12 Dates of Christmas, January, Cross Country Skiing!

For Christmas I gave John "12 dates of Christmas." I made a book, and for each month of this year I planned a fun date. We've gotten into the routine of Cafe Rio, and rent a movie...not that that isn't nice, it is, but we just struggle to do really fun things like we used to when we were dating. So I wrote out these fun dates, that rhyme and everything! In the book, (I'll blog the whole thing sometime) I had a place for a photo of us on our super fun date to go. He LOVED it! I tried to pick things he has mentioned that he wants to do together, that I might not be inclined to agree to do, you know, to make it a real "gift" to him, so January's date said:

"On the first Date of Christmas,

Your true love would agree,

It will be fun to learn to cross country ski!"

Friday we went to Solitude Nordic Center up Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was such a beautiful day! (We brought the baby, because we weren't sure how long we'd be gone) John has been cross country skiing before with scouts so he was a great teacher. I'm afraid I wasn't the best student. You better believe I tried my darndest, and I had loads of fun, but I couldn't manage to stay upright!

**Dear random passers-by, thank you for offering to take our family picture!**

Getting ready to go, Jenni made Everett this cute green hat, John said he looked like the Taj-Mahal... He wore a fleecy pair of Jammies, and his bundley snowsuit, and two hats and gloves inside his bundley snowsuit, oh, and super stylish baby sunglasses :)

Okay, this is me, with my face not planted in the snow! They have these tracks for you to follow if you're new, it's like training wheels, or bumper bowling, I didn't do well outside of the tracks, but then again, I didn't do that well inside the tracks either! LOL!!!

It is a good thing John was carrying the baby, he didn't fall once. Skills, the man has skills.

Everett just hung out there the whole time, didn't say a word, just looking around, and laughing at mommy biffing it time after time!

Okay, here we are, a more accurate representation of how the afternoon was spent by me. I fell TWELVE times. Yep. TWELVE. A few of them were small, just tipped over to the side, but a had a few stellar falls, John was sweet enough to capture on of them (above) notice my ski's completely behind me. Falling hurts, but not as much as trying to get back up, on slippery snow, with your feet attached to ski's that are as tall as you are, I felt completely handicapped. John was so sweet trying to help me up, but more often than not, we were both laughing so hard, we didn't have the collective strength to pull me up...whew, it was rough, and fun, and I don't think I'll ever go cross country skiing again. Ever. But I'm really glad we went, it was gorgeous! I'm looking into buying snowshoes :)

Happy first date of Christmas honey, i love you!