Celebrate

 We celebrated Mike's and my birthdays yesterday with lunch halfway between our son's home and ours.  It works well for all of us, the weather was sunny so we could all drive safely.  That's an issue around Michigan, being able to get where you want to go. 

This is the continuing saga of Aunt Marcella's cake.  I've posted about it every year and it never gets easier.  Even DIL commented that the frosting was different this year than last.  Famous last words.  It's near on impossible and takes ten times longer to do the frosting than it does to bake the cake from scratch and cool it.  I will only make this cake once a year, for Mike. The things we do for our grands.

I handed Mike the knife and told him it was his cut.

Charlie is missing from this picture, he's away at college.  Next year we lose another one. The chicks are growing up and flying away.

I never thought I'd be this age.  Not that I thought I wouldn't be alive, but thinking of this number seemed so far into the netherland that I couldn't even see it.  But here we are.

OK, this is a perfect explanation photo of what I've talked about.  We call it lake effect snow.  When the cold air comes down from Canada and the winds blow they cross Lake Michigan and Lake Superior (and the other lakes, too, actually) and the condensation of the cold, arctic air crossing the yet unfrozen lakes creates snow.  If the winds are really strong the snow travels further inland.  But look at the immediate lakeshore, the western end of that mitten, directly across the lake from snow free Wisconsin.  The lakeshore get the worst of the lake effect snow.  Absolutely a lot. The wind has to be really strong to blow that snow the hour inland where we are but it does happen.  When it gets here, though, it's lost some of its bluster.  Michigan is a state of all four seasons.  People love us in the summer when they come to play at the lakes and some love the snow but you kind of have to be able to GET here.

This year the cold has frozen the smaller lakes so the ice fishermen are happy.  They've had some warm winters recently but not this one!

    The Upper Peninsula, the area between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan historically gets the worst.  As of now they have 117 inches on the ground with more coming.  No, thank you.