Merry Christmas

Christmas presents, 2012

This was our second Christmas together as a family (here's last year's Christmas pictures).  We did something a little diffrent this year: rather than staying home for Christmas, we went to Toronto and stayed for a few days.  Elena opened presents just before we left (that's the picture above), and then we piled in the car and headed east. 

It was still a relatively quiet Christmas, but Elena had a lot of fun swimming in the hotel pool, and eventually let us know that she liked staying at the hotel better than staying in her room at our house.  Which is kind of the point of a vacation, right?

Toronto hotel view.  Elena is eating an apple.

We also went to a puppet show, and rode on Toronto's subway and streetcars.  The train and the streetcars were both novel enough that Elena thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  It snowed in Toronto early on the day after Christmas, so we got to slog through snowy streets, too.  After last year's lack of snow, this is really the first good snow Elena's experienced since leaving Kotlas.

To her delight, there was a heap of snow when we returned to Detroit, too.

Snow at home.