Personal: Our Year In Review 2022
By the end of 2021, we were in a completely new location trying to make new friends in our community, trying to fit in and find our place, and trying to survive our first UP winter. I had to navigate restarting my business in a new community. As someone who strives to be productive, that winter was the hardest for me to endure business-wise. But 2022 has taught me so many wonderful things too. I met some amazing people, started collaboratively writing for Visit Keweenaw, learned the art of slow living, and have been navigating the art of family-work life balance through the many seasons.
I have linked content I have created throughout the year if you want to experience the full flash-back fun with me! I have enjoyed creating this content so much for all of you and I’m so thankful to be able to do this. As always, every like, comment, share, and subscribe click helps me keep doing what I’m doing and let’s me know that you are also enjoying what I’m sharing. If there is something you really want to see on my site, feel free to send me an email! I love to receive requests and will try my best to accommodate.
January
We rang in the new year down state with friends and family, which was quite amazing! The holidays were always a time to be surrounded by friends and family to me, so I’m so glad we were able to end our year and start the new year that way. After coming back home, we set up our plans for the new year. I love to set a list of goals with various categories from fun, relationship, work, home, and so forth. And when writing this year in review, I like to revisit my goals to see how many I can check off!
In previous years, I loved to challenge myself with yearly challenges like the 365 challenge, where you take a picture every day of the year. I thought I would keep that going, but something a little more manageable like the 52 challenge, which is where you take at least one picture a week. Well… I quickly dropped off that once our schedules started to take off in the spring. I wish I could say I picked it back up, but I didn’t. So needless to say, I failed at that and honestly? That’s okay. This year was an off year for me and I wasn’t very inspired photography-wise. I am hoping next year is better, or I’m a bit more disciplined.
We also started the 1000 Hours Outside challenge! This challenge is about getting kids off screens and out in nature, where they thrive and it already has everything they need for development. Not only did this help us get back out on the trails, but we learned so many neat ways to enjoy our insane amount of snow! In January, we painted the snow with food coloring and droppers and we made snow-canoes with vinegar and baking soda.
I started to learn about homeschooling and we started that in January too. I began purchasing lessons from For The Love of Homeschooling and we would explore new topics each week. While we were downstate in December, I picked up some skincare products I had been wanting to try and started a new skincare routine! By the end of January, I was hooked and loved the products.
January is birthday month!! I celebrated turning 25 with my own creative birthday pictures. I started taking birthday portraits the year before (the theme was galaxy), and I hope to continue this tradition. It’s such a fun way to give back to myself by creating something I enjoy and having portraits of myself, which is so rare since I’m always behind the camera!
Then, we braved the negative temps and wind chill to attend the Copper Dog Sled Race kids event! Evelyn had a blast riding in the dog sled with Charlie and I’m so jealous I didn’t ride. I wanted to capture the event, but I should’ve asked if she wanted to go again so I could try. They provided a warming tent with hot chocolate, which we grabbed afterwards, and then headed home to thaw. January also marks our first snowshoeing trip! That was such a fun experience and I hope to add cross-country skiing to our list. By the end of the month, my parents had come up for a mid-winter visit.
February
February! And my parents were here! So of course, what do two parents do when their support system comes to visit? If your answer was to leave your child with your parents, you would be right. I knew my dad didn’t want to get out in the snow, so we took this opportunity to hit the trails by ourselves and enjoy some time away while Evelyn enjoyed quality time with her grandparents. After my parents left, we kept up our outside challenge by learning how to make maple candy in the snow and making fresh juice for snow cones. While Evelyn was working away on her homeschool projects, I took that opportunity to practice my own new years goal: learn how to watercolor.
Our snow pile was way high by this point in the year, so Evelyn and I began carving out an igloo behind the house. That was a fun project to work on while she played in the snow, because parents need something to do too right? We celebrated our first and MTU’s 100th year of Winter Carnival! With it being my first winter, I wasn’t comfortable heading out to the events with Evelyn by myself. But after being up here for other a year, my anxiety has decreased SIGNIFICANTLY and I’ve never been so comfortable heading out into public by myself with Evelyn. I’m hoping to enjoy more of the festivities this upcoming year (plus Charlie will be on paternity leave). We did visit the carvings and participated in the GlowShoe hike, which both were super cool! So I’m looking forward to seeing more of what there is do to at this wonderful festival.
