My family has been on a mini-break in Whistler for the last few days, so I haven’t been posting my daily shots, though I’ve continued to take them.  Here are a few images.

Our first night, wandering through the village:

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I really liked seeing all the dogs at Whistler – and this place had the yummiest breakfast sandwiches and quite a tasty latte.  🙂

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We took a break from skiing on Monday and had a relaxing, but busy, day.  We wandered through the village and enjoyed some snow.

Saw more cute dogs.

Avery went ice skating for the first time.  She did great!  (Paul took this picture.)

Alexa insisted upon visiting her favorite Irish pub for lunch.

We hung out in the room for a bit while Paul tried out another pair of skis.

And we attempted to take a nap . . .
but mostly ended up watching TV in bed.

In the evening, we went for a sleigh ride in the snow.

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On Tuesday, we skied again.  And had a nice post-skiing bath.

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Finally, on Wednesday we said good-bye to Whistler and drove back home.

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Over the last year, I’ve taken a number of photography classes through Clickin’ Moms, and I think that my favorite class so far has been Lifestyle Photography with Kids. Some of the alumnae from that class are participating in a monthly blog circle, posting photos that demonstrate how we view things through our lenses. For the first month of the year, we are focusing on Beginnings.

This month’s theme was easy for me, because this past week Avery took her first ski lessons.  Paul and I love to ski and are so excited that skiing is so accessible here in Seattle.  But for Avery’s first time, we traveled a few hours north to Whistler.  Avery not only did excellent at her first two lessons, but she was the only kid who was not crying when we dropped her off!  Our kid is just too damn cool.  😉  I don’t have shots of her on the mountain itself because, well, I wasn’t going to ski with my dSLR, but we caught enough here to give you a taste of her experience.

After taking a look below, please continue along the circle and check out the work of my talented friend, the lovely Sherri Davis.  Please click HERE to see how Sherri views Beginnings.

Renting skis.

Off for her first lesson.

Looking official.

Apres ski drinks might have been pushing it….

I probably post a few too many head shots of Alexa, but really, I just can’t get enough.  The next few days we will be in Whistler – hoping I will be able to post without too much trouble (otherwise I will upload when I get back Wednesday) – so I’m hoping for some fun snow pictures!  Stay tuned.  🙂

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Today we visited with our friends Max and Teddy.  We’re so lucky to have found such wonderful friends here in Seattle.  Teddy and Alexa are about the same age, and so are Max and Avery, which makes playdates particularly fun since everyone has a friend.  Max and Avery were often running off and doing their own thing, so they weren’t as easy to capture, but you can see that they did make some efforts to play with the littles as well.

(When I saw this drum, I told Max, “Either someone likes you a whole lot – or really, really doesn’t like your Mama.”)

Hey you guys, wait for us!

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