A Manitoba mom is re-adjusting to life after losing her lower legs to frostbite.

Kristen Hiebert and her daughter Avery survived a night in the freezing cold after their car rolled down a steep embankment near Dunrea, Manitoba.

It has been nearly six months since they were rescued.

Hiebert now has a greater appreciation for spending quality time with her daughter after the life-changing car crash left the two of them stranded in the dead of winter.

“I had to get up that hill,” Hiebert said. “There was no getting past it.”

“Either we were going to die down there, or I was going to get up and I didn't want to be the reason why we died down there."

For the past six months, Hiebert has been learning how to live without her lower legs – they had to be amputated below her knees because of frostbite.

"I wasn't even sad I lost my legs,” she said. “All I could think about was Avery."

Kristen and Avery were on their way home to Boissevain on the night of Jan. 17 when their car went off the road on Highway 23 and rolled down a steep slope.

They were stranded at the bottom of a cold, dark and snowy embankment for hours.

"I don't remember how it happened, but I remember coming to in the car and just needing to get out."

Hiebert had a broken arm, lost her shoes, and her cellphone was nowhere to be found on the -20 degree night.

She pulled Avery out of the wreckage and yelled for help but no one could hear or see her.

She and Avery huddled in the ditch clinging to life.

"I put her hood up and I just kind of laid on top her because I didn't know how else to keep her warm,” she said.

Her feet frozen, Hiebert eventually started crawling up the embankment to get help.

"When I look at it now it's such a small ditch but then it felt like a mountain,” she added.

When she got to the top, a driver stopped and pulled Avery to safety and the ordeal ended, but Kristen's journey to recovery was just beginning.

She got prosthetics in June and spends about an hour each day learning how to use her new legs.

After surviving a night in the cold, no challenge seems too big.

Hiebert's just grateful she and her daughter are still alive and still together.

"Every day I just tell myself we're both here,” she said. “She's okay, I may not be all there but I'm here for her."