Christmas in Michigan

2009 couldn't have ended any better. I had another amazing Christmas at the Lodge as well as a fun early New Year's celebration. I flew into Detroit on December 17th and, from there, had to drive the four hours to northern Michigan with a sailboat on my lap. It was totally worth it. We had a record 25 people this year, all contributing to a ton of awesome memories.

The house was decorated with all sorts of traditional Christmas decorations. Complete with Laura's stocking hanging from the ceiling fan...

I guess that's what she gets for arriving late.

On Christmas Eve, we all went to church. Then we came home and exchanged Christmas presents.

I got to do a LOT of snowmobiling this year. We had great snow for it, most of the time. My first day up north, we blazed all sorts of new trails and put quite a few hours on the machines. We had trail riding adventures all week and didn't even encounter another group of snowmobilers once. It was like our own private set of trails!

Here are the girls playing Storming the Castle. Such a great game.

These are the boys at our annual hockey game at Cheboygan Ice Arena. I think Evan was the only one to go undefeated, even after all the team switch ups. The real fun came after the game, though, when we made the longest train ever and then transformed into a circle. I'm sure we were quite the spectacle if we had any onlookers. Not that we ever would.

Here are the boys trying out their new beer mugs that several of us got for Christmas. They came straight from Germany and make drinking beer a whole lot of fun. (You can fit three whole beer cans in one mug!)

Looks like the girls are doing a better job on their beers. Nevermind that this is the night before Christmas...

The Berkas Family New Years tradition this year was held on the night of Christmas Day. Steven rigged us up the ball and dropped it precisely at the chosen time of 8:38 pm. We set off our poppers, sipped our House wine, and hummed along to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. (Pretty sure most of us don't know the words.)

I had a ton of fun this Christmas and I'm glad most everyone could make it.