Heather and I were tired of spending the holiday season in sunny Southern California, so we decided to celebrate our anniversary by going to a winter wonderland, or, er, more specifically, Lake Arrowhead!

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Not bad, eh? Most people are surprised to learn this place is only a two hour drive from Los Angeles.  Amazingly, you can go from swimming in the ocean to throwing a snowball in the amount of time it takes to catch a movie.

All week before we left we talked about how we hoped it would snow while we were there, but it turns out we needn’t have worried. As we drove up the mountain we found ourselves caught in the biggest snowstorm of the year. This was exciting at first, then scary as cars skidded off the road. We skidded too at one point, but thankfully Heather remembered to “turn into the skid.” Phew. I’ll have to buy her Driver’s Ed teacher a beer.

Once at the resort we needed to decompress from the stressful drive. Thankfully our room had this:
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Yup. That’s a flat screen TV over the tub. How cool is that? The view out the window wasn’t bad either.

On Friday we decided to go skiing, but upon arriving at the slopes we found that all but one of the lifts had been shut down because of the storm. The lady at the counter tried to discourage us from skiing since only one run was open, but we decided to ski anyway and it ended up being a great decision because we were practically the only skiers there. It was incredible… like we owned our very own mountain!

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Beautiful Spohr Mountain!

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I’ve been skiing before when it is packed, and it stinks having to wait in an endless line for the lift and trying to navigate your way down a slope clogged with people. This was much cooler… not only did we not have to wait in line, but when Heather ate it coming off the lift there was no one there to laugh at her but me!

The last thing we did before heading home was have breakfast at the Belgian Waffle Works, which is legendary for its heart cloggin’ waffles. We got the Mud Pie Waffle:

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The best part about this dish is that, despite all the ice cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream, it only has 200 calories! (note: it has 200 calories… per bite.)

All in all it was a great way to celebrate our anniversary and experience the snow. We can’t wait to take Annie up there next year so she can experience the snow too. AND the waffles.