Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, I know I shared the little video from Christmas Eve and Christmas day but thought I would recap with some photos if you'd like to see.

On Christmas Eve, I travelled with Marco to Kingston to spend the evening with his family.  We had a great meal and opened gifts late into the night.  This was the first time I'd ever been away from my own family at this time, but I had a great time.  After the gifts were done, the nieces and nephew gone, everyone got ready for bed.  Marco and I decided to do stockings for each other this year--a first--and did that in private around midnight.  It was fun and perhaps the beginning of a tradition.

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast with his parents.  From there, we packed up and travelled the two hours back to Ottawa to spend the afternoon and evening with my family.  My parents were busy cooking in the kitchen upon our arrival we settled in with some drinks and snacks to pass some time.

Around 4pm, my sister, her husband and my nephew arrived and we opened our gifts--also a first for this sort of thing as we normally do this Christmas morning--which was really fun.  We didn't finish before my grandparents arrived for dinner, so we took a break to visit and eventually eat a turkey dinner (my fave!).

I'm going to do a full post and video on some of my favourite gifts but here is a really cool one my sister and brother-in-law gave me: a mini pie maker!  As some of you know, I'm a huge pie lover and this baby whips them up in 10 minutes.  This could be dangerous, but I'm really excited.

Later on in the evening, we finished opening our gifts and spent hours chatting, eating and trying to solve little metal mind-twister game puzzle things (above) Santa gave us.  We left after midnight, tired and happy.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Although I'm not from Toronto, the ice storm that hit the capital of Ontario--also about four hours away from my city, Ottawa--was quite incredible.  It's been over 15 years since we've seen a storm like this and hundreds of thousands went without power for days and sadly, over Christmas.

On the bright side, it makes for some beautiful scenery and photographs and while Marco and I drove back from Kingston on Christmas morning, we stopped along the 401 at a service centre to walk into a wooded picnic area to snap some photos of the aftermath.