I am so lucky that I have a second career a family photographer that I absolutely love and that I believe is so important – I truly believe that photographs are some of the most important possessions you can own.  I love being a Ridgewood family photographer and meeting and photographing so many wonderful families all over Bergen County.

Working for yourself definitely is not without challenges but there are so many great perks.  My boss is wonderful and very understanding when I take some time off to recharge and spend time with family and capture my own family memories:)

And every year after a busy fall I take a break at the end of December till sometime in January to hang out with Victor and the girls and once Victor goes back to the office and the girls go back to school – to enjoy some alone time.  I’ve really enjoyed it and definitely needed it – I needed time to sleep in, to watch movies and sort through our photos, design personal albums (although there are still a whole lot to be designed!), to clean out closets and sort through papers (I ended up shredding piles and piles and piles of old bills and statements) and to do a whole lot of housekeeping stuff at Live Love Laugh Photos.

I am slowing emerging from my break (already had a couple of studio sessions this year) and one of the first things on my To Do list was blog our Christmas break, like I do every year.  This Christmas break seemed very short (the kids only had a week and a day off school) and Millie was very much missed but it was a nice break nonetheless.

We hosted our family on Christmas eve (all 19 of them!) – the girls baked white chocolate chip candy cane cookies and I made a goose (my first and most likely last). A fire that started in the oven (my quick thinking sister threw a glass of water at it, which took care of the fire but resulted in very watery sweet potatoes!) made the gathering so much more memorable!:)

On Christmas day we opened presents, spent half of the day in our PJs, went to the movies to watch Star Wars and had sushi for dinner (all local Chinese places were super busy and we could not get through).

We spent a day being tourists in the city with my sister and her two girls – think lunch at Alice’s Tea Cup and Rockefeller Center Christmas tree:

and we managed to go to DC for a few days to explore monuments (by day and night), eat great meals, sleep in, visit the pandas and introduce our kids to the comic genius of Seinfeld:

A holiday bash at my parents house in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve and a viewing of Jumanji on New Year’s Day completed this short but fun winter break!

And now I am almost ready to catch up blogging client sessions so stay tuned!