We have snow!

Just a little. But the grass is covered anyway!

Another cache........

The next day we decided to take advantage of the weather again and find another cache. This one is less than a mile from our backyard!

For those of you who aren't familiar geocaching is hunting for little "treasure" boxes hidden at set GPS coordinates. We get the coordinates and instructions online and then use the GPS to find the "treasure".

I included a picture of this one so you can see what we're looking for. Some are bigger and many are smaller (like a film canister). Some have trinkets in them and some small ones just a log book.

Alex got a "super fast race car" matchbox car out of this one!

2007.....................

Ben had off work the 1st and 2nd so on Jan 2nd we decided to head north and be tourists for a bit. We drove up to Petoskey and walked all around their downtown area. On the way out of town we couldn't resist a drive down into Bay Harbor, which is a man made wealthy community between Petoskey and Charlevoix. We were totally being hillbilly tourists cracking up and hanging out the windows taking pictures.
The building you are looking at in the first picture is a house, yes a one family house. Apparently when you are filthy rich you get to make up random speed limits.......the speed limit all through this part of Bay Harbor was 23 mph. I guess the standard 15 or 25 just doesn't work for them.
And the last picture is of some condos perched on top of a man made cliff. That building is divided in half into 2 units.
There wasn't a good way to get a picture of it but there is also a "main street" sort of thing with upscale shops and restaurants. As it was we were waiting for security to show up and ask us to leave!
On the way home we stopped for a late lunch/early dinner in Charlevoix at a little pub type place. A fun day, but again, not our normal activities for January!

"Untle Matt and AAAmy"

Matt and Amy came to visit for New Years!

And what an odd end of Dec/beginning of Jan it was! Instead of our normal New Years activity of snowshoeing we went hiking and geocaching. This was a big cache, Alex got a really cool obnoxious plastic hand clapper thing out of it! As you can see he was thrilled. It was a nice little walk though, not far at all from our house. The bubbling water picture is one of two natural springs on the edge of the pond we were on.

Along with Amy and Matt we had a few other friends over on New Years Eve. Alex and his friend Carter stayed up until 10:30 partying! They crashed pretty hard and I'm not sure about Carter but Alex slept until 9:30 the next morning.