the 600 square foot home: happy new year

Last year we had without a doubt the craziest new years ever. I'm sure you've heard me tell the story and/or seen the videos. All I wanted to do was stay home last year but instead we went out and it was terrible.

This year was going to be our year to stay at home, cuddle with Espen (who we've only spent one new years eve with) and lay low. My parents had Espen at their house for one last visit before his winter break was over and the plan was to pick him up from there house and head up north to play in the snow. Now, my parents house got hit pretty hard with snow this year and we could have easily stayed around their house in Yarnell but we thought we'd try Prescott for a change of scenery. After about an hour of driving up crazy switch backs with snow everywhere we finally made it to Prescott around 3:30. How cute is Prescott, by the way? The center of town and the county court house building looked amazingly quaint and the snow and people all bundled up made me want to immediately plan a weekend trip up there. I'm not sure how it happened but Jeremy said we were going to head to Flagstaff without even looking for a place in Prescott to play in the snow. So, I plugged in the info on the navigation and off we went. I was desperately watching the clock because our navigation told us we'd be in Flagg in over an hour and a half and I wasn't sure we'd make it there in time to a) play in the snow and b) make it home in time for a relaxing night at home...well, it turns out I was right. We didn't reach Flagstaff till 5pm. We passed the main part of town and headed towards Wing Mountain, to try to find a snowy spot that we pulled off and played in last year. We couldn't find the old spot so we pulled off in another just long enough for me to use the most disgusting/frozen/stinky public/park restroom. At this point I was getting anxious. I'm normally the kind of girl to just roll with things and make the best of a situation but this time was different. All year I was looking forward to being home on new years, my monthly bitch from hell decided to visit that day (and if you know me then you know that I become completely useless), I was cold and starving. Jeremy talked me down from my mild freak out and the next thing you know we were checking in to a crappy Super 8, ordering pizza & wings and settling into our new digs. We thought at some point we were going to be able to stop by Jeremy's parents on the way home from playing in the snow so we brought a bottle of Glogg to give them and thank god we did, we immediately opened the bottle and started to drink! Espen was asleep by 10:30 and while Jeremy & I waited till midnight to arrive we watched bad Mexican new years countdowns, flipped between Harry Potter and Road Trip and a couple of times, fought the cold long enough for me to grab a quick smoke. By 8pm it was 0 degrees out and by midnight it 10 below. At midnight we watched the ball drop on TV, snuck out for one last smoke and an impromptu photo shoot with my camera (who's battery was about to die since I didn't think we'd be gone all day, I had only charged it half way, ugh).

In the end, after all of my complaining and freaking out about not having a relaxing new years at home we ended up having one of the best new years ever and from now on, we're thinking about heading out of town every year, next year...El Tovar at the Grand Canyon! And, it turned out that staying the night totally worked in our favor. The next morning after weathering the -17 degree temperature, we ate a not so yummy continental breakfast and headed out to Wing Mountain, but I'll save that for another post.

{espen & his icicle or what he calls 'obstacles'}

{before we left Yarnell my dad asked jeremy to help him drag his canoe up a hill on the side of their house and tried to ride it down, somewhat unsuccessfully}