I've lived many different places in the eight years since I left Michigan, and though I've finally come to think of where we now live in Tennessee as 'home', the seasonal rhythms of Michigan still run deep in my veins. For instance, though I love Tennessee, the summers there are way too hot for me, and the winters are too mild with not enough snow.

So of course, I'm thrilled to be in my hometown in Michigan for a couple weeks in the coldest part of winter. I proclaim how much I love the snow, and even the dreary gray clouds, and my family's response is always: "You wouldn't love it so much if you had to spend ALL winter in it." I know the truth of that. I can still remember desperately wishing for spring to arrive after a long, cold, dark winter. But I don't live here anymore. I feel like some sort of in-betweenling, no longer belonging to Michigan the way I once did, but not entirely accustomed to Tennessee's climate either. So, I plan to soak up the cold and the snow while I'm here, to thoroughly enjoy the things from home that I miss when I'm in Tennessee.

Yesterday, it snowed almost all day (so much that when I drove home from my brother's house in the evening, the roads were a snowy, slushy mess and traffic was moving at a snail's pace to compensate), and this morning when I woke up, the sun was out for a brief time, sending sparkles across the pristine layer of new snow. Mia was particularly impressed by the sparkles and commented that "the snow sparkles because it has tiny jewelries in it!"

I pulled on my mom's heavy-duty snow boots, grabbed my camera and headed out. Here are a couple of my favorite shots:

We have an old red barn out back that my dad keeps miscellaneous equipment in (lawn mower, camping gear, etc.), and it's not much to look at, but in the winter when it has snow piled on top of it and ice caught between the ridges of the corrugated steel walls, it somehow looks almost charming, in a rusty-vintage-grunge sort of way. Here's a shot I took of some kind of lattice leaned up against one side of the barn. I just like the textures of the wild vines climbing over the lattice and everything covered in snow.