Life out of the Pool: Christmas in Wisconsin

Beautiful view as the snow started coming down

Since Christmas 2013 was spent on our honeymoon visiting Mexico via a wonderful cruise, we decided lets go completely opposite for Christmas 2014, Wisconsin it was. In reality Brennan had not been home in almost two years and his poor parents had been making the trip to California a lot in the last two years. Though there could be worst places than San Diego for your only son to move, just saying!

Before the game

Always hard to be away for Christmas, thankfully technology helps a lot. I spent Dec 23 with my family at the Poinsettia Bowl to watch the Aztecs play. I know my mom loved it all her kids in one place for a few hours. There were not even any husbands this evening. Just the family. You do not realize it but those kinda days become few and far between. So it was nice to be just us Vessey's for a few hours. It was a good game of football. Close throughout with the Aztecs having a chance to win. But in the end we did not get the outcome that we had hoped for with an Aztec win.

Christmas/Brennan's Birthday

Brennan and I would leave for Wisconsin Christmas eve on the 1st flight of the morning. Thankful that weather was on our side for traveling. Which if you have traveled with me in the last two years I have not had one flight go on time. I know Brennan was worried my curse would continue. But all was good and we arrived without issue. Since we traveled on Christmas eve, made for Christmas and Brennan's birthday arrived quickly. Seemed like it snuck up on us. We had a great Christmas day. I also spent some time of the morning on facetime with my family to watch them wrap up there Christmas. Also in perfect timing to see Sean get a new car.. Guess Santa thought he was a really good kid. The rest of the day was spent celebrating Brennan and his day of birth. We went to the movies and saw "The Gambler". It was a good movie and different than what I expected.

No Snow!!

A few days later.. SNOW!

Sadly I did not get my white christmas (which Brennan had promised me). Mind you this was my 2nd Christmas in four years in Wisconsin- neither of which had snow. Late on the 26th it started snowing I rushed out to play in it. But it only lasted a few minutes and did not stick. Then either later that evening or the next night we were headed to bed and Brennan noticed it was really snowing- needless to say we spent some time playing in it. That night they got somewhere between 5-7 inches of snow. I may have been the only excited person within a few hundred miles. From that point the weather was cold, but nothing crazy. Well that changed quickly and caused a very drastic change in temperature. The rest of the trip was very cold and usually started with a - sign.

Deer in the backyard

After Christmas we had not really plans. Except for Brennan to see a few specific people. The rest of our trip was spent hanging out and visiting people. Spent a night out in Eau Claire with some of Brennan's high school friends. A few trips to the Twin Cities. On one trip to the cities we visited the Mall of America and had a fun lunch together, did a bit of shopping. That same evening we headed to Coach Hartman's house for dinner. Such a fun evening getting to know him and his wife even better. Brennan and I have a lot to thank him for. He really pushed Brennan to go to grad school (thank heavens he did).

Stood outside in -10 for this picture

The last day of the trip we meet up with Brennan's grandpa for lunch in the Dells. It has a huge outlet mall, thankfully we were shopped out. Plus no way I wanted to be at an outside mall when it was that cold. It was great to spend time with Brennan's grandpa. Plus you could just tell how much it meant to him.

Brennan made me try this on: guess it is a
Wisconsin thing

By the end of the trip it was a lovely -10, that is without wind chill. The coldest the thermometer said at one point was -13 while Brennan & I were driving back one night. Thus I was happy to come back to Cali. Even if when we arrived it was raining. Within two days it was a lovely 70.