Christmas through the years

First off, I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. It's my favorite day of the year and I'm very excited that it's arrived and that you've chosen to spend a part of your holiday here with me.

It's interesting sometimes when you look back on things, to see how time really does go past so quickly. Many times, we often go through life a bit too quickly and when we stop to reflect and look back on things we realize that a lot of time has passed.

I try to soak in as much of the day-to-day stuff that I can - in particular things that pertain to my daughters - because I know my life is changing ever so quickly. There is one marker I've used over the last four years to gauge how life is and has been, how things have changed and evolved. Christmas and, more precisely, cookies.

It's a time-honored tradition around here, to make Christmas cookies with our daughters. It's not something we plan per se but we've done it now four years running so why not count that as a tradition?

It's even more so because of these: I've shot snippets of videos over the last four years and sometimes it's amazing to look at the first one and see my daughter how she was then and compare her to how she is now. This is excellent motivation as well and it helps keep me grounded. It really wasn't that long ago that, for no real reason, shot video of my wife and daughter making cookies. And now I look forward to shooting the video and making the cookies myself. I think the first two years of this tradition my wife used store-bought cookie dough but last year and this year I've made everything myself, from the dough to the icing, thanks to All Recipes.

Anyway, here are the videos:

The first one, Yvie is two and Kennedy (probably asleep) was all of two months old:



Yvie can talk just fine by 2006 while Kennedy is taking in the action from her high chair:



Kennedy is up now and watching first-hand but Yvie's the one who is most excited:



This one was shot just a few days ago. See how big my girls have gotten?