Jason and Kerri's Visit

For New Year's Eve Jason and Kerri flew up to visit and we got to do a lot of the winter activities that allow Chicagoans to make it through the winter.  Happy New Year everybody!  Sorry I've been lazy and not published in so long!  I'm gonna stay on top of it from now on!  

This is the only picture we had from our snowboarding/skiing trip.  During the snowboarding portion we were all either on our a$*es or flying so fast down the hill and landing so painfully that pictures were the last thing on our minds(-:  After 20 minutes, and switching to skis, we got the hang of it and had a great time!  Jason and Kerri were pros and Josh and I were umm, we could go down the hill really fast and sometimes stop, so it was awesome!  Josh and I are just naturally athletic (cough cough)(-:   He does look so handsome when doing extreme sports, even if we suck!

A winter in Chi is not complete without ice skating in Millennium Park.  The city as a backdrop, hot chocolate, Christmas Lights, snow flurries here and there, it was sweet! Josh wants me to make a note that he was sick over New Years so that is why there are no pictures of him with a drink in his hand and why he is wearing my scarf on the ice skating rink (I made him do that)!  It's a great scarf, thanks Mommy!  

Yes your eyes are not fooling you, that is a man in a penguin costume (Pamela, Megan, your welcome, I was hanging out the car to get that picture:-).  On New Year's Day we heard of a Polar Bear Club meeting down in Lake Michigan, so naturally we bundled up, grabbed the camera, and headed down to see well fed men jumping into a freezing lake.  Turns out this is like a rite of passage in Chicago.  There were seven year old kids and entire families jumping in! Plus, probably 500 onlookers. The air temperature was 15 degrees (10 with windchill) and the water temp was fluctuating between 33 and 32 degrees, there were parts that were actually frozen.  Enjoy, we sure did!  You can click on the pictures to enlarge.