Winter Wonderland

Friday morning I woke up to a phone call informing me that school was cancelled due to the snow.  It was the first time in the last thirteen years that school has been cancelled in the district I am employed by.  I was very grateful I didn't have to brave the weather to make it to work.  The snow had started to come down on Thursday just as school was getting out and it took me twice as long as normal to make it home.  I was content to spend a day at home in my pajamas lounging around.  It was nice that Seth received a text that he could work from home.

I wanted to show a few of my friends in South Carolina what a snow day in Utah looks like.  The two pictures below were taken on Friday evening.  The snow was literally up to our knees in places.  We decided to brave the weather and walked several blocks to pick up a movie.  We joked about how if it ever snowed in South Carolina like this...school would be cancelled for a month.

Saturday we met up with our friends Matt, Beth and Philip for a snowshoe hike up to Ensign Peak.  The trail was fairly packed...which I was grateful for on the way up hill.

The view from the top was AMAZING!  So nice to see all of the gunk cleared out of the valley.

We continued on our trek up to the Bonneville Shoreline trail.

We encountered several herds of deer along the way.

This was by far my favorite part of our trip...the powder was fresh and nearly up to our knees.  It was fun to run downhill in this section.  FYI...the Camelback was a good idea in theory...it was only 16 degrees outside and it froze very early on in the trip.

As we came out near City Creek Canyon we entered this beautiful Winter Wonderland.  It was absolutely magical and reminded me of a picture book or a scene from a movie.  I apologize for the weird lighting...it was pretty dark by this point and the only light in the picture is that reflecting off the snow.

Gender Reveal

We found out on New Years Eve that we are having a little BOY!!!  I went in for my third ultrasound to check on low amniotic fluid...and found out the great news that my amniotic fluid levels are doing much better...most likely due to drinking a ridiculous amount of water over the break. While we were there the doctor asked if we wanted to know what we were having.  The doctor was about to say it was a girl...and then paused and said wait a minute...after a little adjusting and poking our little one showed himself.  

That night we had dinner with our good friends and tried to reveal the gender of our little one in a fun way, with balloons...but our attempt failed.  Both the blue and pink balloons inflated...even though I poked all sorts of holes in the pink balloon.  We were happy to share the news with them regardless of our failed fun reveal attempt.  The picture below was taken at midnight that night.  It is exciting to think that this will be the year that we welcome our son into the world.

After our next failed reveal attempt with my parents...we decided to try a new idea.  I made cupcakes for Sunday dinner and filled them with blue whipped cream.  I accidentally let the gender slip to my sister-in-laws in our pre-dinner conversation...but our nieces and nephews were sure surprised.

Mueller Park

The day after Christmas we headed up to Mueller Park in Bountiful for a little snowshoeing.  It was fun to be get out and enjoy the snow.  This trip inspired Seth to plan a trip from Mueller Park to Ensign Peak in Salt Lake.  I volunteered to be the driver on that trip.

Christmas 2012

We had a wonderful Christmas Day up in Cache Valley.  The picture above is Seth playing with the gift he got his parents...a castle building block set.  Seth has a strategy of getting his parents something that he would like at their house.  He and Jami spent quite a bit of time building castles in the morning.  Our big gift this year was a DSLR camera with many accessories.  After charging up the battery I was ready to take some photos...Seth was my first subject.

I was excited to try out our new present at Jamie and Jotham's house.  They have a lot of land behind their house and we headed over to their house to shoot shotguns Christmas afternoon.  They have beautiful horses in their back pasture.

A fun shot of Jamie, our gracious host.

I took a short turn shooting...I may or may not have got one pigeon.  I blame my poor shooting on the cold.

Seth on the other hand was quite skilled with his gun.

He is also not half bad at throwing the pigeons.

Remember how I said it was cold...you can literally see frost in my hair in the picture below.