Snow, snow, and more SNOW!

So one of the things that I miss the most from my mission is the SNOW!

I love that weather is nice here in Arizona because it was really frustrating to deal with crazy weather especially when we had to go tracting or contacting in it.  But I do miss the snow anyways!  It's fun to play in, it looks awesome, and it's just a nice break from the heat.  Well yesterday I got my wish!

Kristen and I went with her siblings and their families up to Flagstaff to play in the snow!  Her brother Stephen had heard of a great location where there are some really nice hills.  So that's where we planned on going!  We spent a good part of last weekend collecting gear from our families that we would borrow for our trip to the snow.  We borrowed jackets, boots, gloves, scarves, etc.

Then yesterday at 7:15 we all met up at Mom Erickson's home and carpooled from there up to Flagstaff.  First I got to say hi to Bella and that was nice.  Kristen and I rode up to Flagstaff with her brother Dan in his vehicle.  We kept his daughter Sam company on the drive.  Together we did about 5 crossword puzzles from my crossword book, watched 4 movies including Despicable Me TWICE, and took naps.

We arrived to where our instructions said to go and wouldn't ya know we were in a parking lot of a ranger station and the station was closed!  So we bagged that idea and headed a few miles up the road to find it on our own.  We went to a location called Wing Mountain.  It was super crowded and we were in long lines of cars on the way in and out.  We found some good hills, walked around a bit, went traipsing through untouched snow, built a snowman that we then transformed into a snow bunny and Kristen made a few snow angels.  It was all in all a great day and though we did get sunburned a little bit, that was the extent of the damage.  There were no injuries or accidents among our crew.

I think my favorite part was when we did a train of 4 people each on their own saucer sleds and went down the top of the biggest hill!  We got soaked because some of the snow towards the bottom was melting and it was spraying slush everywhere.  Oh and I did see two kids going down in the same sled that shot right into the middle of a 1 foot deep pond.  They came out soaked from head to foot and were dumping water out of their sled!

We headed home and saw Bella once more, dropped off the borrowed snow gear, and came back to our apartment!  It was a great way to end our winter break!  Now we are back to the books starting Tuesday as the new semester picks up at ASU!

So long winter break, we can't wait for summer! :)