we had a late start so the next day we had to find a short cut back to our car so we wouldn't get caught out and about when the sun went down. We had to book it and shave our 13 mile hike down to 10.

So0o0o happy to get back to our car - with only 15 minutes of daylight to spare - phew!

"Polka polka polka polka" - I love Wisconsin!