It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Last Friday, Nate and I went with Russ, Liz, Kate, and Abby (Nate's brother and sister-in-law and their two daughters) up to Liz's parents' house in Midway. Russ had a work dinner up there, so we rode up and watched the girls while they went to dinner. It was really fun to get away (even though it wasn't too far away). The girls kept us entertained until they went to bed that night, and the next morning we drove to a little hill and went sledding for a while. After her first trip down, Kate didn't want to go again because it was too fast. I suggested she go with me and that we could go slow, thinking I could just drag my legs on the side to slow us down. I didn't think to factor in the 6 inches of powder that was sitting on top of the more packed snow, and that flew up at us and into the sled when I dragged my feet. At least we didn't go too fast :) Here are a couple of pictures of the sledding.

We hung out at the house and drove around Midway a bit before coming back to Salt Lake. We were pointing out the various livestock to Kate as we passed them, and we saw some horses that had big blanket / coat things on them. The next horses we saw didn't have blankets, which Kate was quick to notice and asked "Why don't those horses have life jackets on?" We thought it was pretty cute.

Other than that, not too much has been going on. Work has been fairly busy for both of us, and we're working on getting ready for Christmas. We did get our tree put up last week. At first, we had a grand total of 4 ornaments, but thanks to a few red balls and a wonderful (as always) pre-Christmas package from my mom, I think our tree's looking pretty good.

For those of you who read our blog last week, here is documentation of the sad demise of our poor snowman :(

Once there was a snowman...

The snowman story is coming, but first...On Tuesday, I flew to Orlando for "Intro to Manager" training with E&Y. They kept us pretty busy with training and "networking activities", but we did get to go to Universal Studios on Thursday night. They had a section of the park open just for the E&Y people. I liked the Mummy ride but boycotted the ride called "Twister" becuase I'd just eaten dinner. The best way I can describe the Mummy is a cross between Indiana Jones and Space Mountain (a roller coaster in the dark, but with some of the adventure theme and "tricks" of Indiana Jones - like running into a wall and not knowing which way you're going to go from there).

I flew in Friday night, coming from 75-80 degree weather every day in Orlando, and woke up on Saturday to 3-4 inches of snow - quite the contrast! The snow was still coming down. It kept going until about 3:00 and we had a good 6-8 inches on the ground by the time it stopped!! It was beautiful. We went to a ward breakfast, where Nate started a snowball fight with some of our primary kids, and beat them all handily (they are 6-7 years old). We later met a couple of Nate's friends for lunch at the Olive Garden - they all had fun catching up and I enjoyed getting to know them a little bit.

I've seen several things recently that have made me suspect that I married a 4 year old. This idea was reinforced when Nate went outside to build a snowman in the front yard. The snowman turned out pretty impressive considering that the snow didn't pack very well. I was inside catching up on work while he made the snowman, then decided to go out and help. My snow clothes were out in our storage unit so instead of trekking through 30 feet worth of 8" deep snow I borrowed some of Nate's and got all decked out (including the wool socks doubling as mittens). Notice the fashionable ski goggles!

Today was warmer so Mr. Snowman and the rest of the snow started melting. Here's a couple of pictures of the complete life cycle of our new Friend. - "in the sun he melted, melted, melted, in the sun he melted...and fell flat on his face."

We were able to go to the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional tonight with Heidi & Cory, Anna, and Spencer. It was a good way to get in the Christmas spirit. It was my first time being there in the conference center for the devotional and it was neat to see how they had it all decorated. We walked through some of the lights at Temple Square on our way back to the car - It always looks so pretty at Christmas time, especially with this much snow! As much as I fear driving in the snow, snow is one of the good things about moving back to Utah - it was beautiful yesterday, and made everything so quiet and peaceful outside.