After what felt like forever of trying, we had gotten pregnant! I learned the news shortly before we were planned to get guests and I had to keep that secret. I loved planning images to capture the baby during each size and week. I knew the next time we got pregnant, I wanted to make beautiful images of the baby’s size each week. This was such a challenging project!!
Like I said, we had guests coming for a mid-winter break adventure! We scrounged up some extra snowshoes and ice cleats and went to visit some amazing winter sights. We revisited the Eben Ice Caves during their prime! Much better than visiting towards the end of the season like we did before. We had hoped to climb some frozen waterfalls, but we had no luck signing up for one. So seeing the caves and hiking to some frozen waterfalls were our next best thing. The next day, we took them to the Hungarian Waterfalls, which is one of our favorite scenic hikes. Other than that, we spent the weekend cozying up by the fireplaces, playing games with friends, and showing them the beauty of slow living in the UP. I tried to get them in the sauna for the full experience, but they didn’t want to!
We ended our month with a hike to O Kun Du Kun Falls, which was stunning! To see the ice formations and the bridge covered by snow was breathtaking. We were able to go out into the ice (for the most part) and get a closer glimpse. That is, until Charlie fell in the water and we had to book it back to the car to warm him up. A lesson learned that trip!
March
It’s March! The weird in-between phase for the UP where it’s warm enough in our sunrooms by noon, possibly hang out on your deck/porch, but there’s still snow covering the ground. It’s also the month that I found out I was experiencing a miscarriage. I knew miscarriage was a hard thing for other families to face, but you don’t truly know the pain until you go through it yourself. At first, I wanted to keep all my feelings to myself and learn to cope my way, but something kept drawing me to open up about it. I read another mother’s story about how her personal favorite blogger was the first person she looked to during her loss, and she couldn’t find a single post about it. So, I knew I had to tell my readers my story, whether or not they too experienced the heartbreak, but just in case there was even one of my close friends or readers going through it too then they knew they weren’t alone.
There were quite a few topics I was drawn to share after releasing my story. I knew I needed to write about the realities of grief, for other parents and their friends and family. There’s such a lack of awareness when it comes to grief, due to cultural stigma, that I was drawn to spread true awareness in what to expect. I was also drawn to sharing how I took care of my body after my miscarriage. There was a lot of information on the internet about how to let yourself grieve, but nothing on how to actually take care of yourself and heal. So, I wanted to share everything I did that truly helped me recover and what I think helped me lean into my body and trust it through the process instead of hating it for what it did.
One of the ways I found healing was learning how to get out of the house by myself with my daughter. This is something that used to cause me a lot of stress and anxiety. But hiking and being in nature is so healing to me and I knew I needed it, so we tried. The first few hikes were a mess. She was screaming, I was stressing, we both were high strung. But we would get in the car after and be like “you know what, I still had fun with you.” This started many things for us, but I can now say that I am finally able to do normal daily tasks out of the house that I wasn’t able to do before because of my anxiety and it’s been amazing! I never knew the joys of taking my daughter out for a date, and now it’s my favorite thing that I look forward to.
Like I said, I knew I couldn’t keep my miscarriage bottled up no matter how much I wanted to, so we called up my parents and met them in Mackinaw City for a quick trip. That was my first time solo driving with my daughter too. Turns out, she road trips like a champ and it was a breeze!
After getting outside, reading or listening to podcasts was another method in my healing process. I was drawn to educating myself during this period of rest. So while my daughter would play outside, I would read my books. I also love that she is able to witness me reading! I think there are two main ways to set your kids up to love books, and that’s by reading to them yourself and showing them that you read too. We were able to get on our porch to enjoy reading/playing in the sun for a few weeks before we were hit with a late snowstorm!
