Kicking off the Christmas season!

Morning, friends!

We hope you're all keeping warm - it looks like a lot of you got snow, and Provo definately got its fair share too!

These count as snow shoes, right?

Provo is used to snow and did a great job of clearing roads and keeping everything going, so fortunately the snow didn't really stop us from doing anything. Including our FHE date to BYU's Museum of Art. :)

BYU's MOA is incredible. Right now, it has an exibit of paintings on loan from Germany and Denmark that are special to the LDS community. These paintings are well-known since they're used in a lot of our resources (like Preach My Gospel, Sunday School manuals, etc) but the originals have been in European museums and churches... until now!

The exhibit, called Sacred Gifts, is open until mid-May, and we highly recommend it! Tickets are free, but need to be reserved at this website: http://sacredgifts.byu.edu//

It made for a perfect Christ-centered FHE to kick off the Christmas season! :)

It also felt Christmasey because snow started falling on Monday and kept coming down all week. I was grateful to be working from home. This is my 'office' :)

Nice, warm, and no commute! :)

But venturing out to teach group fitness classes and do wellness programming at the rec center wasn't bad, either. My classes were still full! (27 people on Saturday! Good job, guys!) Several friends make it to my yoga classes too, which was fun! :)

Running outside had to be cut, though, when temperatures dropped below 10 degrees. I was bummed at first, until discovering THIS... 

Have you guys seen these before?? These treadmills have a video screen of trail and/or city running, and make treadmill running significantly more enjoyable! (I know these have been around for a while but I'm just now realizing how much fun they are!)

I did a 4+ mile 'run through Germany' loved my workout!

Usually treadmill runs are SO BORING that I can barely drag myself through 3 miles. But this helped me to excitedly run over 4 miles, and when it was time to go, I wanted to keep going! SO great to know running doesn't have to stop because of a little snow. ;) 

Later in the week my Relief Society  put on a Christmas dinner for all of us ladies in the ward! :)

It was beautifuly done and even included a talk by Brad Wilcox, a prominent LDS author, BYU professor, and member of the General Sunday School presidency! One of the many perks of being in Utah is getting to meet inspiring people like him. :)

The messages and food and were lovely, and it was fun to hang out with the ladies in my ward / apartment complex! Gotta love Relief Socity. :)

Soon enough it was Friday. Time for date night!!

We bundled up and headed to Salt Lake for dinner, the Temple Square Lights, and a Christmas market!

We went to a German restaurant we'd been looking forward to since hearing rave reviews about it from Matt's mission buddies. It serves authentic food, which Matt has missed ever since serving his mission there.

We liked it a lot! The food definitely had an American twist, but it hit the spot. Yum! 

Next was the Christmas Market. True to this week's (coincidental) 'German' theme, the market was made after a traditional German Christmas market, or Weihnachtsmarkt (Matt can pronounce that one - but not me!)

The event reminded me of a family vacation to Austria that my parents, sisters and I took a couple Christmases ago. It was a good copy of the European Christmas markets!

It was absolutely FREEZING there (10 degrees or less), so we stayed warm by jumping from one retail booth to the next. They had live musicians performing German music, traditional food, and even had reindeer :)

We stayed for a while and enjoyed the cute ambiance before heading to downtown SLC for our next stop. 

In honor of our one-year engagement anniversary, which was this week, we went back to where Matt proposed: Temple Square!  Although we got engaged exactly a year ago on Saturday, it feels like he proposed a lifetime ago. So much has happened and changed since then!

Once on Temple Square, we were happy to see that this year's Christmas light display was just as good as last year's :) 

I love the horses pulling carriages. The bagpiper wasn't bad either ;)

Temple Square was perfect! We got hot chocolate and walked around, taking it all in for an hour or so.

After our big date night we took it easy for the rest of the weekend, me teaching yoga and him catching up on homework from being away last weekend. 

And now it's time for church! Enjoy your Sunday, we'll catch up again next week! :)

Our 'back yard,' all covered in snow