well, we haven’t posted anything for a while… we missed Max’s birthday (it was fun, lots of presses from around the world, balloons, and cake!) and Christmas, which was also very fun… we had a nice quiet Christmas eve dinner at home with just the 4 of us, then all got up and opened presents and had a yummy breakfast, then it was time to get ready for the big family afternoon here with everyone to open presents, eat caviar and drink some yummy lemon cocktails that Mark was mixing up and then sit down to a big dinner.  It was a nice holiday and we have plenty of time to relax and just hang out.  We celebrated New Years Eve in a grand fashion over at my folks house wth a late dinner after the kids had gone to bed, and we stayed up til 1:30AM… it was a really fun night!  We also celebrated Mark’s birthday a little less grandly the next day, too.  We managed to get up to the mountains one day to get the kids fitted with their ski stuff for their lessons which started the first week n January.  But, the one thing that we haven’t been able to shake is some sort of sickness or another.  Max got an ear infection at the very beginning of the year and then Sophie missed nearly a week of school with a bad eye infection, then I got sick and have been battling something for the last 2.5 weeks and it’s still hanging on.  I rarely get sick and so this is a bad one.  THe whole country is actually having what the news talking heads are calling a “Flu Epidemic”, so it’s been a bad year for colds and we still have a month to go at least.  Anyway, it’s not record high heat or fires, but it’s been cold, foggy and full of coughs and sniffles.  Spring can’t come soon enough!