I can't believe it's already January of the new year! Wow, where has time gone? Well I thought I'd dedicate this post to the last month of 2008. What a month with Christmas, family, friends, and all of the festivities that go along with the holiday's and leading up to New Year's. In summary:

- We had a new house guest this year. A silly looking but irresistibly fun little elf named Zig Zach (the kids named him immediately - Tyler came up with Zach and Briella came up with Zig so we combined the two - a nice compromise). The kids miss him terribly but we're hoping he'll be back to visit us next year.

- Tyler has his first loose tooth - makes me a bit teary to think not long ago we were counting each tooth as they came in. Now we're counting how many loose teeth he has. Why is this so emotional for me? He's so excited he can hardly stand it while I'm wishing I could make time stand still.

- Brielle at age three was so into the magic of Christmas this year. To her everything was 'beautiful'. And I mean everything - from the partially squished grasshopper she brought me to nurse back to health, to the cracked Christmas ornament of the Seattle Ferry. I loved her sincere expressions of how everything was so amazingly beautiful - she'll say it in soft whisper as if she's almost lost her breath it's so stunning. And Santa brought her some pink princess shoes and when we ask her where Santa left them, she replies with her cute little lispy sing songy voice, 'he put them in a big thSock (sock)' ~aka her stocking.

-We also talked to both kids about why we celebrate this amazing holiday so they were reminded of the real reason.

- We had family stay with us in the beginning of December and the end of December - such a great way to start the beginning and end of the month. Wish we could see them more.

- We had our first ever family portrait done! Woo hoo!! I'm so bad, I'm never in pictures since I'm the one behind the lens. So this was fun for me even though I was still the photographer ;-) We used some of the pictures on our holiday card. And I'm hoping to take more pictures of our family together in the future, this is time we can't get back so I want to capture it now.

Overall we had a wonderful end of 2008 and hope to have more fun memories in 2009. I also wanted to thank my clients for such a wonderful 2008 - I couldn't have imagined such a great year, meeting so many new people and their beautiful children. Thank you!

Happy New Year!

Here's a compilation of images from December - just a taste of the final month of 2008.