Frost bitten.

In February we had the opportunity to travel to Northern Japan with some good friends to ski and attend the famous "Sapporo Ice Festival." We also had the opportunity to be the coldest I have ever been in my entire life. This Texas girl had to buy quite a few articles of clothing, including my first real winter jacket. :)

May I just say Niseko was the most amazing skiing we have ever done (now coming from a Texas girl that may not be impressive, but even Tdub agreed and he's been around. with skiing that is.) Because we were stuck in a perfect blizzard every day on the mountain and knee deep in powpow, pictures were not the priority so we only got a few. :) Our legs were burning, our little piggies frozen and bodies were sore after 3 days of shredding the gnar gnar.

view from our hotel room

The team then headed to Sapporro for a few days to the Ice Festival. Over 2 million people from all over the world attend this festival every year. It started in 1950 and has continued every year since. The park is full of about 400 ice/snow sculpted structures. Teams from all over the world come for a couple weeks before the festival and start to build and sculpt the structures. Each team/country makes theirs so unique and different. It was really incredible to see and I found myself in disbelief that this was ice and snow shaped before me. It was so "warm" this past winter (i beg to differ, would have hated to be there during a normal winter) that several of the structures melted and one actually fell on an older lady and broke both of her legs. It was the first time that anyone had been injured by a snow structure in the history of the festival. We got out safe, just a little frozen on the buns.

that's S.N.O.W. people!!

the whole gang at the Taj!

my favorite one i think, the detail was ridic!

the children, i mean our very mature husbands decided to race on the ice slides. The Japanese workers weren't sure what to do with them when they got in line because it seemed to be just a children's attraction up to that point. But as you will see by the time they are sliding down there are other adults in line. gosh, those Gaijin's have great ideas! haha! What I love about this picture is that the top workers are holding them back like they will slip and hurt themselves and the bottom workers were creating a snow drift to help slow them at the end. haha! Japanese people were getting in my way to take pictures of them sliding down. awe-some.

and the f-u-n just keeps coming...a few of our people got chosen to participate in a game that was totally lost in translation. still not sure what they were supposed to do, but raise their flag when a certain thing was called out. Thank goodness everyone (even if you don't know Japanese) was a winner and got a goodie baggie. :)

Tdub and his prize, a milk box.

I am realizing this is a long blog and there is still a few more treats to share, join me for part two on the next post...