McCall Winter Festival

For Christmas Brian gave me a new purse (that I picked out, haha) and inside of it he put a drawing of a map and our suburban driving to McCall for the Winter festival. I have been begging to go for the 6 years we've been married and we've never gone so I was ecstatic! I became even more ecstatic when I found out we were staying at The Ashley Inn and my parents were keeping both girls!

Brian took friday off and we got the kids all situated and headed out of town. I won't lie, I cried leaving Norah since it would be my first time being away from her over night. I trusted my mom but was a little nervous about how Norah would do. I wasn't worried about Liv because I knew she'd do awesome (which she did!).

As we were driving up, we got stuck behind a log truck. I'm 100% sure that if I follow behind a log truck for more than 15 minutes, one of the logs WILL shoot off the back, blow through my window, impale me into the seat and that will be the end of me. Brian of course made fun of me for watching to many horror movies growing up (It's true, this whole fear comes from Final Destination), but humored me and passed it when he got a chance. :) True love right there folks.

We went straight to McCall first. We ate lunch at Lardo's and then walked around looking at the sculptures and going through shops. I was particularly fond of the Buzz Lightyear sculpture!

Brian wasn't on his best behavior. ;)

It was so nice to walk around and just enjoy ourselves. Althought, I did find myself periodically looking around and melting into a panic attack looking for the 2 small humans who are usually attached to my hips.

After we had froze enough in McCall, we decided to head to Cascade and check into our hotel. We had an amazing time! I will keep this part to a minimum and spare you the details. haha. But I will post a picture of the hotel though because it was gorgeous!

Matt and Heather were staying at the same hotel as us and were already then when we arrived. Once uupon a time, we had a "share the road" bumper sticker that randomly got passed from car to car throughout our family and then suddenly disappeared. Personally, I think Matt buried it in one of the bean fields but since I have no proof I will say nothing. We no longer had the bumper sticker but we did have a nice green car marker and decided to do a little graffiti suprise for them.

The next morning we got up and drove back into McCall and it was C.O.L.D. Our thermometer showed the coldest temperature I have seen in a long time:

Since we weren't the only Shellenberger's in McCall that weekend, we met up with Matt and Heather (and the girl), and Luke, Jenn, and little Eden at the Pancake House for breakfast. The food was super good, and good for you, as always. I enjoyed some snuggles on my nieces since my arms were feeling akward with having gone a whole night without holding a baby for the first time in over a year.

After breakfast (and a nice 20 minute show watching a giant tour bus try to get out of the icy parking lot!) we loaded up into the truck and headed home to rescue granny and papa from the kiddo's. We had such an amazing time and decided now that we have built in babysitter's (mom and dad moved in 2 doors down!) we are going to make this an annual thing!