Winter in Wisconsin

Todd and I had been in Wisconsin for the last four weeks staying with family on our rural family farm. Because of this I have been pretty inactive on social media and thought you would want an update of what I've been doing!

Our first week here was our fifth year anniversary! We took a trip to Door County, which is apparently the *it* place to be in our part of Wisconsin.

For those of you who don't know Door County is a peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan. There are miles and miles of coast line with quaint farms and cities dotting the way.

Unfortunately for us, Door County thrives on tourism in the summer not winter. So many of the shops were closed for the season. We did enjoy time hiking around Peninsula State Park and eating at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant.

Phoebe was thriving being on the farm. She would spend hours bounding through the tall grasses!

Then of course it was Christmas week. That week we prepared by baking sugar cookies and decorating them. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be decorating the cookies than eating them. By the end of the week we just tossed them to the chickens!

On Christmas Eve all the cousins gathered around to receive gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. Each grandchild got a little stocking of candy, a five dollar bill, pens, and a notebook. After that we dressed in our matching Christmas pajamas and threw oats into the yard for the "reindeer"! Real deer probably came and ate it while we were sleeping...

Our little nook of Wisconsin has a large Amish community, my grandparents happen to be quite good friends with some of them. They have a small country store where we ended up buying all of our flour, jam, pickles, and candies. I've never seen a jar of jam finished in a single week! Not to mention the boxes of candies we hoarded in the kitchen drawer...

One of my favorite activities we did while in Wisconsin was cross country skiing. Every year I say to my family "Lets go cross country skiing!" and everyone says "Yeah!" and then nothing happens... This year I said "We are going cross country skiing." and so we did. There is a nature reserve about 30 miles from us that offers miles of skiing and snowshoeing trails. The start of our journey was rough. Todd couldn't get his ski to stay on his boot and kept falling. I thought for sure he would give up. But, by the end he said "I would do that again!" So, my fingers are crossed for next year!

I hope you enjoyed this little read and that your holidays were filled with love and cheer no matter how near or far your family was this year!

with love,