Friday, January 1, 2010

Christmas in Michigan


As you all probably already know we drove up to Michigan to spend Christmas with family. This was the first time Maranda has spent Christmas at grandma and grandpa's, and with the whole family (well most of the family). Also the first time she saw snow. I will split the pictures that I took in different posts, so you won't be overwhelmed.
I wanted to get a picture of Mom and Dad's house before the snow melted.

I found out that I didn't have to hurry. We were supposed to go to Wade's dad's Christmas Eve which is an hour north, but there was freezing rain so we waited until morning. Christmas day it rained all day, but was warm enough it didn't freeze.

There are a lot of Amish farms around where his dad live. They work the farms with big plow horses. All of the Amish farms are kept up really nice. They were all going visiting, we passed around 8 buggies going up there and around 12 on the way back.

The roads were slushy, and slippery for what we were used to.

The passengers in the buggy have a barricade up in front of them where just their heads peak over the top and a hole where the reigns go through. I guess it keeps some of the weather off of them, burr. We passed a group of young people walking, one was pulling a sled with baked beans riding on top.
After we visited up at the farm (Wade's dad live on a dairy farm) we had Christmas with my side of the family. It's funny because we never had to worry about that before, where to spend Christmas, Christmas eve with who and when and where. We usually spend Christmas with our friends who are originally from South Africa and they don't have family in town either. So we make our own traditions, a little South African and a little American.
The food was already when we got there. One nice thing about coming in from out of state, everyone else did all the cooking.



Mom fit us all in. Of course the kids table was mostly adult kids :) not so bad for Maranda.

Our family, Sarah was in California and baby Ruby was sleeping, otherwise we're all here.

The first time my car had snow on it. In North Carolina where we stayed the night on the way up it was all frosty! It snowed after Christmas and became really nice snow. It wasn't the crunchy kind you usually get after it rains then snows. I think they ordered it that way so Maranda could see a little bit of everything.
Oh, I slipped this photo in the wrong spot. Karen got us all some fuzzy sleep pants to wear Christmas Eve. Just like when we were kids we got the matching PJs.

I don't know where Karen was in this photo though. Just us and our cousins at Grandma Bouwman's on Christmas morning. Fun, fun, fun!

12 comments:

  1. The final picture is wonderful! Glad you got the snow for Christmas. =)

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a beautiful house in a very cool area! I love the Amish buggies. Looks like a great place to spend the holidays. Snow really makes it feel so festive, something we hardly ever see either. :(
    Love the fuzzy PJ pants.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a great post Lyndsey! What great pictures! It looks like you had a marvelous time visiting your family! Thanks for sharing! I love the fuzzy pants too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ces photos de famille sont magnifiques, des souvenirs qui restent inoubliables
    bonne journée

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your Christmas looks like so much fun, and the snow must have made everything even more special. Looking forward to the next round of photos.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh how nice!!! The pictures look like where I live....It looks like you had a great time!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a nice post! I love the pictures and that house is so lovely :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Looks like a great old fashioned Christmas with family! How nice that your daughter got the chance to see snow for the first time.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Looks like an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thank you all, it was wonderful to be with family during the holiday. It was such a nice snow, (well after the rain). Maranda got a good chance to see snow every way possible without a blizzard.

    TKW - Ooo, I never thought of myself as "retro" :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lyndsey, this is so much fun! I've seen snow when I was in New Zealand years ago. It was a great experience but don't have a chance to make up snow angel & snow man! I can see Miranda was soooo excited about it. She had a fantastic time over there. I guess this is her best X'mas gift ever!

    ReplyDelete

Welcome to my space. Please feel free to leave a comment. I would love to hear what you have to say!