Lastly, we ended our month with a quick trip to Marquette. Although we went to Marquette to drop our car off at the dealership, we also used it as a chance to visit the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum! It’s nothing compared to the 'state of the art’ children’s museums of major cities, but our daughter had a blast and looks forward to going back each time we visit the city - so that makes a place pretty magical in my books. The exhibits, programs, and special events are all hands-on diving into art, health, science, communications, innovation, global issues, and empowering our youth. We always leave the museum happier (and more tired) than when we walked in.
April
So…. we still had snow in April. I’ve been told we had an unusually long winter this year so I’m hoping for a warmer April next time around. The snow started to drive us crazy this month, but not because of the actual snow being on the ground. Instead it was because it was either too cold that the melting snow was a sheet of ice, making it difficult to hike, or that the day was warm enough that the trail was all just mush, making it difficult to hike. Either way, getting out for daily hikes was a bit tough this month so I turned to finding ways to continue my healing indoors. I rekindled my love of yoga, discovered a fitness YouTuber that I thoroughly enjoyed, and made daily exercise a pinnacle point of my morning routine.
At some point, much of the snow had melted and we were able to hit the paved trails instead! So we did. We tested out the waterfront trail from Houghton to Chassell. If your kiddo is like mine, pack plenty of snacks! She actually requests bike rides, but it is much more enjoyable with a pack of snacks. Afterwards, we kicked off ‘spring’ with our first campfire of the year. We typically like to enjoy Earth Day out in nature like this, but our ‘celebration’ had to wait a few extra days. April seemingly dragged on as we were tired of winter’s rest.
I did find productivity in starting Evelyn’s birthday presents. By the end of April, I had hand-sewn a backpack for her - which she had been begging for for quite some time.
May
Do we still have snow? Yep… Can you see it in the background? If we head to the trails or head down the mountain, there isn’t much snow left. So we were finally able to get out and enjoy trails! Guess what we also finally found out? I am pregnant again! After how long it took us to get pregnant with our miscarriage baby, I was completely shocked to get pregnant this fast afterwards. I was filled with so many emotions too! Both joy and fear took over. In fact, I was so nervous that I didn’t even call my doctor until much later after finding out.
Although we still had snow, the sun was really starting to warm up! So we headed to the beach to try a popular pastime up here: Rock Hounding. What happens when you take a toddler rock collecting you ask? My handle breaks off my last favorite basket. I now know why everyone else at the beach had 5 gallon buckets. I actually found this a wonderful time to collect flat stones for painting as well! I painted them as markers for our vegetable garden, and they turned out so cute.
Since the weather was looking up, we finally brought out the trampoline! That was so fun and excited for our daughter. Afterwards, we headed to Canyon Falls which is named the Grand Canyon of Michigan. The rapids were extraordinary and the rock was mind-blowing. I had been able to hike with Evelyn in her backpack up until this point. This hike was soooo rough for some reason! I’m still not sure if it is because of her current age/weight or if it was tiredness from the pregnancy.
Evelyn and I actually loaded up the car and headed down-state for a mommy & daughter trip to visit friends and family! It was a wild trip. I was 2 hours out from our final destination when our car stalled into limp-mode and had to be towed. So we stayed with our close friends that were in the area to see if I could pick the car up the next day. We couldn’t. So the friends we were originally staying with came to pick us up and we had so much fun with them for a week! We had so much fun playing with their daughter in the backyard, going for walks to the ice cream stand, and even visiting a fun play center! Then, my parents came to pick me up and we stayed with them until my car was ready. After I was dropped off to get my car, Evelyn actually stayed with my parents for the following two weeks. The most difficult thing about this trip was trying to pretend that I didn’t have morning sickness too!
When I came home, I had some projects to work on as Evelyn’s birthday presents and a garden to complete - but I ended up sleeping for a whole week instead. This first trimester was rough for me trying to battle all the exhaustion. I did manage to quilt Evelyn a backpack and butterfly wings as her birthday presents, but the garden didn’t quite get finished… We did, however, meet up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin at Kitchi-iti-kipi! And we headed out for some hammock camping in the Hiawatha Forest.
June
Evelyn’s back for her birthday! And, our whole family is here too! She absolutely LOVED her new backpack, she had been asking for one for months. While everyone was here, we took them around to see some waterfalls and Quincy Mine. We also headed up to the top of Brockway Mountain for the sunset.
