Looking Back

Instead of rushing to post my holiday pictures, I like to let them marinate for a while. You know, like a month or so.  It really lets the flavour shine through. And the flavour of Christmas 2012 was AWESOME.

These are my favourite things from this year (Fine, last year. Don't rub it in.):

Our tree was so much prettier than yours. 

Liliane's last year for daycare song pestacles *sob*

Oh look!  The Christmas turkey! Also pictured, our dinner for the 24th. 

Grandparents! 

Auntie Jaime!

This may have been the only time Stéphane and I sat down for more than 5 minutes.

THESE TWO.

Goofball central.

They are hilarious together.

Christmas cracker treasures.  The best.  

Homemade presents.  Now I KNOW I'm old.

Introducing Alice to the concept of gift opening.  

She was a quick study.

I got another make up lesson with all my new eyeshadow from my talented sister.

So much couch time.

New Year PAR-TAY!

The short one discovered colouring.

BFF Luana!

First Star Wars.

And so many more great moments!  Unfortunately it took us the entire ten days after Christmas to recover from that marathon of eating/merrymaking/drinking/presents and my camera arms were so, so tired.

It was wonderful having my Dad and sister with us.  It was not wonderful trying to get them to the airport during the storm of the century, but they eventually made it out after spending waaaay to much quality time at the airport.  

Looking back, I have to say that as much as I love going back to the west coast for the holidays, it's pretty wonderful just staying home.  The girls are entering that era of perfect, magical Christmases and I know that those years are going to be over too soon.  Le sigh.

ANYWAY!  Enough looking back, moving on to 2013! 

Portrait of a Family Portrait

Take one teething toddler

Add an enthusiastic five year old

Throw in some sleep-deprived parents

And this is what you get!  

Eleventy billion attempts at a family portrait.

Nope.

Really no.

Alice wandered off to find some food so we grabbed this one.  Note the subtle camouflage of my child's ridiculously bruised legs.    

Trying again, now with snack.

Almost there.

 Sigh.

 So close.  Alice apparently has a hairball.

I think we have a winner!  

Thanks again to our friend Ariel Tarr for getting some really lovely photos despite the spoiled rock star behaviour of the shortest member of the family.  

If you live in or around Montreal Ariel can do your family photos, too!  Email me if you want more info. UPDATED: Here is Ariel's website - check out her work.  All this and she's great with kids!  Not to mention parents! 

http://www.arieltarr.com/

Oh, and Happy New Year.  

Also, Christmas was amazing.  So much fun that I did not make any time to sit down at the computer to blog about it.  But I will.  

Wishing you all the best for 2013, readers!