The winter is flying by and as I write things are warming up. But if I look back on the month, it was defintely a cold one. People from Japan have been writing us saying it is unusually warm there (and it is much warmer than Michigan normally) and I have to kind of wonder why we subject ourselves to it.

But it hasn't been all bad. A few weeks ago Sarah's parents visited from Chicago and we took full advantage of the cold weather. First, we took a walk on the lake. Yes, on the lake. Of course the ice was more than a foot thick, enough to drive a pickup on. We walked on the lake to investigate the ice fishing situation and it was a lot of fun. Shanties were randomly placed all over the lake and around the shanties you could find big holes hand drilled through the ice. We would have only been able observe had it not been for two boys we came across who have us a little ice fishing lesson. Apparently you stay in the shanties to stay warm, and send out the kids to inspect the holes where fishing lines have been dropped, waiting for a catch.

Sounded like a good setup for the parents anyways.

After we were significantly chilled to the bone walking on the lake we headed to Grand Rapids and did some ice skating on the downtown rink. We found out the idea of it was better than the actual doing of it, mostly as the skates hadn't been sharpended in who knows how long, which led to a lot of slipping and sliding on the ice. Still it was fun to get out there and clown around right in the middle of downtown GR.

That was a few weeks ago and since then things have been steadily warming up, but as fate would have it, the day we had to do some serious driving things got a little dicey. The occasion was my Grandma's, on my Mom's side, 80th birthday. So Adrian and I headed down to Detroit to pick up my mom from the airport (who had arrived from LA) and then finished the rest of the trip to Sarnia, Ontario (my birthplace).

We spent the day with Grandma talking about what was new and what had happened over the years. Then at the end of the day, the extended family got together at a restaurant to celebrate. The extended family is made up of almost 100 members (the 100 member is scheduled to be born this year!!) and more than 50 were able to make it for the celebration. It was great to have a chance to catch up with family and remember where we came from.