We seen that Munising was doing their annual Pictured Rocks Days Festival, where Yoopers get free cruises! So of course we had to go experience that. Evelyn enjoyed the bounce houses, riding the ponies, and the clown who made her a puppy balloon.
We started going on fun excursions with our new friends and neighbors! Including our first official beach day, though the water still wasn’t warm enough yet. We headed out on plenty of hikes, summer playgroups, and so many beach days.
Houghton also celebrated the kickoff of summer with their 2022 Bridgefest. We had an absolute blast at our first Bridgefest from ducky races, kayaking, parades, fireworks, and festival food.
To end the month, my grandparents came up to visit on their way to their little cabin in Vermont. We had so much fun showing them around. Evelyn also couldn’t wait to do crafts with her great-grandma! We used to do so many crafts growing up with my grandma and it was my absolute favorite. It’s probably why I am able to try so many different types of crafts/crafty skills. But, I love how much joy it brings Evelyn, just like it did me.
July
Things started to ramp up in July for us! Between all the play dates, beach days, visitors, and summer activities, this summer seemingly flew by. We begin our month with some amazing hikes and a visit from family in Vermont! I hadn’t seen them in so long, so it was amazing to be able to spend some quality time with them and let the girls play together. They still talk about how much they want to play with each other again.
We also kicked off strawberry season by going to our first farm for some strawberry picking! This year, we picked at the Henry Ohtonen Strawberry farm, which you can read all about on my blog, but we’ve come to know some other farmers in the area and look forward to supporting their farms too! Plus, I didn’t make nearly enough strawberry jam from our one picking. Afterwards, we celebrated the season of strawberries even more by attending Chassell’s 74th Annual Strawberry Festival. I can’t say whether or not we truly have the best strawberries, but I can say the local strawberries have been the best tasting berries I’ve ever had and they didn’t last long at our house! This was also the day we happened to find out the gender of our baby, but we don’t announce it to the family until much later.
I had been itching for a camping trip to kick off our summer, so we headed to Lake Superior for a foggy backcountry camping trip. I love being so close to the little town of Copper Harbor, which harbors so much family history for my husband and so many wonderful memories for our relationship. This was a wonderful camping trip, and also the moment I realized that I could no longer carry Evelyn on my back. She had just become too heavy and I didn’t want it hurting the pregnancy. We did some major planning after this, invested in a day bag, and rearranged some things so Charlie could be the main one packing Evelyn should she need to be carried. It was also the time we discovered just how truly awful the black flies up here could be! Thankfully, our campsite was breezy and clear. But the whole hike to our site was riddled with flies that loved to nip at us.
July also marked the beginning of Thimbleberry picking this year! If you don’t know what a Thimbleberry is, it is a species of Rubus that harbors resemblances to a raspberry. They are very aromatic with a sweet-tart, fruity flavor, followed by a honeyed aftertaste. It was difficult to collect these berries when we went picking with the girls, but our trail bore enough fruit for me to make 9 jars of jam! Jars of Thimbleberry jam are quite the hot commodity up here and can go for $22 a jar. I’m so thankful we are able to collect and make our own, and I can’t wait to gift some to friends and family this year for Christmas.
We took a bee keeping class with the MTU Sustainability House in July! It was so amazing to be able to step inside a sustainable home and see what students are doing to make MTU a little more green, from zero waste essentials, to solar power, they were doing so much to help our planet. The bee keeping class was incredibly informative and we hope to have our own apiaries one day. I would love to be able to supply our family with fresh, local honey from our own backyard.
I also witnessed and captured my first Northern Lights this trip! Way back when we got married, I remember seeing some glimpses of green streaks across the sky. But, it wasn’t until we got home that we seen a message from our AirBnB host that we had a Northern Lights show while we were there. And honestly in all the festivities, we missed them despite being outside! So it was amazing to be able to witness this display and that I was able to do it with friends.
