15th Anniversary

The last few years, we have gone to Lava Hot Springs for our anniversary, but this year we decided to stay closer to home. A few friends mentioned wanting to go to the Ice Castles in Midway, so we decided to do that and also swim in The Crater.

We stayed at the Homestead Resort in Midway. They had a package that included a crater swim. We stayed two nights, so we were able to go to The Crater twice.

It was pretty cool. I still prefer the Lava Hot Springs because they are more relaxing, but it was cool to know we were in a crater. I did like the resort more than the ones we've stayed at in Idaho. Their rooms were very nice and up to date on accommodations. The resort itself was much bigger than I pictured it online, and you could tell they were full because the parking lot was full. But with the way things are spaced out, we felt like we were the only ones there. I loved that.

During the warmer months, you can climb up the crater and look down inside. But they had the path closed due to all of the snow. 

They gave us their best seats at dinner the first night. The view was beautiful. 

 

The Homestead Resort had their own ice castle.

The original plan was to go to the Ice Castles the 2nd night, but when I went to buy tickets, they were already sold out. So we went the first night. I'm glad we went, they were awesome.

Kids would crawl through this small tunnel.

They had a slide you could go down, but when we saw the line, we decided to skip it.

Our anniversary was on Tuesday, so Josh had these beautiful roses delivered to work. You can't see them all, but there was 15 for 15 years.

Josh's 34th Birthday

For Josh's Birthday we went to his parents house and cooked his birthday dinner there.

Colt loved the birthday cake.

This picture makes me feel like I can see into the future. Josh looks so much like his dad. 

Christmas 2015

As I mentioned in a previous post, we decided to scale back this Christmas. I was stressed over school and wanted to focus my energy there. 

But then as Christmas got closer and closer, I started to feel back we didn't have a tree. So I did two things that I vowed I would NEVER do.

I bought a fake tree. Not only that, but it was a small tree. Someday, when school is over, I will go back to having a huge, real tree. But until then, this one will work.

My favorite part about it was digging out our old ornaments that hung on our first Christmas tree. I think we only used them for a year or two, and then we boxed them away and never dug them out again. It was really fun seeing them up on the tree again. 

Having a fake tree did not keep that cats out of it. In fact, we had fake pine needles all over the floor because they kept chewing on it. And I didn't get a picture of it, but there was a kitten sized gap in the tree where we think Blue was sleeping when we weren't home to kick him out of the tree.

Our stockings on the couch Christmas morning. Santa even left a gift for the pets.

The cats were obsessed with the catnip filled carrot. They took turns playing with it all morning long.

This year, our stockings contained candy and gift cards. I got an Amazon gift card and Josh got an iTunes gift card.

It was a much smaller Christmas this year, but I think it helped us remember that we don't need a big and elaborate Christmas.