Up north for new years, 2012

We always head to northern lower Michigan to celebrate a late Christmas and an on-time New Years with my Godmother. It's a trip we look forward to immensely for the silliness, serenity, and snow. Weather is weird this year, and we thought we were out of luck on that last bullet point, but nature delivered just as we were looking to head home, and we got an extra day out of that timing. As for the other two wish list items—silliness is no problem, but serenity is always at an arm's length with a five-year-old. Still, two out of three isn't bad.

More Christmas? Such a lucky boy. Look at those wonderful penguins.

Blue (the dog, not the Christmas)

Sleepy-heads

A cherry-berry pie from Jesperson's in Petoskey, photo taken five—literally five—minutes after we got home with it, still warm from their heavenly ovens.

The bushes were masquerading as dog/bear/snow/burlap people so Jack Frost (and possibly the deer) wouldn't recognize them. I was thoroughly fooled.

Jon and I got some of that serenity we were looking for by heading out the store for some last-minute necessities on New Year's Eve. To extend it a bit we walked, and we also added a few things to list of "necessities" that took us not only to the grocery store, but also into our favorite quaint little town, Harbor Springs. Whose to say that we wouldn't find "necessities" at their little book store?

Bot Bie is a family food tradition. It fits the definition of comfort food to tee—warm, filling, and not so very good for you.

You'd think he'd done all the cooking...

Last nap of 2011.

And finally the snow has arrived.

This is what a chickadee looks like head-on. He makes me giggle.

The bear/dog/snow/burlap people say "Happy New Year!"

And now we're home, the blog is "caught up", Michigan has won the Sugar Bowl (in a not-so-pretty game), and 2012 can get underway.

Well loved friends and a brewery

We headed north for new years as usual, but on the way we detoured to Grand Rapids to visit friends (who are from Seattle now, but come back once a year to visit friends and family). With growing kids and families, once a year hardly seems like often enough to catch up, but we'll take what we can get, and one of these years we'll visit them out in Seattle, too. And since we were headed to Grand Rapids anyhow, we stopped in at Founder's, our favorite Michigan brewery for lunch. Turns out they have really great food, too.

Christmas

Still Christmas Eve...

Christmas morning at home

His favorite gift? The five new Magic Tree House books. He was ecstatic.

Grapes the Penguin. He was on Calvin's Christmas list, and he'd already named him. Grapes.

Grapes is going to be well, well loved.

Programming the car with new music for Christmas

...for a long winter's nap

Eating Christmas calamari and discussing my new (very old) book art. Awesome.

Jon playing with Calvin's new train.

It's Christmas morning all over again!

Puppet chef! Nom nom nom...

Ahhhh...Christmas music

Crooked IPA is crooked

Merry Christmas!

1 day: Christmas Eve at Kerrytown

It's a tradition, something I've done with my family since I was a young girl, a tradition that we have continued together year after year after year. A brunch of seafood chowder from Monahan's, and bee-bim bop from Kosmo. Shopping and browsing and giggling and taking pictures.

No matter how cold it is, this is the warmest time of year.

Holiday Nights

It was the weekend of our annual Christmas outing with our good friends. Calvin spent Saturday night with his grandparents while we enjoyed cheese, fruit, wine, scallops, an evening of festivities at historical Greenfield Village, and, finally, more fruit, cheese, wine, and dessert.

This evening is magical very year for us. It was frigid this time around, temperatures dipping to near twenty with a brisk wind, but the sky was clear and the moon was full. We all have a great time together with good food and lots of laughs, and there is something very beautiful about Victorian Christmas traditions, or really anything Christmas and historical. And making creme brulee together was a lot of fun.

Calvin also had a great night, and has yet to stop talking about the shaped pancakes his grampa made for him this morning (including a liopleurodon, apparently—we'll never be able to top that).