July also marks the month my first post with Visit Keweenaw went live! I wrote about 5 things to do in the Keweenaw for Families. I think it is so important that Visit Keweenaw is working on promoting family activities because when we first announced that we were moving up here, all of our family thought we’d be the only ones with kids. That has been SO far from the truth! There are so many families up here, and children as we witnessed at Bridgefest. So I think there’s just a lack of discussion and promotion around family events, centers, and kid-related activities. I am happy to be apart of that with this community.
My mom visited towards the end of the month and I made her some Pannukakku! Pannukakku is a delicious custard pancake that I actually didn’t like when we first moved up here. It’s a Finnish recipe, and you can find them at a few of the local restaurants for a taste of the Keweenaw’s history. But, since having a few at the various restaurants, I’ve either grown to like it or found the places that make it best. I decided that I’d have to try making it because there’s never anything better than food made from scratch, and I was right! It paired really well with my homemade jams too.
After we dropped my mom back off, we headed down to the Mackinaw area to meet up with friends for our annual friends camping trip. For us, this was an amazing break from our busy summer thus far and we enjoyed hopping around backcountry camping spots. We had only a short time with our friends, since their trip got cut shorter than planned. But we were able to spend a few days camping in the area, then headed up to the Hiawatha National Forest where we found a secluded site on a lake. We enjoyed our first lake bath here too! That was quite the experience, but it felt great to be clean. While Charlie spent some time planning out where the site was, how long it was going to take, and what we were going to do for food, I took Evelyn up the Mackinaw Lighthouse to keep her busy. That was super fun (but a little over priced in my opinion). She enjoyed the interactive displays and conquering her fears climbing up the ladder to be in the tower.
August
Hiking Mount Baldy in Eagle River | Photo Courtesy of Pure Michigan
August started out with an amazing volunteer opportunity for Pure Michigan! Visit Keweenaw was asked for volunteers for promotional images of families hiking Mt. Baldy by Pure Michigan, and we were asked if we were interested. After further communication, I discovered that Drew Mason and his team would be the one photographing us! Drew has been a source of photographic inspiration to me for a while now since I found him and his dog (Mitten Mutt) on Instagram. So it was so interesting getting to talk to him and connect about the complexities of social media, bounce ideas off each other, and other business stuff.
Afterwards, we got back to harvesting the first batches of raspberries and 65 bulbs of garlic from the garden! This was my first year being able to harvest a sizable amount, previous years have been spent replanting cloves and growing our stash. I learned how to braid garlic for the first time and hung up the braids in our basement cellar area! Our garden this year didn’t produce much. I was able to harvest a decent amount of chamomile for tea, but not enough to share just yet. I did get the perfect amount of calendula to make salves for everyone for Christmas though! The bugs ate right through my lettuces, I think I’ll move those closer to the house next year. My poor cucumber plant made 4 cucumbers before the frost and my corn only produced baby corns. There’s a lot we had to learn about growing in our new climate, but I’m excited to hopefully get a better harvest next year now that I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t!
Evelyn and I took a trip down state to meet my family & friends at Higgins Lake Campground. While we were here, I wrote and published my second article with Visit Keweenaw: 13 Fall Activities Every Family Should Experience in the Keweenaw. This was a wonderful few days and I hope meeting my parents for a camping trip becomes an annual thing! We spent time on the beach, in a boat, canoeing the Au Sable river, and making s’more waffle cones every night. The sunsets were breathtaking each night too and reminded me of how much I truly love sunsets! We face north on our mountain, so seeing the sunrise over the sunset is something I’ve become used to. But sunsets still hold my heart.
After coming back home, I headed out to Marquette to photograph the most stunning microwedding at the Black Rocks. This was my first UP wedding since moving up here and it was such a blast to capture! Then we went to Houghton/Hancock’s county fair and took Evelyn to her first carnival. With her only being 3, I expected the rides to be a little much for her. But, she ended up having the biggest grin and was so sad when it was time to leave! It broke our hearts and we hope to carve out more time next year so she can fully enjoy the thrill of the rides and events at our county fair. I wish we had more carnivals throughout the summer because those were always my favorite too!
