Laramie, Wyoming

Last weekend Nate and I made the trip up to Laramie, Wyoming to visit an old mission buddy of Nate's. Laramie is about a six hour drive from us and boy is it scenic, not! Fortunately the drive was made better by having a good travel companion. Nate and I left early Friday morning and got to Laramie a little after noon. We got checked into our hotel and then headed to see his mission buddy Rowdy. Rowdy is a big into the outdoors so he wanted to take us ice fishing. We packed up and headed to the reservoir and the boys got out to set up the tent on the ice. Unfortunately it was so windy that the tent broke, Nate's glasses flew off and got lost, Rowdy lost his favorite hat and bucket that held all the ice fishing poles. Talk about drama on the ice! So we headed back to town without fishing and on our way back we got a flat tire. Luck was not on our side that afternoon. After visiting for a while, we headed to dinner. Nate decided he wanted to do a spicy wing challenge for dinner. 12 of their hottest wings in 12 minutes, you had to eat one wing per minute, no water, no nothing. I was dying when they brought the wings to the table, holy smokes, the smell alone was overwhelmingly hot. Nate made it five wings before he called it quits. Fortunately they provided gloves for the challenge so his hands didn't burn, but he said his lips, tongue, and throat were all on fire. He had some milk to drink to try and cool his mouth down. He also decided we needed to go for ice cream after dinner too. After dessert we went back to Rowdy's house and played games with him and his wife. Nate and Rowdy were set to go ice fishing early Saturday morning, however Nate got super sick during the night from the wing challenge. I thought for a little bit that I was going to have to take him to the ER. He rallied though and was finally able to fall asleep, but he cancelled on ice fishing. I feel bad, fishing with Rowdy was a big part of the reason for the trip and they didn't get to fish at all! Oh well, you can definitely say that things didn't go as planned on our short trip, but it was definitely memorable to say the least! After a short visit with Rowdy and his family Saturday morning, we headed home. It was a nice little getaway and it was good to see friends. 'Til next time!

Even though I brought my camera, I only took iphone pics. Oh well.


Here we are bright eyed and bushy tailed to make our 6 am departure time.



Nate in the midst of the wing challenge.


Um, is this not the coolest name for a street ever?!


Mission buddies.

Christmas

Christmas was nice this year. It was full of family and fun times. Since we had been up to Idaho the weekend before Christmas, we were able to make it to Nate's extended family's Christmas Eve party. Nate and I got up early to go over and help his mom make rolls for the party, I think we made well over 20 dozen. There was a ham lunch, a recorded nativity, and a slide show at the party. Later that night we had a hot chocolate party with Nate's immediate family and our annual gift exchange. It was a long and busy day so we crashed at like 9 pm. Usually Nate is up around 5 am on Christmas morning ready to open gifts and start the day, but he actually let me sleep in til 7:30 am this year. So nice. Nate and I always spend Christmas morning just the two of us, a tradition we started so we could have special moments with our kids on Christmas morning. After our morning together, we trekked through the new snow to visit Nate's parents. We had a prime rib and potato dinner and were able to Skype with our favorite missionary, Nate's brother Aaron. He'll be home in about 9 months and we can't wait to hug him! Like I said, we had a nice Christmas and now I'm a little sad that the holidays are over, especially since Nate and I are both sick. Here's to 2015!

Our poor tree. This was it's last year with us. Some sections of the lights don't light up any more and the tree has seen better days over the last 8 Christmases.

Cute Nate, always so excited on Christmas morning.