Welcoming Winter...

We had such a fantastic Thanksgiving week.  After two days of hittin' the books and grinding out assignments, we cruised into five days of tranquility.  It all started with our trip to a cozy north Utah town called West Haven.  We arrived at the General's Resort (aka Aunt Vickie and Uncle Rod's place) Wednesday afternoon.  Our first (and only) order of business was to swap out our summer-fun tires for our winter-safe tires.  If you are wondering what this means, picture dozens of small metal stubs in all four tires that click against the asphalt when the roads are clear and grip the slippery black ice when they are treacherous.  We then, as we always do, cracked the cokes and played an amateur game of pool with Rod under dim-lit Brunswick lights.  This was followed by a pre-Thanksgiving dinner (just as nice and almost as big) and a movie.  Does Thanksgiving week start any better than that?

The next morning, we flopped out of bed at 10:30, laced up our tennis sneakers, and set out for the windy, leafy tennis courts at Mt. Ogden Park.  We were pretty intimidated because we had heard many stories about Uncle Rod and his fury on the court!  He's known for hittin the ball hard, and hittin it low.  After warming up and getting the ol' rusty bones ready to rock, we started our round robin tournament.  It quickly became evident that we were...well?  Certainly less than a worthy opponent.  We were honestly trying our hardest to hit the balls back to Rod but the gushing wind would drop them two inches from the net, leaving Rod a good 5 yard sprint away.  Not to mention the fact that three out of the four balls we were using were dead and had very little bounce to begin with.  It didn't take long to figure out just how he felt about our play.  Despite the weather and our malfunctioning gear, we had a great time and worked up an appetite for Thanksgiving Dinner.  What followed is what you would expect for a typical Thanksgiving day:  an amazing dinner that left us stuffed to the rafters, a two hour food coma, MORE food, and then our farewell.  We are so grateful to have such kind and thoughtful family so close and look forward to seeing them again.

If this trip is sounding too blissful to you, we'll have you know there was one minor hiccup in our plans. As we drove back to Provo we were engaged in a mini planning session when we realized we had left a backpack, and thus all school materials in Ogden.  This wouldn't have been such a nuisance if we were in kaysville, but since we were in Salt Lake City this folly tacked on 90 more minutes to our already 90 minute drive.  Woof!

The crowing jewel of our weekend had to be our two day get-away to Sundance Resort.  We enjoyed and chilly snowshoe hike, followed by a yummy dinner by the fire.  The atmosphere was surreal.  It seemed as if we were hundreds of miles away from home when in reality we were a mere 20 minute drive away.  We passed the rest of the night over card games, pass the pigs, Tim Tam Slammin', and a myriad of other fun activities all in the dancing light  of our cozy little fireplace.  It was so nice not to be distracted by cell phones, the internet, TV, and other empty forms of entertainment that yield very little satisfaction.  That night we fell asleep to the crackling of the fire.  It lulled us into one of the best nights of sleep we've had since we got married.
The next morning we woke up with the sun, and like all resort commercials advertise, sipped scalding apple cider from our back porch, overlooking the entire resort and beautiful Mt. Timpanogos.  After the warmth of our cider wore off, we slipped back into bed and dozed away two more blissful hours of sleep.  It was so wonderful.  The grind of a tough and busy semester makes short adventures like these so much more meaningful.  For us, it was just what we needed, when we needed it, to finish our semester on a good note.