Arctic Winter

It’s been a cold and snowy January. So I always try to make the best of our dreary winters by taking some fun photos of our frigid land. On Saturday, I met my friend Rachael at the beach to take some pictures of the snow/ice covering the first part of the water. It was crazy to see how far out this went over the water.

It was SO cold. We were bundled up, but I was still shivering under all of my layers.

I was really, really tempted to walk out on the ice to get some cool shots. But I held back because of spots like these – it just didn’t seem smart.

So I got a lot of shots of the crazy huge waves beating against the ice from a distance:

It was really neat seeing the water crash at different points along the shore. Keep in mind that most of the snow/ice chunks shown in this picture are covering water.


It was such a nice cloudy day at the beach. I love expressive cloud formations.




I love this building (it’s an art center) – I know I often post pictures of it, but it’s fun to see how different the scene looks depending on the weather.


Here’s Rachael getting some shots:

Pretty berries sticking up in a little plot of land in the parking lot:




And back at home, there were lots and lots of icicles.

So… you would think one visit to the beach on a 15-degree day would be enough. But when I came home and told Ben how cool it was to see the waves crashing on the ice and snow, he decided to go check it out too. He went to a different beach, then came home and was telling me all about it when Eli heard him and decided he wanted to see it too. So we threw on all of our winter gear and piled into the car.

Ben was smart and grabbed our sled – this was a gift from Santa and so fun that both boys could ride on it together. Charlie was especially loving it since this was his first experience on a sled.


However, notice that his mittens have come off almost instantly…

The snow wasn’t too deep where we were walking, but it was still slick enough for Ben to pull them along.




The waves at this beach were even more huge!! These teenage boys were walking on the ice, so I snapped some shots of them to give perspective of how far out the ice went and how large the waves were.






While I took more pictures, Ben was busy pulling the kids on the sled on the ice. Though at one point they were both out of the sled and Eli kept falling on the ice. But he loved it and kept calling himself a hockey guy.

I think it’s so funny to see Eli in his big puffy coat and tiny legs/boots.

Charlie started to get cold (we seriously tried putting his gloves on 10 more times, but he kept yanking them off). His poor nose turned red pretty fast.

I was enthralled with the massive waves and tried to get a closer look from a semi-safe vantage point on some snow-covered rocks.


Pretty cool for Lake Michigan.

There were these huge icebergs all over the place.

After about 10 minutes outside, Charlie started SCREAMING. Like uncontrollable screaming. Ben tucked him into his jacket and raced back to the car to warm him up, and I trudged along with Eli in the sled, who was starting to look cold and tired as well (little did I know that he would have the croupy cough that night).

When I got to the car, Charlie was ballistic. I have never seen him so upset. He was screaming, throwing himself around, crying, and I started to get really worried he might have frostbite. I tried nursing him to calm him down, but he started crying again after a few seconds. We sang to him, talked calmly, tried to warm his hands, etc. and nothing was snapping him out of it. The last thing I could think of was to pull a lollipop out of my coat pocket (I don’t remember why it was in there, but thank goodness for the lolli), and he immediately started eating it, calming down after a few seconds. I was majorly relieved that he could hold the lollipop, but felt so sorry he had been so miserable and worked up. Poor Charlie!

On our way out of the beach/park, we saw some guys playing hockey on the ice. Eli loved seeing real hockey guys :)

Before I end this long post, I want to jot some things down about the boys while I’m thinking about them:

1. Charlie loves to click his tongue – it’s really cute. He clicks his tongue and then looks right at you to make sure you notice. I usually click back to him, which makes him smile.

2. I tried giving Charlie a sippy cup with formula last week, figuring it had been a while since he’d had any and maybe he would drink it. Nope! He took a few sips, then got this awful look on his face and started wiping his tongue! It was hilarious. He turns one next week and then we’ll try to push the whole milk and stop nursing soon.

3. Eli has said some funny stuff lately – for example:

“Dad, I have something to tell you. First of all….” this was when we picked up Ben from the train last week, and Eli told him about falling outside on the sidewalk when we went to the post office.

Sort of related, Eli is very into telling stories. Over the weekend, Eli told Ben some elaborate story about a train and then said, “That was a long story, daddy.”

And the story he has told me multiple times usually starts with, “Mama, I have a story to tell you. Once upon a time, there was a train with a red caboose…”

4. Eli really likes when Ben builds him a fort. They build them often in the basement using the slide and other toys to hold it up.

5. Charlie doesn’t say a whole lot yet, besides Dada and Mama. But sometimes it sounds like he’s saying, “Hi!” when we hold the phone up to his ear, and other times we have thought he has said, “Here!” He babbles constantly though, so I’m excited to hear more words in the next year.