January into February

January brought more snow, more snow days and many days below zero.  At one point we had 5 snow days in a row.....we just called it our "midwinter break".  This winter definitely changed our perspective on temperature and playing outside.  I remember one day Maya asked me how cold it was outside and I said -8.....Maya turned and yelled down to Alex "Hey Alex, let's go outside, it's ONLY -8!!"
We did the cross country ski program at Timber Ridge again this year.  The kids had a blast as usual, I'm still not good at skate skiing as usual.
February brought a new camera for me!
The consistent very cold weather resulted in record amounts of ice on the Great Lakes and unusual ice formations all along the area coast of Lake Michigan.
We did some exploring at Empire beach and finally got to the dune climb in the winter for some sledding one weekend when my parents came to visit.
The sledding at the dune climb was super, super fast.  Like pull the skin on your face back fast.  The climb back to the top certainly limited the number of times we wanted to go down though!

The ice formations in Empire were so much fun to explore.  Alex was absolutely fascinated and could have stayed for hours.