August marks the beginning of a very busy few months commuting back downstate to see family. We begin our trip by celebrating the future marriage of some of our closest friends! Our Friends Weekend was full of fun events like blueberry picking, picnics, and laser combat. While the bachelors stayed back to play laser combat in the hot August sun, the bachelorettes packed picnic goodies and headed to a local farm to try blueberry picking for most of our first times! It ended up taking a little too long for Evelyn and she quickly lost interest (especially since we had our picnic at the ‘playground’ area first). We ended the night with a murder mystery party and I wish so much that I was able to document that for the bride and groom because it was a memorable time! Everyone couldn’t stop talking about how fun the game was and how we hope to make it an annual thing. The next day, we headed out the Michigan’s Renaissance Festival! I didn’t think we would be able to make it this year and I’m so glad this worked out. It’s one of my favorite Michigan festivals and our daughter is the perfect age to dress up and enjoy all the games. We all wore our matching dragon masks, which I’ll have to make us some Twig & Tale dragon wings to go with them!
We ended our trip with a small family get together. I had my cousin at Abbie Lynn Baking make the cutest ‘what will it be’ themed cupcakes! I gave her full creative freedom and she made them so cute. I thought the sneaky pink frosting added onto some would have given the surprise away, but no one else caught it. After the gathering, Evelyn headed to her grandparents for another two weeks while we went home to get all the summer projects done while she was gone! Since we were having some fall weather back home, we were getting everything prepped and ready for winter.
September
Evidently I didn’t pick up the camera quite often in September! One of the first things I did after getting home without Evelyn was start feeding my sourdough to make crackers. But also, I used the discard to make my first ever cinnamon rolls! After enjoying our two week vacation from parenting, we packed up the car and headed back downstate to pick up Evelyn. But also, because I was photographing a wedding at Victoria’s Wedding Chapel. The wedding ceremony itself through some curveballs at us, but we all worked through them and enjoyed a beautiful reception afterwards!
When we came back, we stayed quite busy with fall activities and some events through Visit Keweenaw. We started loosely homeschooling again in September too. Homeschool to us right now is just home education. I say we ‘loosely’ do it because I know from studying children’s development that she will learn everything naturally and what is most important it to allow her to be a kid and just play. So if she wants to paint, then that’s our schooling for the day. Sometimes we spend our morning reading to each other and practicing pre-reading skills. Some days we head straight outside and explore nature. I have been loving the resources at For The Love of Homeschooling. They have wonderful materials that support other homeschool families or educators and beautifully explore topics Evelyn may have questions about. If we sit at the table for formal home education, then it’s usually more hands-on learning, like projects, art, music, cutting, tracing, and so forth. I’m slowly letting go of the idea that we have to make these special projects and learning that the way she produces art of her own creation is best for her development and allowing her creative nature to flourish.
Other than our home education, we also attended the Parade of Nations downtown! I was dressed in my purple kimono to support the country of Japan. I was surprised to see not many people were dressed up for their culture, even with the amount of Finnish culture there is here. Evelyn also has some traditional garb, which she went back and forth on wearing so I packed it to bring just in case but she ended up not wearing them. After she filled her bag with goodies from the parade, we headed to the Dee Stadium to load up the stroller with cultural foods, support the cultural student organizations, and head home to Charlie! I also attended a speaking event with someone from National Geographic, then met him the next morning with the Visit Keweenaw team. We were able to ask him more personal questions and get some one-on-one time with him while showing him Pannukkaku at Soumi’s and how vibrant our community is!
After a year of searching, I finally decided just to make one myself. A couple moms and I got together from a local mom group and started a nature group for kids! It’s a wonderful weekly experience to get us moms out of the house and get the kids exploring in nature. It’s not quite like the forest school we attended back down state, but it’s a start and it’s been fun. By the end of the month, we got our first frost already so I had to bring in the remaining cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden! There weren’t too many tomatoes, so I need to double my plants next year if I want to make my sauces again. Instead of saucing them this year, I dehydrated them and ground them to a powder. I now add them as a seasoning to meals where we could use a little extra plant power.
