Biggest Little Christmas Photo Booth

Christmastime means Christmas Parties

Kelly, Julie, and Me.

I'm kind of the designated Picture Taker. I did a bit of this.

Me and Martin. He looks great with his mustache shaved. He doesn't like it as much but does it for me. Aw.

This is the Hall. Very cozy for a very cold night. I think the high temperature that day was 18 degrees.

Had my work Christmas party. It's always a good idea to try to have a time with co-workers where you relax. And Castle Farms in Charlevoix was a great place to be. It's an old mansion that has been turned into a banquet hall type place. They had a table with bowls of candy and scoops where you could make your own little gift bag of candy. I was all over that. I made Martin go up there with me to get an extra bag. They also had a photo booth where you could go up there all night and get pictures taken. That was fun. You get more creative as the night goes on. They are going to post all the shots online. I keep checking it to see if they're up yet. http://www.shutterbooth.com/ So far, they haven't showed up yet but I got a kick out of looking at the other party's photos. And then I was thinking "we should've done THAT". Next time.

A Culture of Cold

Mitchell Street downtown Petoskey

Martin, Cheyenne, Craig, and Josh giving their tough-guy faces. Josh just can't look mean no matter what.

Martin dragging our tree back to the car.

Danielle and I. People call us D&D. She's my neighbor and great friend. I love having such a good friend living so close. We wave at each other from our kitchen windows. It's quite fun. The other day I hung something on the wall in the kithchen and she told me it was throwing her off everytime she looked over at our place. Guess I should've warned her first. :)

So, winter is here. Technically, winter isn't until December 21st, but that means nothing up here. I'm a northerner. So, naturally there are a lot of things about the north that seem to be a part of me and that I like. I like sweaters, hot drinks, mittins, snowflakes the size of silver dollars. But at the same time, I'm kind of over it. I've done the whole 2am walks where it's almost as light as day, I've seen the northern lights several times. And I've also scraped ice off my car 25 million times, and stock-piled more lotion than any one household should have in their house on any day. Cold air = cracking skin.

I don't hate winter collectively. There will always be things about the cold season that are cozy and fun. But I've put my time in. I'd like to at some point live with sunshine and hot weather. And contrary to what people up here think, 75 degrees is not hot. It's warm, not hot.