Ice Castles

Last night I didn’t write a blog post.  It was J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday so we put on one of the Lord of the Rings movies but I was celebrating a new holiday my mom told me about.  Festival of Sleep Day.  I slept on the couch while the movie was on.

Today, however, our whole family celebrated National Trivia Day.  We went up to the Midway Ice Castles to visit our friend, Brent.  Oh, it was so good to see him.  

He showed us around this year’s ice castle and told us some really neat information about it.  Perfect for the holiday.  We even found a spot that had a piece of trivia on a sign so we could take a picture.  

This was our first time seeing the ice castles at night.  It was so cool with the lights in the ice.

After exploring the ice castles, we got to visit Brent and his wife and youngest daughter.  Oh, it was so good to see all of them.  Brent used to be our home teacher while at the same time his wife was my visiting teaching companion.  Such great people.  We still remember when Brent built an ice castle in his backyard.  After that it really took off.  Now there are massive ice castles in several different states and even one in Canada.

Lucky had never been to an ice castle since the last time our family was able to go was when Lucky was a newborn so he and I stayed home while Jeremy took the other kids.  That was not long after The Piano Guys had filmed their Vivaldi’s Winter/Frozen video there. 

I mentioned that when we went this evening and Lucky kept asking where The Piano Guys were.  He was just sure we were going to see The Piano Guys there.  I had to let him know that they weren’t there but they had filmed a video at another ice castle like this one.  Then when we told him we were going to visit Brent’s house, he latched onto that idea.  “We’re going to visit our friends’ house,” and wouldn’t let us forget it.  He got upset a few times when he thought we weren’t going to go to their house.  We reassured him and he kept mentioning it.  He didn’t want us to forget to go there.  He was so happy.  He even gave Brent a hug when we were about to go home.  It was cute.  He definitely had a good experience tonight. 

I enjoyed it, too.  The last time I was able to visit these friends and go to the ice castles was before Jr. Jr. was born.  That was the first year they were doing it at Midway.  Wow, that was a while ago.

It was a great evening.  And the weather cooperated for us to head up there.  We got some snow yesterday morning and we’re supposed to have a winter storm, but we didn’t have any problems traveling to Midway today.  On the way home, we got a lot more snow through Provo Canyon, but we made it okay.  We just went somewhat slowly.  Jeremy and I both remarked how glad we were that we were able to go.  The ice castles are great and all (read: amazing), but what we really love is to see our friends.