Anni-brrrr-sary

Ok, here's the quick back story: We were coincidentally married on Groundhog Day, the big Groundhog Day celebration originally took place in Punxatawney, PA. In the early 90's there was a movie made about Groundhog day, it was supposedly set in Pennsylvania but was actually filmed an hour north in Woodstock, IL. We would love to go to the actual Punxatawney one day for our anniversary, but when we heard this summer that Woodstock recreates the same thing we had to check it out.

The kids smiling for the camera in this pic.

....but this is a more accurate depiction of the morning.

We had to be at the town square at 7:00 in the morning to catch the festivities. It was freezing and despite my attempts at layering the kids, they were miserable. We made a note to ourselves that if we ever do this again, we'll do it when our kids are in college. Looking back is always different though, if you asked Kate if she liked it she would say she had a great time.

They played some songs, invited the crowd to sing along, then they had the actual guy that was the DJ in the movie to say his wake up routine that he said every morning in the movie. After that they introduced Woody, he said a few words (they literally held him up to the mic and he squeaked) and then they conversed with him and it was decided that he did not see his shadow. The crowd cheered and we took some more pictures and booked it out of there. It took a few minutes for the kids to regroup in the heated car.

If we would have planned it better, the town of Woodstock has events scheduled all day. There was a breakfast, a free showing of the movie Groundhog day, a chili cook off, a guided tour of all of the filming locations and more. We, on the other hand, decided to move the party to our next destination which was way more tropical. The Winterfest in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Now, when we talked about doing this little excursion a few weeks before, the temperatures were in the 40's. We even worried that there wouldn't be any snow for the snow sculpting competition, but of course we were wrong. I'm sure the drive to get there was a little tense for Ryan, but it was beautiful driving on the back roads and seeing all the cool farms.

The frozen lake. 

Actually, Lake Geneva seems like such a cute town to visit in the summer, maybe we'll put it on our list again when it gets warmer, a lot warmer.

Needless to say, we are a bunch of light weights, we had all of these plans to take our time at both destinations and really enjoy the day, there was even a fish n' chip place I had plans to try on the lake for lunch but we were done with both places by 10am so we headed home.

It was definitely an adventure and one of those things that if we didn't do it this time, we might never get a chance to do it, especially with baby sister coming. I would recommend at least doing the groundhog thing to anyone and it was fun to come home and watch the movie to see where we had just been.

Anyway, Happy Groundhog Day and hopefully it's true that spring is around the corner!