Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve - no snowshoe this year

This year was a Christmas Eve mass hike rather than a snow shoe. We had a few less people this year too as some of the cousins who live far away (Oregon, Colorado and Western Australia) couldn't make it this year.

Charlie LOVED hiking across the lake and back in the woods. He did an excellent job off his leash - he never strayed too far away and came back when we called him.

I love the long shadows this time of year.

Maya stayed inside for the big hike, Alex came along. He did a great job keeping up, it was a fast paced hike, and made it across the lake and almost all the way around Chickadee and then back across the lake.

Finally some snow? Sort of...

Enough for the kids to play in for a while. They managed to sled a bit, mostly on the grass. They managed some snowballs but couldn't quite do a snowman.

This was just before Christmas. We have slightly more than that now, meaning the grass is entirely covered, but not much.

The way home 12/18

On the way home there was a really strong south wind. I stopped along US Hwy 2 and walked out on the beach to take some pictures of the waves. It was windy enough that it was hard to walk on some of the smooth sections of frozen sand without getting blown around!

The sun was setting just as I got back into Traverse City so I couldn't resist a quick stop for a couple sunset over East Grand Traverse Bay shots.

Marquette 12/17

I drove up to Marquette (alone!) the weekend before Christmas to hang out with Matt and Amy. It was very relaxing and although there wasn't enough snow for skiing we did some hiking.

Since there was little to no snow the frozen sand and the way the lake was starting to freeze was really interesting.

The tree - 2011

Last year we got our Christmas tree in a blizzard.

This year we got our Christmas tree in a downpour.

So there are no pictures of the tree getting.

But there are some of the decorated tree.

About 30 of them in fact.

Of which there are two with both kids looking at me and smiling.

Catching up

We did a lot of little projects in December. Some teacher gift jewelry made from beads from Bead for Life. A knitting/felting project from a Waldorf Mama pattern. Some ribbon bracelets from Family Fun magazine. A bleach pen shirt design ala pinterest......

Saturday hike

We had to walk off all that turkey! We decided to stick close to the Boardman River Nature Center because of deer hunting. Even living so close we still haven't walked their entire trail system there so we managed to hit a few stretches we hadn't hiked before. We got misted on a little but made it back to the car before the real rain started.

A Thanksgiving surprise!

On Tuesday we found out we had an opportunity to go to the Packer/Lions game on Thanksgiving day! My mom and dad were already planning on coming for Thanksgiving but graciously offered to come the night before so we could go down to the game early in the morning on Thanksgiving and we postponed our family dinner to Friday.

Neither one of us had ever been to an NFL game in a dome before and we had never been to an away Packer game. It was so weird to watch the Packers indoors and not at Lambeau Field. For the most part the Lions fan were very good natured about all the Packer fans there. Most of the people sitting near us were great even when the game didn't go their way. We had an awesome time!