700: have i got a treat for you!

all right my friends!!! this post, is my 700th post!!!!! and due to the fact that my major bench mark posts have always fallen at rather boring times, i was super excited that i would actually be able to provide a good... no... fantastic post for my 700th. as you can see by looking at the statues to the left, i spent my interim break in good o'l holland, mi. i am going to come right out and say it: holland, mi holds a special place in my heart... absolutely love it there.
rebekah joined me for a nice three day break staying at the brands' house, and i had a wonderful time. so lets get this post rolling... there's a lot to show and say!
mrs. brand loves birds, so she has a ton of bird feeders. this beautiful red bird hung out for a bit... doesn't it look so cool with the snow in the background?
this picture is sideways, but just look at how much snow there is... all stacked on top of the picnic table... crazy!

at night, rebekah and i took a little walk through the woods in the backyard... you can see... i like snow... even if it's just sitting in a big pile of it.
then we decided to see if the pond was frozen... although it appears that i am standing in the middle of it, it wasn't frozen solid--there was about a couple inches of slush, and lots of cracking sounds as we walked out.
this is rebekah "skating" with 'flat stanley' out on the pond. very talented.
so it snowed and snowed and snowed all night... leaving tons of snow all over the property. well, i've had a hankering to try out shovelling snow for a long time, so i asked mrs. brand if i could shovel the front little part of their driveway (we were going to need to anyway so that my car could back up and what not. but you see, i began to shovel, and i loved it. i thoroughly enjoyed shoveling snow... SO MUCH FUN. wierd, i know. but i must say that it is my favorite chore... if you even want to call it that... actually i am going to call it a hobby. so, i didn't stop at the driveway... i kept going.here is a little video tour of my snow shoveling job. what i didn't mention in the video was that i was in a short sleeve tshirt the entire time while shoveling... and it was 19 degrees out. now that's how good of a workout it was... you stay fairly warm while shoveling.

so now that the car was able to get out, rebekah and i went out to rent some cross country skis for a day. so this (sideways) picture is at van raalte farms... a place with a bunch of little trails to ski on. it was a lot of fun... more on that to come.
despite the lack of packing snow, i managed to make my first snow man... as you can tell by how big the hat and gloves are on my little snow buddy, you can tell that it is rather small... either way, he's my first snow man. and as i was making my snowbuddy, i saw this:
the sun was beginning to set. so, since we still had the cross country skis, i decided to grab them and go on the trails in the woods in the back... then i worked my way out towards the front of the property and stood out there and watched the most amazing sunset i have ever witnessed in all my life.

isn't that just amazing?????!!!!!!!! i took about a gabillion pictures of the sunset, but this one is my favorite because it has all the amazing colors and the red reflection on the snow. i'll have to show y'all some of the other pictures some time. it was absolutely breath-taking.

the next day, rebekah and i took our cross country skis out to tunnel park. after going through a great ordeal trying to get through the tunnel, we made it down to the snow covered beach where i saw the craziest things. lake michigan frozen. it's hard to fully see it in these pictures, but there are two sets of frozen waves. repeat: frozen waves. incredible. it was so fascinating, i couldn't get over it. so we skiied from tunnel park all the way down to the holland lighthouse (about 3 miles roundtrip).

here is rebekah the eskimo nomad... i love this picture. the red building is holland lighthouse.

this is on our return trip... we had a hard time smiling... couldn't quite feel our faces. cross country skiing is a blast... i hope to get to do some more of it this season.

then i decided to use my skis as a little sled and slid down the beach... good fun.
we climbed up the stairs to see another amazing view... this kind of shows the frozen waves a bit better... keep in mind, these things are more than twice my height... that's crazy tall. anyway, you can see a bit of the sand where the lake begins, the frozen waves, more frozen-ness, and then where the unfrozen part is. amazing.


this picture is funny if you can understand what happened. we were about to walk down what is usually a sand dune, so i took a step, and then my entire right leg plunged straight down, and i was over waist high in snow. that was probably one of the funnest things i have ever done.


these two dolls were in the room we stayed in... i couldn't get over how great these dolls were... aren't they awesome?!?!

so that's just about it... a wonderful couple of days in holland. and today is the calvin vs hope basketball game... it's going to be great. man, all this fun i have been having, and it's only saturday, and we have monday off!!!

speaking of monday! i have an interview with the place i applied to for a job this summer in colorado! i'm a tad nervous because it's going to be a phone interview... never done one of those before... but we'll see!

well, how about that for a 700th post!?