A few Ramblings…..

Well… the holidays are officially over for us…

Sob…. Simon went back to work this morning… It felt really good having him here for almost two weeks…

The week before new years was taken to lounge around and be lazy all day for a few days which just made me relax and got a lot of stress out finally… Colin is growing up so fast and changing so much… over the holidays we have seen a remarkable change… he went from baby to toddler completely… We have almost no more need for the gate at the top of the stairs because he goes down them with no problem… Keeping the gate open also makes it great when we both (Simon and I) wan to do things on different floors…. now the kids can just freely go between us which also means that they play more knowing that they can get to us whenever they want to…. It feels now that the gate is shifting from being a safety device to a way to restrict movement which doesn’t feel right…. I just can’t believe that this time has come so fast….

Colin has also been eating everything lately and trying everything!! Recently we found out he LOVES black olives, escargots and Wakame (Seaweed Salad with spicy Chile-Sesame dressing)
Colin can also get on a chair and sit at the table with us which is another big change… hre are some pics of how big he is now…

Eating Wakame (note the green tinged tongue)

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New Years also brought old friends…

New years eve we made the gingerbread house that we had put off for a few weeks… Not that we didn’t have the time to do it but we didn’t take the time to do it… When we did got to it though we had a lot of fun and Xavier showed off his talents… It was great!

We had two friends come over for new years eve… Yan, a good friend of ours and who has taken a kind of “godfather” role for Xavier and Martine, a childhood friend of Simon’s that has become a good friend of mine… Martine has been in Equador for some time now for her thesis and found love there, so she is now just visiting to to turn in her thesis in and see family… She is one of those friends that you can’t not love… she is sweet, fun, honest and you just feel comfortable with her… one of those people that you don’t feel the need to entertain them all of the time… you can just be yourself…. So, it was great when we found out that the stay would be a bit longer then we expected… it will be sad for all of us to see her go tomorrow…

Here are some more pics…