It beat him

Ethan has been dealing without a coat at BYU.  He has been wearing sweatshirts and said that he didn't need a coat.  Well, it finally beat him.  I sent a coat up to him and he was very appreciative of it!

It's snowing again

Ivins had 2 more days of snow, which is crazy.  It doesn't stick for a long time but it's enough to give us the water we need for the summer.

Freezing cold college tour

We woke up to -13 degree temperatures!  We ate some breakfast and then left the hotel to go to the campus for our college tour.  I didn't know what to expect.  I thought that we would be the only ones on the tour because who goes to Bozeman, MT in February to check out MSU?!  We parked in the parking garage and made our way to the building where the tour would begin.  It was so windy and cold!

When we found the correct room there were quite a few others waiting for the tour.  They showed a video talking about how great MSU is and then they split us into groups to go on the tour.  They offered a virtual tour to those who didn't want to freeze but no one raised their hand so we ended up outside in -20something wind chill weather.  There were 4 groups of about 5 students each (add to that the parents and siblings that came to tour also).

This is how we looked before the tour:

Courtney froze during the tour! A few times they had huge wind gusts so the man doing the tour had us hunker down to wait out the wind.  

Courtney had to do the traditional photo in front of the bobcat mascot statue.  

This is the building where Great-Grandpa Hodgson worked when he taught at MSU.  It hasn't been remodeled too much yet so it looked like it did years ago.  It was cool to go inside and see it.

This is us after the tour.

We were finished with the tour about 4 hours before our flight out but we made our way to the airport to wait.  It was too cold to walk around Bozeman and there wasn't anything else we needed to see.  By the time we were halfway to the airport, it was snowing really hard.  We made it just fine but were happy to be out of the snow. It definitely was an adventure.

Visiting Montana State University

Courtney wanted to check out Montana State University.  We found a good time for both of us, found some cheap plane tickets, and took off. We flew out of Las Vegas where it was beautiful weather.  We landed in the snowy tundra!

We rented a car to travel around and it ended up being Courtney's dream car.  She was so excited when she saw our ride.

It was so snowy!  The car we rented had 4-wheel drive and I was so grateful.  Everyone was sliding around and it seemed normal.  I was so nervous that we were going to be stuck in the high snow.

We checked into our hotel and it was really nice.

We explored Bozeman, found Great-Grandma Hodgson's house, and then decided to go to the cemetery to find Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Pack's graves. Courtney was so sure she knew right where we needed to go to find their graves.  And she was right!  Although we didn't get to see their headstones because the snow was SO HIGH!

We tried to get to their headstones but we were sinking up to our knees so we decided to abort the mission and take a selfie from afar.  We figured we had tried and that's what mattered.

This is what we saw in the cemetery:

After sliding around all day in the snow as we drove, we ate dinner at Costco (across the street from our hotel) and then we went to bed.  We followed the natives and put up our windshield wipers so they wouldn't freeze.  Did I say that it was -8 degrees?!

Courtney's video

Courtney went over to Grandpa Oman's house to do chores for him.  She decided to play with his scooter and made a hilarious video.  She is hilarious!

Haha!!

We bought an electric fireplace and it came with some rocks for decoration.  I loved the description on the package.

Valentine's Day dinner

Bryan always makes my favorite meal for me on Valentine's Day.  I love it!  

Snow storm

We have had a weird winter with a lot of snow and rain.  This is great for us because we need the water in our mountains and lakes.  Whoever has been praying for the end of the drought, it has been working.

Finished bed

We got the bed finished!  It took a bit longer to do than we thought because the slats didn't work the way we wanted so we ended up buying a  base.

These slats didn't work the way they should have so we didn't feel it would be as stable as it needed to be.  So we bought a base to use.

I think it turned out really well and I'm proud of our building efforts!

Broken fish tank

Courtney's fish tank was disgusting so I decided to clean it.  It didn't go well. I took the fish out of the tank and got him all situated.

I dumped out the old water into the toilet in the bathroom and then used the tub to fill the bowl with clean water. I thought I was doing really well until my hand slipped and the bowl fell back into the bathtub and SHATTERED!

I took a minute to grieve and look at the mess.  I put gloves on to pick up all the glass and try to get the rocks so I could clean them.  After a while, I got the rocks all cleaned and the glass thrown away.  Then I got in the van and went to Walmart to buy a new fishbowl for Courtney.  It all turned out well but it took a lot longer than it should have to clean the fishtank.

Cleaned carpet

We decided to try and save money by cleaning our own carpets.  I rented the carpet cleaner from Lin's and started on Friday night.  It was such a long process!  It's been a while since we have had our carpet cleaned so it took 2 times over the carpet to get it clean.  It was hot water so the house was hot and humid.  We did a great job but decided we are going to pay someone to do this the next time because it was too much of a pain!