Arctic Art

1 Ice Sculpture = Pretty Cool

A Whole Festival of Ice Sculptures = Awesome and AMAZING!

Sure it's cold, but there are a few advantages to living through the icy winters of the upper mid-west. One of these advantages? The Plymouth Michigan Ice Festival - the largest free ice sculpture display in the USA.

There were tons of ice sculptures to see through out the park, as well as sculpting demonstrations and competitions. 

The best part of the festival was the interactive sculptures. They were great photo ops for kids. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of us riding the giant ice dinosaur but we did get a few others. 

Mammoth Cave

On the way home from Georgia we decided to stop and take a tour through Mammoth Cave (the longest cave in the world). We always pass it on our drives but have never stopped. 

The formations inside the cave were beautiful. It was a little difficult to get good pictures (plus the flash was giving James a headache) but we got a few. 

A creepstery pic of Jamesy. 

We went on the "frozen Niagara" Tour. Here's a picture of the formation that gave the tour its name. It's actually quite large and goes down the whole side of one of the cave walls. Cool huh?

A New Generation of Jumpers

The kiddies were quite interested in using my camera. After I showed them to take awesome possum still shots of airborne jumping action, they wanted to try it out. 

We demonstrated...

... and they followed.

They wanted to do it over and over and over again. I was so proud!

Christmas in Georgia

This year we spent Christmas with James' family in Georgia. James' brother and his wife were nice enough to let us stay in their home during the holidays. 

James's mom Carolyn and Grandma Fuller came to have Christmas morning with the family. Might I just say that Christmas is so much more fun with little kids.

We don't get to see James' family nearly enough. He absolutely loves seeing his brother. Allen does all kinds of fun things with James that I won't usually do. I like camping but backpacking really isn't my thing so during the week, James and Allen went on a backpacking trip in northern Georgia. They also discovered they could play each other in Metal Storm over the internet on their respective apple devices. I haven't yet seen the end of it.

The best part of Christmas with kids is helping them to try out their new Christmas presents! Most of my time was spent playing with play-doh, having picnics, and dressing like princesses.

This little one didn't like me so much, but he sure did love his uncle James. He wouldn't let James put him down. 

Right before we left Georgia we took Carolyn out for a fun night at the Japanese Steakhouse.  Delicious! Not the most flattering pictures, but it's all we got. 

Family Photos

On November 23rd my mom organized family photos in the Lebanon Memorial Park during the Thanksgiving break.

We got a few decent family pictures.

Obviously, we had to include a jumping picture as well.

There were a few pictures with just the girls. 

And even one for just the boys.

That day was James' and my 4th wedding anniversary, so we got a few pictures with just the two of us.

Expecto Patronum!

If you haven't noticed, whenever my family gets together, the picture taking gets a little out of hand. This trip was no different. 

After the spooky haunted house in Indy, Marissa wanted to show us how to make a few ghosty pictures of our own. Only problem, she couldn't really remember exactly how. So... we played around with the camera a bit. 

Then we thought to ourselves, "selves - that looks just like a soul being sucked out of someone's body by a dementor." Why not? And so we did...

Awesome, no? But we didn't stop there. Flash lights got added to the mix and after a few outlining pictures and some fireball action came the Harry Potter pictures. 

Expectro Patronum! Add a wand and you got yourself some magic. We may or may not have taken these pictures until three in the morning. 

Lots of Wizarding Duels ensued...

But we all came out friends in the end!