Valentine's Day Extended

How about a more appropriate Valentine's Day blog post?

I was determined to make Valentine's Day last all week (especially since we celebrated our 18-month anniversary the following day), and I like to think I kept Julie on her toes with a little surprise or two each day.  But the big excitement happened on Friday afternoon when we took off work a little early, packed up the car with snacks and cheeses and warm clothes and headed up to Park City for the long weekend.

We stayed at The Homestead in Midway, and took advantage of their 125th Birthday Bed & Breakfast package, which included a lot of great perks.  On Friday night we went to an awesome local Mexican restaurant that featured an impressive salsa bar (our favorites were the mango salsa and the cilantro cream salsa), then went back to our room and watched movies and ate so much candy.

 

 

On Saturday we woke up to beautiful falling snow which lasted for the better part of two days.  We enjoyed our included breakfast at the on-site restaurant (that is one ginormous slab of chicken fried steak, let me tell you), and then braved the snowstorm and low-visibility roads to Park City to do a little shopping.  Anyone who knows me knows well that I'm not a huge fan of shopping, but I do love to occasionally go with The Wife and shop a little (I have certainly bought more clothes for myself nowadays than I ever have before).  We found some awesome deals and headed back down to our place, glad that the weather had calmed down a little by then.

In the afternoon we enjoyed the included rental of showshoes and hiked around the resort grounds for a while.  Neither of us had been snowshoeing before, so we were pretty excited, and it was just fine exercise too!

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening we had an appointment to swim in the crater, a natural warm spring inside a crater at the resort.  There were a lot of scuba divers and a few swimmers, and it was pretty cool.  I didn't quite get why people would want to scuba dive in such small and uninhabited waters, but I guess it's good for training and practice for when you want to visit more adventurous areas.  We ran into a friend (and her husband) from Julie's undergrad days at BYU, and really enjoyed swimming about in the warm water.  Incidentally, we missed the resort pool and hot tub, but felt like we participated in the better option anyway.

 

 

This was in the dressing room.  I laughed so hard.

That night we didn't feel like going out and finding foods, so we ordered some great fish & chips and Szechuan noodles from room service, a first for us both, and watched more movies.

On Sunday we were determined to do as little as possible, and it was still snowing pretty steadily, so we decided to stay in all day.  We did some reading, some writing, and watched a lot of "I Used to Be Fat," "My Strange Addiction," "600-Pound Mom," "The Man Who Lost His Face" and other such enjoyable and enlightening programs.  It was so nice to have nothing really pressing to do, and so much time to not have to do it.  We also continued our ongoing and increasing battle with some local ants throughout the day, and managed to largely triumph.

Monday morning we had another great final breakfast at Fanny's Grill.

 

What lovely eggs benedict, Wife!

 

Then we packed up and headed home, but not without stopping at the local awesome Ice Castle.  It was small, but pretty inexpensive, and it was super cool.

They had convenient ski poles available for our use.

 

 

 

So that was that.  We spent the rest of Presidents' Day relaxing at home and getting ready for the regularly scheduled workweek, but it was so great to have such a nice long weekend to celebrate love and anniversary and vacation!  Surpreeze(s), Wife!