weekend getaway.

I took a day off.

I always do in March around our anniversary.  It's the only time of the school year that I take off for a personal day so that T and I can go relax and not think about work or the rest of life going on around us.

It's a time where we take time for each other and our marriage.

We like it.

This year we took off to Daniel's Summit Lodge.  We go there a lot for hot cocoa in the winter, but we've never actually stayed at the lodge.  We rented one of their queen cabins and stayed overnight.

What we didn't expect was how much snow we'd get on our overnighter!  We said hello to 5 inches of fresh new powder the day we arrived.  

It was beautiful and breathtaking sight.  Literally, though.  The wind was blowing so hard that it took our breath away.

{Checking into our little cabin abode for the evening}

{Cabin Numero Uno}

The next morning we woke up and ate a large breakfast of biscuits 'n' gravy for T and french toast and eggs for yours truly.  

Check out wasn't until 11:00, but we packed up around 10:00, snapped a quick picture inside the cabin, and went out into the frigid wind to start our snowshoeing adventure.

{Quaint and cozy little cabin}

We piled on the layers and set off for snowshoeing around the surrounding area and into Lodgepole Campground just North of Daniel's Summit.  Lodgepole also happens to be where where most of my summers as a child were spent camping, hiking, and roasting mallows).  Props to my sisters who let us mooch off of them and borrow their snowshoes so we wouldn't have to rent.

The snow was as high as most of the fence posts that we saw.  The upcoming pictures don't do the snow as much justice as it truly deserves.  If we didn't have snowshoes on, I'm sure I would've sunk right to the bottom and had the snow covering my head.

 {Super cold.  Super white.  Super windy.  Super fun.}

   

{Snowshoeing King}

{Snowshoeing Love}

And, of course, we had to grab some hot cocoa after our bitter-cold adventure.  See this post for my Daniel's Summit hot cocoa addiction/obsession.  I had cocoa for every meal we ate at Daniel's Summit this time around.  It is seriously heavenly goodness in a mug.

Even T agrees with me.  It is delish.

  An attractive husband, good food, adventures, and lots of warm blankets always make for a great anniversary.

The First Snowfall

This is what it looked outside my classroom windows last week.  

I usually have all of the blinds closed so my little monsters don't get distracted with other classes out on the playground.  When I took a peek outside to see if it was still raining...

I saw this! 

There was no way I was going to make my little monsters miss witnessing the first snowfall!  So I quietly opened all of the blinds while they were working hard on their journals and turned off the lights.

I told them to look out the windows and they started clapping and cheering.  I finally had to let them all get up and stand by the windows to get a good look. 

7 year-olds make winter a lot more exciting!  

We even turned on a little Christmas music while we finished up the rest of our journals.

It was a good morning.

As wonderful as snow is, it was not the only thing that fell last week!

These wonderful camping supplies just happened to "fall" into our house this past weekend.

Okay, they didn't really fall, but after running to the REI outlet sale with my sister and brother-in-law, we couldn't pass up these massive deals!

We've been looking for decently priced camping pads everywhere.  They've been the last thing we've needed to complete our camping set for the two of us.  We wanted some good quality ones that wouldn't take up a lot of space if we wanted to just take off camping.  Not that we didn't love my parents old foam pads... they just take up half the space in the back of our Explorer!

My sister and her husband got these same pads for $200 for the both of them.  T and I got ours for a fraction of that price!

We also picked up another Camelback to use for more extensive day use if we want to do some more difficult hiking in the future and need more room than the usual PB&J sandwich pocket in our smaller Camelbacks.

Our main steal of the day was this JETBOIL!  My sister and her husband swear by this thing and I'm so excited to use it!  It's a glorified Buddy Burner, but oh so much better!  It boils water in less than a minute and easy to pack in a backpack.

Did I tell you I was excited?!

My sister insisted that we just had to try out the JETBOIL before we actually took it camping with us.  So we decided to pick up a Mountain House package of Mac and Cheese to try it out at home.

I'm a Mac and Cheese lover.  

Even ask my little monsters.  They'll tell you I always write about the gooey-deliciousness of Mac and Cheese.

Seriously.  My name is Jamie.  And I am a Mac and Cheese addict.

I have a problem.

But my 2nd graders understand and still love me.  And so does my husband.

That's all that really matters in the end.