it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride with you...

We've had a snowy couple of days! Well, we seem to have taken care of our visa applications (following some really beautiful governmental incompetence), so if we truly sent them to the correct office we should have them in time to fly out to the UK and be allowed into the country. Thursday night we had a fun dinner with one of Ryan's high school friends and his wife. Friday we re-packed boxes and took care of a lot of paperwork stuff that has to get done sometime before we leave. Saturday it snowed pretty much all day and night. In the afternoon the city that Ryan's family lives in had free "sleigh" rides (a sleigh with big wheels...more of a horse-drawn carriage really) that left from a parking lot literally in Ryan's back yard. So we waited in line in the snow and took a ride around the park. The snowflakes were so cool because the temperature was just perfect to have beautifully formed flakes. We tried to take some pictures of them, but most just ended up kind of blurry. Use your imagination.

snowflakes

sleigh ride--yes it was cold

We got to have dinner with our college friend Meg on Saturday night. The ride home was really snowy and it apparently kept going the rest of the night because we woke up to about 10 inches of snow. Since Kelly couldn't easily run in it, we both suited up and started shoveling the driveway. Shoveling was SO much fun, that we completely lost track of time and the next time we looked at the clock it was 10 minutes to church time. So we and Ryan's brother Dale went to church in our sweaty snow clothes. It was pretty funny.
This afternoon we went downtown chicago to a Bavarian festival with our friends Jeremy and Liz. Though toes were a bit numb, it was fun and we enjoyed some good Bavarian treats.