I also finished my second ever quilt by the end of the month! This cat quilt is a wedding present to the bride and groom from the earlier bachelor/bachelorette party. They love cats and just recently bought a house. I know there’s never such thing as too many blankets and providing them with a quality throw to warm up with in the winter felt like a very meaningful gift to both their first year of marriage and new homeownership. Moving up here has given me so much time to focus on my crafts and it’s coming out in my gift giving! I hope you all can make time to allow yourselves to truly enjoy your hobbies and not just let the stress of daily life define you this upcoming year too.
October
It’s October! The first couple weeks are the most beautiful up here and we didn’t get to enjoy any of them! We were here for the first weekend, so we headed over to Ironwood for some rustic camping and early fall colors. We spent our time hiking to the waterfalls and exploring the Porcupine Mountains. This was my first fall with my hand-me-down drone and I wanted to practice getting in some stunning autumnal captures.
Afterwards, Evelyn and I ran around the peninsula working on a post for Visit Keweenaw that has not been published yet! We visited the Monk Trails, Boston Nature Preserve, and McClain State Park to photograph a mom and her daughter enjoying some fall hikes. One of our favorite shops in Copper Harbor is for sale and we spent some time heading up that way and discussing the possibility of purchasing it. Copper Harbor is so close to our heart and we would love to keep it even closer with a gift shop (which I admit is a really cool idea and I’d have somewhere to put my photographs on display!), but we decided it just wasn’t our time. We ultimately came to the conclusion that neither of us want to give up our current careers to invest our time into a store and we moved up here to spend quality family time together that we weren’t ready to give up just yet.
By the second weekend of October, we were back down state AGAIN. But this time, it was to finally celebrate the marriage of our friends! All three of us were part of the wedding party and that was a bit much to manage, but we made it through. The day was absolutely gorgeous and so so special and I loved being able to joke around with the photographer. He would show me his images throughout the day and I took mental notes of some amazing tips he had to better my own services.
I went and used some of those tips the next week at a wedding I was photographing in Silver Lake Sand Dunes! I have to admit, I did not dress for this wedding. I came prepared in my wedding jumpsuit and ended up having to throw on a cardigan, vest, and one of the family members lent me some gloves. It was SO cold and windy that day, but it was still perfect and everyone had a great time. After both weddings, our healthy streak ended with our first COVID positive tests. All of my plans while we were down state visiting for a while were thrown out the window as we recovered on the couch watching TV, sleeping, or sucking on popsicles. Thankfully, I wasn’t affected much and had a quick recovery. But sometimes women can have complications in pregnancy if they have contracted COVID, so I have to take baby aspirin for the rest of my pregnancy and hopefully go into labor naturally before needing to be induced. The other two, however, hope to never experience that again and it hurt my heart watching them suffer the illness. Usually if we happen to catch a cold, we are all recovered within 3-4 days and don’t seem to be affected too much. But this strain knocked them both out with achy bones, they could barely get up to eat or drink, and cried about the pain the whole time. We tried all of our usual cold go-tos and nothing seemed to help but just letting the cold take its course. It took a few (seemingly endless) weeks to finally get it out of our systems too.
Thankfully, by the end of October we tested negative and could resume a few of our typical routines, but kept it to outdoor related activities. Our nature school had a harvest potluck and we all brought some snacks while the kids enjoyed free-play at one of our local parks! That was so fun and it was a full turn out. Later, we headed to downtown Calumet for their trunk-or-treat since we decided to skip Houghton’s Treat Street. We were negative at the time of Treat Street, but still very much had symptoms and didn’t want to spread them. On the way to trunk-or-treat, we picked up some pumpkins from a local farm and carved them afterwards. There were some Halloween pictures I was hoping to capture this year, but timing just didn’t work in my favor. Hopefully I can get a jump start on them next year and finally have them!
November
Hello November! And Hello third trimester. After all of those trips across the state, we took our Subaru to the dealership for a maintenance check and oil change. While we wait, we love to head to the Children’s Museum! Evelyn could spend all day there and even when it’s closing, refuse to leave. It’s such a fun place. They are still in the process of adding some new exhibits which were exciting to see! You can play in some parts of them, but others still need finishing touches.
