This is the 4th year I've made my girls an ornament for Christmas time. This year, I made Santa Claus ornaments (free pattern). Holly and Greta are kind of Santa Claus crazy (can you blame them? The guy brings presents!). I love how the ornaments turned out - they're really cute! The girls were happy with them. We very happily set up our Christmas tree yesterday. I love this time of year!

This is another photo shoot I did before Christmas. It was a little hurried and the youngest had croup, but I think I still caught a few gems. Always a pleasure to take pictures of this family.

On Christmas Eve day, some of my family members went tobogganing. Holly was continually going down the hill with whomever was on the way down, and then freeloading rides on the way up. Greta spent most of the time watching and laughing from the top of the hill. Alanna coaxed her down with a ride on her back, such a sweet thing for her to do. I wanted her to have a full ride or two, so I took her down without permission and she laughed the whole way! It was a gorgeous sledding day! And an absolute dream to spend it with my three siblings.

While in Calgary, we spent an impressive amount of time in the snow for a family that lives in temperate California. Holly especially loved the snow! And Greta enjoyed it after a week of becoming used to all the gear the snow requires. This sledding trip was short, since we were still recovering from travel.

We're back from our 2 week trip to Canada. It was a completely wonderful trip with so many highlights. Is it too bold to say that this was our best trip north ever? Seriously, it was so great! I think I can speak on behalf of my little family when I say we really felt loved by everyone. The cousins swept my daughters up and Holly and Greta were immediately one of their own, no warm-up time required. I'm so grateful my nieces and nephews have such big hearts and open arms for their California cousins. Made my heart happy.

Now I'm sifting through hundreds of photos, organizing toys, cleaning up my diet, cleaning our home, laundry, and trying to catch-up on sleep. It's all so worth it for two amazing weeks with our dear families. I'll have LOTS of blog posts in the next couple weeks to show off the fun we had. In the mean time, I'll leave you with one photo of the four of us. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!