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Recently, the weather has been pretty unusual for a U.P. kind of winter. We’ve had more snow than in recent years but the temperature seems to fluctuate every couple weeks. We’ll go extremely cold for a short while then we get a blast of warm air and then more cold air. Greg does not like this weather! He would rather see it cold throughout the winter and then a gentle transition into spring. However, Leah would rather all of the snow just go away and it be spring already! She’s anxious to be back on the beach.

Yesterday, it was in the 40s here with some rain but it didn’t seem to affect the snow pack. Today was the total opposite. The temperature fell drastically and is supposed to be in the single digits tomorrow with wind chills -15° to -20°. We are also in a blizzard warning and we’ve received a decent amount of snow.

This past weekend was pretty funny with ice fishing on Saturday and Sunday plus a church fund raiser in Nahma on Saturday night. Greg fished by himself on Saturday morning and caught 25 perch in the 6-8″ range. Leah was jealous of this catch (yeah, right, like I’d rather be out freezing instead of sleeping in? Dream on, Greg) so we went again on Sunday afternoon. She managed to out fish him (oh, yeah! Who’s the better fisherperson?!) with 10 fish to his 8. Her prized fish was a splake (a brooke/lake trout mix) that measured 12 1/2″.

As for the fund raiser, we had fun with the Nahma folks and managed to win a few prizes. Leah won a 50-50 raffle that equaled $54. We also won a dinner for two to a local restaurant and a $25 gift certificate to the local grocery store. Leah’s grandma, on the other hand, did quite well with winning the grand prize of 10 face cords of firewood. Two minutes after winning it she sold it for $800! Way to go, Grandma!

It’s been awhile since we posted. We’ve been extremely busy with holiday events that we’re finally getting organized. Here’s a quick recap…

• Christmas. We headed downstate this year and spent almost a week at Greg’s parents’ house. We had pretty good weather driving so that was a relief. It was nice to be home since we hadn’t been there since last Thanksgiving. We managed to go bowling as it has become a tradition. Other than that we just ate a lot of food and relaxed.
• Saturday before New Years. We drove to Nahma on Saturday to attend a 50th wedding anniversary party for Leah’s great aunt and uncle. It was held at Mac’s Bar and they closed the bar for the party so that was really nice. There was no trouble.
• Sunday before New Years. It was Greg’s cousin’s 4th birthday so we joined the Stieler family for bowling and went to their house after for cake. Leah managed to put the smack on Greg in both games (oh, yeah!) and the kids were really entertaining!
• New Year’s Eve. With so much driving in the last week we decided to just stay in for the night. Leah cooked an excellent steak dinner and we watched some episodes of Family Guy and played some games.
• New Year’s Day. Greg finally got to go ice fishing for the first time this year! We headed out to Shag Lake in Gwinn and spent a few hours in the shanty. Greg got a “Mr. Heater” for X-mas and it is a big improvement from the single burner cooking stove we used previously, safer too. Leah got a new fishing pole but sadly didn’t catch anything. It was a slow day, anyhow, with Greg catching one in the shack and another on a tip-up.

This weekend with conclude the holiday season for us with Leah’s company’s holiday party. Last year we had fun with it being held at Upfront & Co. restaurant and that’s where it’s happening again. Beside that, hopefully we can go ice fishing and pick up around the house.

Photos from all these events will be posted soon.

This past weekend we stayed home to attend Greg’s company’s Christmas party, visit with the Stielers and Co. and finish our Christmas shopping. On Friday night for the party we went to a new steakhouse in Marquette called Elizabeth’s Chop House. It’s a high-class joint with excellent food (don’t forget your checkbook). On Saturday we finished 95% of our holiday shopping and decided to buy our joint gift as usual. Instead of buying each other gifts (we can never figure out what to get each other), we buy one gift together that we both want. This year was a little more exciting as it was an iPod Nano. Last year was a car starter and the year before was a snowblower. On Saturday night we visited with Greg’s relatives in Skandia and Leah had fun playing firemen with them. Sunday was more of a relaxation day and we did pretty much nothing but watch football.

Hard to believe Christmas is only a week away…

I can’t believe that it’s almost Christmas. Greg and I are still way behind on the gift buying because I keep thinking that we have weeks yet to finish up, but we don’t. Next Friday we head downstate for the fun, old-fashioned Kretovic family Christmas. Speaking of that, we haven’t watched our usual National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation yet. And if you didn’t catch that reference (lame though it was) you need to watch it, too. We haven’t seen A Christmas Story yet, either, and we’ll miss the 24 hours of it on TNT, so we’ll have to watch it some other way. See all of the stuff we have left to do? When will we find time to watch two movies?

Last weekend we went down to Appleton to do some of our shopping and visit Scott, Theresa, Lily and our goddaughter, Chloe. It was fun, the mall was crazy and Chloe doesn’t like Greg. He would ask her, “Chloe, do you want to come sit by me?” And she would just give him this LOOK and say, “No!” It was funny.

At least this year feels more like Christmas, with the snow and all. I was reading our post from after last Christmas, when we still didn’t have any. [As a side note, Greg was just telling me that in the Duluth area tomorrow the wind chill is supposed to be -50. That's just one more reason that I'm glad to be back in the UP. I can handle the snow way better than the cold.]

Tomorrow night is Greg’s company’s Christmas party, which is at a new steak place in Marquette. Yum. I’m going to order an extra big steak so I can take the leftovers home with me. It should be fun! Here are a few pictures from last weekend:

Chloe smiling (she must not have seen Greg yet)

Theresa, Lily and Greg playing Twister, one of our gifts to Lily