30 Before 30 // Midway Ice Castles

#8) Visit the Ice Castles in Midway.

It's been too long since I checked another item off my 30 Before 30 bucket list (let's blame the pandemic, shall we?) but I've finally managed to do one! Earlier this week, we packed up the snow gear and headed through Provo Canyon to the eastern side of the Wasatch Mountains to visit the Ice Castles in Midway. I first heard about them a whole decade ago as a freshman in college (dang) so it took me a while, but I finally made it over there!

- It was rather cold, but very pretty.

- Autumn didn't like walking in the snow, so Doug's arms got quite the workout from carrying her around most of the time.

- The older kids loved going down the big ice slide.

- It's beautiful to see the ice light up in a rainbow of colors as evening falls.

- We just so happened to go on the coldest day of the week (high temperature in the 20s... oops) but we managed to stay pretty warm, although Autumn's hands and feet got chilly.

^^I pulled this photo from a Pinterest board and could not find original photographer.

Doug's eyelashes started accumulating frost!

The castle glows as it gets dark outside!

We rounded off our family night by popping over to Heber City to eat at the highly recommended "Dairy Keen" fast food joint. Thick milkshakes. Good social distancing measures. (The booths have tall dividers added to them for extra precaution. We got a booth in a corner of the back room of the restaurant, and it felt like we were by ourselves.) The kids loved watching the little train that travels around the restaurant on a track placed up high near the ceiling. Surprisingly, nobody fell asleep on the ride home... but that may have been due to a combination of sugar from the milkshakes, and the swelling music of John Williams from the Harry Potter soundtrack that Nicole insisted on listening to. Am I proud of her music choice? Yes. Yes, I am. Am I proud that she sings along to the various themes? Also yes. We're on book 3 in the series, currently. She claims to love Harry Potter more than anyone. Hmm.

Hooray for bucket list items and family time! And for getting away from home for a bit during a pandemic!