Ice Castles

For some reason, finding time for a date is so much harder than I thought it would. And of course when we find ourselves with a moment free we don't know what to do! Curtis is still in school so that alone takes up most of the time. I fill my days with work, cleaning, and random crafts I find :) But my absolute favorite thing to do on the weekends is to go out on dates with my husband. We are getting better at setting time aside for date, but it's definitely hard, and we don't even have kids yet! We bought tickets to go see the ice castles in Midway, Utah and I was so excited. We were finally going to escape if only for a few hours.

Last year we went to the ice castles at night, and it was fun but they were pretty small. It was a very warm winter and they were only open for 3 days because it was melting too much.

This year has been much colder, and we knew that we wanted this to be a little tradition with our new family. We got our tickets a week in advance and the only times still available were in the early afternoon. I was excited to be able to see them during the day and see the difference. I'm SO glad that we did, and I might go during the day every year now. You couldn't see the colorful lights, but you could see the amazing details of the icicles. It was gorgeous!

Once you got in they were playing frozen music, and it truly felt like you stepped into a whole new world.

       

They have two different water fountains, and they were WAY bigger this year, I was shocked. Of course my first stop was the hot chocolate station. I didn't plan very well and didn't layer so I needed to warm up (plus the hot chocolate was super chocolaty and delicious)!

We had fun going through the little maze, and the slot canyons. We even got down and crawled through the tiny tunnels that were clearly just made for kids. We couldn't resist. Last year we went on the slide but got so wet and cold that we decided to skip it this year. As we were leaving we noticed that this year they gave you trash bags to sit on so you didn't get wet! By then it was too late, so that will have to wait until next year.

The workers were so nice and proud of their work! I asked them how they did it, and they laughed and just said water and ice. Apparently harvesting icicles is a real thing. We even got to witness a cute couple get engaged! It was so precious, and I couldn't help but sneak some pictures of it :)

Then it was time to go. I didn't want to be driving home in the dark because it was snowing a little. That was a good call too because the roads through the canyon were terrible! At one point we were all stopped dead just waiting because there was an accident up ahead. It's hard to get those cleared up when you are on the side of a mountain :) Luckily we made it home safe and sound. In the end, it was a much needed date day of getting away and escaping into a whole new icy magical world for an afternoon.