December Highlights in Bemidji...Including Root Beer

Trying to get caught up here...

Usually we celebrate the holidays with John's family until late Christmas Eve, then pack up, drive the four hours, and drop exhausted into bed. But this time we decided to switch it up and go to Bemidji before Christmas! It was really fun to make Christmas cookies, decorate them, do last minute shopping, and attend the Christmas Eve service with my family.

Here are a few highlights:

Rob took the initiative and waxed everyone's skis (um...except mine!), and then got us out cross-country skiing. My dad braved it through the cold, my mom was such a trooper not having much kick wax, and we sibs had fun.


There's this park in Langley where you can take birdseed and feed the birds from the palm of your hand. John decided to try it with the chickadees in my parents' backyard. It wasn't very successful with regards to the birds, but those of us inside got quite a kick out of him!


Christmas Day was lots of fun - but we missed you Eric, Kari, Emma, and Charlie!


The funniest part of our stay definitely happened at the end of Christmas Day. See, my husband is quite the root beer snob. I have to admit that there's good reason to be since he comes from Wisconsin. In the summer there are these root beer stands which serve hot dogs, hamburgers...and homemade root beer. SO GOOD. Anyways, my mom picked out five root beers, planning on us having a taste test. When John found out about it, he insisted that it be a blind taste test and boasted stated that he'd be able to name each root beer he tasted.


So we did it. With Chex Mix as a palette cleanser, five root beers-all chilled-were sampled, scrutinized, and categorized. It was easy for me, as each root beer seemed to get progressively worse, but one of us had to resample the root beer, swish it in his mouth, smell the various bouquets, and really consider each drink many times. You can probably guess who that was.

Well, guess what. He got every single root beer dead wrong AND he put his (supposedly) favorite root beer dead last. John claims that it's because you have to drink some root beers from the bottle, not a glass, but...


From left to right, here's the order John put the root beers in. If asked, however, to order them from his least to favorite when he knows what they are, he'd say Spreckers, Henry Weinhards, IBC, Frostop, and then A&W.

Sorry John, but you are never going to live this one down...