Snow Christmas 2016 | Park City, Utah

Last year Husband was super bummed about our 85 degree Christmas. I happened to enjoy it quite a bit because I will always choose heat over cold. He mentioned that our next Christmas should be spent in a snowy state and that I should make that happen and that’s how we ended up in Park City, a place I’d never heard of, on Christmas Day.

Day 1 was almost a total bust. We took a 6:45 a.m. flight out of San Antonio because that was literally the only flight available. We were allowed an early checkin at noon, but the company that sets the lock codes was in a different time zone. So we all five stood outside in the falling snow while I yelled at a customer service representative who repeatedly asked me if I was sure the time I was seeing with my own two working eyeballs was actually the time that I was seeing at with my own two working eyeballs. The third time he asked I yelled JUSRT GIVE ME MY $%^&@* MONEY BACK SO WE CAN BOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE BECAUSE MY FAMILY IS FREEZING and then suddenly he realized what the problem was. He just needed so encouragement, I guess.

It was Christmas Day and everything (including Walmart!) was closed, so I took the local bus to a far away store to get ingredients to make what ended up being a cookie sheet lasagna because that’s all they had in the rental and I forgot to buy a foil pan at the store. Inconvenient, but at that point I needed to be outside alone to decompress after the lock fiasco so it was probably for the best. The day ended with thin lasagne a movie and a big fat sigh of relief that the day was done.

I won’t give a day-by-day report, but let’s just say things kept getting better. The highlight of the trip was definitely Gorgoza Park where we all snow tubed and the big boys did mini snowmobiling. So so so much fun. My advice is to get there early. The later in the day, the more crowded it seemed to get.

Husband had to work during the last two days of the vacation, so I took the kids out exploring. We visited the Kimball Art Center (free admission) which I thought would take at least an hour to tour, but it was more like 6 minutes and we were done. Eek. Luckily they had an art activity set up for the kids and they ended up spending almost an hour creating art. We had lunch at a spot called Windy Ridge Cafe, not because we’d heard great reviews but because we were hungry and I was too cheap to call for another Uber and too cold to roam around looking for a bus stop. It was the only place to eat within a half mile of the art center. Luckily, it was pretty delicious and also very cute.

On our last night we did a sleigh ride in Deer Valley. Y’all. It was hella scary. It was dark as death and we were riding in a one horse open sleigh along the edges of a snowy cliff. Basically, it felt like one wrong move and we were goners. Like what if that horse decided right then and there that he’d had enough of this and wanted more out of life than hauling tourists through the mountains and just jumped for it? Do you have any idea how horrible I’d feel? We laughed it off the whole time so as not to alarm the kids, but we were both terrified and clinging on to each other for dear life. Had I known for certain that we were going to live through it, it would have been really enjoyable. So if you’re not a wuss, I highly recommend it.

So the trip was a success and I can’t even explain how cool it was to see how much the boys loved the snow. I was certain that they’d hate it and complain about being cold the entire time. And I wouldn’t have been too angry because it would mean I’d never have to subject myself to such ungodly temperatures again 😉 .