Christmas in Maine

So I really thought I would be a posting fool during the holiday break; however, I ended up enjoying myself so much I pretty much was never on the computer. Now I need to get caught up on what all went on during the break.

First of all, we tried to visit both sides of the family. I can tell you already this will get old pretty fast. It's a lot of work to do Maine, Texas and Kansas in one vacation. We started out in Maine for the actual Christmas day. We headed up Monday morning with Duke and presents in hand. We actually got upgraded (probably the last time since Sean and I ended up not making our status this year - dang economy (hehe)) which makes it nice when dealing with Duke - the underneath of the seat is roomier. Since there's no direct flights we went through Detroit. Our Detroit to Bangor flight got cancelled because there was no crew so we got a hotel and enjoyed a little extra time in Detroit. We finally made it to Bangor on Tuesday morning and headed straight to the camp.

It was really cold in Maine (as it is during this time of the year) and I was looking forward to a little snow. While we were there I think it ended up snowing more in Dallas then in Maine. However, there was already about 6 inches of snow on the ground in Maine. When the temperature hovers around zero the lake tends to freeze pretty quick and when we saw a bunch of people ice fishing on it we decided it must be pretty thick. We ended up venturing out onto the lake. Here's a couple of pictures from our adventure.

Sean out on the ice enjoying the hill in the back.

Duke sniffing around trying to find out where his summer friends went.

Sean went way out there!

I love this one but you'll probably have to blow it up bigger to really see it. You can see Duke's little paw prints in the snow on the ice.

This is what the camp looks like with the trees all bare for the winter.

We actually went out and talked to a nice family that was on the lake ice fishing. They had quite a few holes and were enjoying the afternoon with their two dogs. I'm pretty sure most of my friends and family have never been or seen ice fishing before so here goes. They use these big giant drill things to dig the holes. Then they put this stick thing with a hook on it. When the flag goes up, then you have a bite. In this picture you can see how thick the ice really is! We estimated it to be about 10 inches.

This is the little fish they had already caught. They had also dug a hole in their ice shack where they use a little fishing pole to try to catch something too. They hadn't put the heater in their shack yet so it wasn't much warmer in there. I didn't get a picture of it or the family.

Some people had been snowmobiling on the lake and I thought this looked so cool with only those tracks.

Here's my honey looking all Maine like trying to keep Duke warm as this was about the time he started shivering - despite having on his snow suit.

Here's Duke heading back to the Camp to get warm. He doesn't look too impressed!

For our actual Christmas celebration we went over to Gram's. Sean's Mom and Dad and Uncle were there too. Uncle's friends also ended up joining us for dinner. Speaking of dinner, of course we had lobster (it is Maine) but we also had ham, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, etc. I was so excited as I could have the best of both worlds - traditional Christmas dinner and yummy Maine lobster. We had good conversation, good dinner and had fun opening presents.

I know this is only our first Christmas as a married couple but I already want us to have our own traditions. First, we're still trying to work out the "rotation" for the holidays. It's so hard because I want to see everyone for the holidays but it's definitely expensive and stressful to do all that traveling. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out next year. I'm still working on some traditions for my new little family. I'd love to hear some of yours. Maybe they'll spark some ideas for me!