Hot and Cold

So since this day has been such a lion day, I thought I would join in with a blog about all things hot and cold.

Here are some things that are cold:

1. Sleigh rides through herds of elk.

2. The Midway ice castles.

3. The ski moguls world championship at Park City.

4. Snowshoeing.

This is the lake we snowshoed across: Taggart Lake!

5. Jackson Hole in February in general.

6. Ice-skating.

Here are some things that are hot:

1. St. George.

2. Tacos in Jackson, Wyoming.

3. The Sexy Survey on the Dating Divas website.

4. Basketball stadiums.

5. Waffles with ham and cheese in a cozy little restaurant at the top of a ski resort.

6. Me with a mustache.

So hot right now.

You know what else is hot? Aruba. I'm just saying.

(I don't have a picture for that one.)

(Yet)

Black-ish Diamonds

Stephen used to get a snowboarding pass every year. I used to try and date expert snowboarders who didn't mind shelling out the $60ish it cost to take me snowboarding. Stephen is kind of an expert snowboarder, and he didn't mind taking me to random snowy places where we could hike-board for free, so that worked out great when we were dating.

But then we got married and started sharing money and came up with some lofty goals for saving and investing, so a snowboarding pass just hasn't made the budget.

So the other day, when Stephen told me he had bought us tickets to Sundance for MLK Day, I was super-excited. Also a little nervous. Snowboarding twice on real slopes and 3 times in the mountains does not a snowboarder make.

{This is very true. Go back and read it again if you had any doubts the first time.}

Still, it was a great day, and I am pretty sure I improved at least a little bit. There was even one time when I got off the lift without completely wiping out! If lift operator is as entertaining a job and full of as many hilarious falls as safety duty on an icy day - and I strongly suspect it is - then congratulations to all those lift operators out there on your job satisfaction. It can't be too bad with all the slapstick you must witness.

The top three things I would like you to notice about this clip:
1. Brandon fell before me.
2. Stephen dropped me.
3. But then he helped me up again, so we're okay.

Margot and Gonzalo met up with us there. Margot is a skier, and like an expert skier, but it was nice to have Gonzalo so I wasn't the only newb snowboarder!  

Sundance is beautiful.

Brandon also came, and it was only his second time. But somehow, he picked it up a lot faster than I did!

Since it was MLK Day, we celebrated by going on some black diamonds. I probably wouldn't survive on black diamonds in Switzerland, but here in Sundance, I did alright.

doing alright, verb: when you start out standing, and make it about 10 seconds before falling, and once you have fallen and can't get back up, you don't cry when you continue zooming down the mountain on your butt, and eventually it turns into a nice relaxing ride so you stop trying to get up, but you keep going down, and it's totally fine, and probably some people judge you but isn't that what this day is all about?....not judging and forgetting the haters, I mean. So you don't curr and you just enjoy your ride until the slope evens out enough for you to stand up and attempt to finish the run the more traditional way, and then when you get to the bottom you still get to tell everyone you have done a black diamond.

No celebrities were spotted.

Also of note, I got some pink goggles, and Brandon got some new bootses.

Merry Shimpmas

So, Reese Witherspoon is pretty much my homegirl. We know this. But she and I differ on one thing - Christmas.

Actually I have no idea how she feels about Christmas. But in her movie with Vince Vaughan, "4 Christmases," she hates Christmas with her own families, and Christmas with Vince's families, too. I, on the other hand, love having Christmas with both families.

We had Shimpmas the weekend before real Christmas. It went like this:

Friday
-Michael's birthday
-Presents and cake
-Aaaand a scavenger hunt to the best present: leopard geckos!

Lacy and Leo :) Hopefully they make some leopard gecko babies soon!

Saturday
- Wake up in a twin bed. Actually on the floor, next to a twin bed. Somehow Stephen and I fell asleep in Logan's bed, and Natalie fell asleep in Michael's bed, and Brandon fell asleep in his own bed, and the birthday boy fell asleep on the couch, and who knows where Logan slept. All I know is, he had to have been more comfortable than I was.
- Go home to shower and gather up presents.
- Go to lunch with the Shimp parents and Craig and Stephanie. We are adults so our lunch consists of talking about our goals, discussing relationship secrets, and shared fries and cocoa.

- Go home to get ready for ice skating. We have planned to leave at 6:30.
- It is 6:30 and the parents are nowhere to be seen. They are last-minute shopping.
- It is 7:30 and I'm almost done curling my hairs.
- It is 8:30 and the parents are back! We pile in the car.
- See the lights at the temple

- Go ice-skating at the Gallivan Center
- Watch a couple break up on the bench next to the skating rink
- Get taken down on the last lap around by Logan (aka Pretzel-Legs)

- Get videoed by some guy standing on a trashcan and recording falls, laughing hysterically each time he catches someone
- Hold hands with errbody else because sometimes, Stephen likes to leave me behind and ice skate as fast and dangerously as possible without me holding him back

We are now at the level where we do tricks, like this one. Which I like to call, the headless lifter.

- Watch Michael pro it up all over the ice and decide that he needs to take hockey lessons

- Go to eat dinner (at 11:30pm) at The Pie, where we were probably the only BYU fans in the whole joint
- Everyone gets a little freaked out and asks if I was "wild" in college and if I am "trying to kill us" by bringing us to this "sketchy place" where no one "has ever even heard of kids or something"

- Then everyone sees the pizza and gets a little freaked out because it is the biggest pizza anyone has ever seen and we can't even eat half of it
- Drive home and promptly pass out

Sunday

- Wake up and get Christmas jammies!! Logan was NOT happy about this, since it is a Christmas Eve tradition and we were opening them early and breaking tradition. But they are my absolute favorite thing.

- Christmas gift exchange with the kids
- Christmas for the couples who are leaving. We got prettttty spoiled with clothes, a Shark something-or-other that cleans our house, gift cards, and for me, workout clothes that I am so thrilled about I might just work out next year.
- Go to church
- Play Scum, which one of these times, I am going to write a blog post exactly transcribing what happens in a game of scum up in here. It is so hilarious.....even more hilarious than dinner here.

So Christmas #1 was great! We've somehow managed to do 2 out of 2 married Christmases with both families, and even though I know it can't be like that forever, I've loved it so far :)