Photos from Canada

We came back to a new job for Tanja and crazy times at work for Chris, and that's as close as I can come to an excuse for taking so long to post these photos!  This is just some of the fun we had...

Meals with family:

Decorating gingerbread houses and the tree:

 

Oscar really loved watching the Muppets on youtube on Uncle Scott's cellphone.

The best part of all, playing with cousins and friends!

Then Christmas was here!  We all got nicely dressed up...

...and two or three minutes later...

But that's the way it goes at first for newly diaper free families...  But thankfully, Grandma and Grandpa's house has a drier, so no harm done!

We wanted a new picture for the top of the blog, and I used the excuse to do family portraits of everyone.  But since I've never taken family portraits before and I wanted to have reasonable lighting, I needed some (o.k. a lot of) time to adjust lamps, camera settings, etc.  Luckily I had some friendly models that didn't mind having their picture taken over and over (and over and...).  Sorry everyone, but I hope you're at least happy with the photos!

 At the last minute we tried to re-create the scene from four years ago, but now including the three new additions since then and minus Erica and Sophia.

Christmas dinner was fantastic (thanks Mom!), and while I have a number of photos other than the one below, I don't think anyone really wants to see us all mid-chew.

After Christmas, the time flew by before it was time to go home.  The kids loved snuggling in their sunny bedroom in the mornings.

And eating the gingerbread house!

Then it was back to Calgary to visit Clara and Oscar's "twin" cousins and spend some more time with Jeff'n Barb and their daughters.  (Oscar called Barb "Grandma" and Jeff "Jeff'n" for quite a while.) The kids really loved playing there.

When it was time to leave, Clara said she wasn't coming with us, she was staying with Jeff and Barb.  She took us to the airport to say goodbye to us, and then was nice enough to fly us back to Berlin to say goodbye to us there.  And then eventually she was ok with us living here again.  But both kids talk a lot about everyone they miss back home...

In addition to getting out of diapers, Oscar's other big change over Christmas was getting used to dogs.  Before we came, he was terribly afraid of monsters like this one:

But by the time we left he was ok with sitting very close to even really large dogs that he knew.

Even a month was too short, and we miss all of you!  Please come visit us in Berlin!