beautiful

Squinty eyes! It is SO bright when the sun reflects off the snow!

    The lake behind my parents' house never ceases to amaze me.. There is ALWAYS something to do or explore and I have to say that it is one of my favorite places to go to when I'm at my parents' house (side note-switching to calling the house I grew up in "my parents' house" has been really difficult for me. I love where I am from and so to not simply call it "my house" has actually been a tough change!).
   In the spring it is so nice to go down by the lake and watch the snow melt and trickle from all different areas into the lake. The water is usually at its highest point and it is absolutely stunning! It is very peaceful because there are no boaters or other people to interrupt the peace and beauty. In the summer there is kayaking, boating, spear fishing and swimming as well as sleeping out on the beach. It is equally as beautifully as spring since everything is so green. In the fall (which is always my favorite) the colors of the trees are reflected in the ripples of the last boaters of the season and the water begins to recede, exposing more beach as the water is released from the dam. It is fun to explore all the meadows and land that the water hides as well as play mud football or have camp fires on the beach. Winter brings her own kind of beauty to the lake. The water freezes to ice and on a clear crisp morning it is just breath taking.

View outside my bedroom window!

    We love to go sledding on the beach hills and sometimes snow mobile out on the lake, but my absolute favorite is when the ice is thick enough to walk out on. Every year God blesses us with new beauty on the ice. Two years ago we had a really neat experience walking on the ice HERE where it was cold enough for the water to freeze but we didn't have any snow so it left the ice clear so we could see beneath the water. This year it was these tiny crystal snow flowers that turned to powder to the touch. We had never seen these before.

It was fun to skate through the snow flowers because they would just puff up like powdered sugar!

I am so grateful that I get to experience such beauty in my own backyard!