Christmas Traveling

After Christmas Shawn and I spent some time with his parents in Michigan's Upper Penninsula.  The UP is a beautiful place to visit.  While we were there we partook in some fun winter activities.

First, we went and saw some ice caves and (partially) frozen waterfalls.  They were impressive and beautiful!  Here are some photos for your enjoyment.

Eben Ice Caves

Inside the ice caves

Wagner Falls

Ice covered bushes along Lake Superior

My mother-in-law and I spent an afternoon sewing together.  As with most times I sew with friends, we didn't accomplish a whole lot.  The truth is that it doesn't really matter how much was accomplished.  I don't sew with people I like to be productive - I like to talk!

Shawn's brother and his family drove in from Wisconsin to join us for a day.  We spent some time hiking on the frozen river, building snowboys, and having a snowball fight.  And more photos for your enjoyment.

Drilling a hole through the ice

The frozen river

Frozen lake with glittery snow

Sunset over the river

More photos here if you are interested.

Beautiful

I left my fancy camera at my sister-in-law's when we went to visit for her baby shower. So sad. Fortunately, I still have our point and shoot at home. This evening I was downloading some photos and I discovered this photo my husband took on the canoe trip he took earlier this month.

It's breathtakingly beautiful! Scenes like this remind me why I live in Michigan.

Taking it Outdoors

There has been beautiful weather this weekend here in Michigan.  I decided to take advantage of it as much as possible and take my studying outdoors for a bit today.

I also took some time to snap some photos of some flowers.  I love this time of year. 

Welp, now back to the books.

Sunset

Occasionally I will go out and try to find a good place around Ann Arbor to take a picture of the sunset.  Unfortunately, there aren't any truly great places.  The last couple times I ended up at the same location.  Right near the side of road where there is a gap in the trees overlooking a pond on a farm.  This past Friday when I was snapping photos, I noticed quite the change.

 

I know it's hard to tell from these photos, but the barn on the right fell down!  It was just laying there along the bank of the pond.  Presumably unchanged from the time it fell.  Craziness. 

Amazed.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got a new lens for my camera.  The 50mm f/1.8 to be exact.  My parents were gracious enough to give it to me as a birthday present.  Thanks Mom and Dad! :) 

When I was at my cousin's son's birthday party last weekend, I was able to play with it and try it out.  It is pretty awesome.

The colors in these shots of the flowers is really rich.

Cute kids to photograph make it easy to look like a good photographer!

 

The birthday boy:

   

  

 

My second cousin's daughter: 

I'm pretty pleased!  The photos are better quality on flickr.  For some reason Blogger has been making my photos look a bit funky.

Random Photos

On Friday night Shawn and I went down to a local park so I could play around with the new camera.  The intent was to take pictures of the sunset.  That didn't work out exceptionally well, but we did have some fun.  Here are some of the better pictures.

I enjoyed taking pictures of Shawn by the graffiti covered walls.

The frozen Huron River.

As we were walking down a path parallel to the river we heard a train approaching.  The interesting thing about this park is that it is where there are two separate sets of railroad tracks that intersect.  We hurried over to the tracks where the train was approaching and I attempted to figure out how to get my camera all set to take some pictures.  Unfortunately, it was getting dark and I still don't know how to work my camera very well.  I thought I had everything set to go, but as the train approached it wouldn't take any pictures!  I'm still not sure what happened, but needless to say, I was so disappointed.  Good thing the Amtrak runs daily and I can try again another time.