All summer, Evie has been practicing riding her tricycle so she can ride a big bike with her friend and we can finally push the peddles without assistance! I don’t know what it was about this month, but my cravings were through the roof on home baked goodies. So we spend one day a week using our home education time to practice our baking skills and indulge a little. We also spent many mornings at the kitchen table painting or working through homeschool because Evelyn got a new mixed-media paper pad just like mommy’s (but bigger) and wanted to spend time with it every morning. It’s so cool how just the little things can bring a child’s interest back into learning!
I wish I could say we got our first snow, but we seen some in October too. This was the first snow to stick though and we enjoyed our first sledding day! For Thanksgiving, we met my family in the Traverse City area to celebrate at Crystal Mountain Resort. That was a stunning ski resort and refreshing experience! If you haven’t read about our experience there yet, please do! I miss those included fitness classes already.
While we were there, we also had our maternity pictures taken! My mom spoiled us with a giant tub of cookies and brownie bites and I may have over indulged… but the fitness classes, walking, and swimming all made up for it right? I can only hope!
When we got back, we went straight to work on crafting the remaining Christmas presents for our families! Although Thanksgiving was our last time down for the foreseeable future, some of our family plans to come visit after the baby is born so we will still be able to gift them their presents. One of our projects were these super cute Santa dough ornaments! They were made with Evelyn’s handprint, dated and named on the backs, and will be used to tag each gift bag. How cute is that?
December
Oh December… If I though I hadn’t picked up my camera much the months before, December is the worst. I have just enough energy to get us on our weekly school hikes, get a short daily stretch in, and do our outdoor advent, but that’s it. Most days I can keep up with daily household, but we are getting close to our due date and things are getting heavier. I battled some pain in these beginning weeks, then read about Ina May’s 100 day squat challenge to prepare your body for labor. At first I thought that was a little much, then I decided to see if I could even do it to begin with. I started with 20 squats, then increased it by 10 each day. The first day was ROUGH with my pains, but by day 3 the pains had disappeared entirely. There are some days where I still feel them, but it’s night and day difference from before.
We had hoped to enjoy all the UP Christmas activities that are offered too, but our schedules just didn’t allow for it. I also go back and forth between having so much nesting energy, to over doing it and being exhausted. It’s a hard balance I’m trying to find this time around. I’m not sure if it’s the weather or just this point in my pregnancy, but we’ve been staying home often too. In November, we cut electronics out of our schedules cold turkey and have been going screen-free until a designated time in the evenings for a month now. So even though we are staying home and mostly indoors, it’s been a whirlwind of activities and final preparations for the baby.
I spent the whole month making a quilt for Evelyn. She asked for one of her own after I made the cat quilt. That quilt took up much of my time, and it took all of my days towards the end of December.
Christmas Eve, Charlie spent a good chunk of his day clearing our driveway from the blizzard. We got SO much snow! Evelyn and I spent the morning doing crafts, which was always my favorite part of the holiday season with my grandmothers. Because we are getting so close to my due date, I have not been able to keep up with documenting our life. It sucks and it hurts my heart, but I know to rest in this and my creativity will come back in time. But it’s also exhausting and I can’t set it all up by myself. So thankfully, Charlie helped me capture a few of my must-have traditions photos that I want to capture annually. These will be my favorite as our family grows!
Christmas Day was spent a little differently than usual. It was actually really relaxing waking up in our own home, being able to clean and prep breakfast before either of them woke up. Then we slowly worked through the presents, allowing Evelyn to enjoy each one. But by midday, I was missing my family and our busy Christmas schedule. I’m so use to jumping from house to house to get everyone in on Christmas that sitting at home relaxing was just weird. We kept some traditions, like cinnamon rolls and my grandma’s Christmas casserole, then Charlie made a delicious steak for dinner. We took turns opening each gift and experiencing them with Evelyn while the other was able to keep up with daily tasks or recreational time.
Now, I have to finish a few small Christmas gifts for our families and check off the remaining of my Third Trimester checklist before baby comes! Then, I’m going to enjoy some much needed rest (which is difficult to actually enjoy with all this nesting energy).
I love these posts and reading back on them every year so I hope you all enjoy reading along too! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and wishing you a Happy New Year!