Jingle Bells

It wasn't a white Christmas but our first Christmas together was great. It was awesome to be able to spend Christmas with both families and share in new and old traditions. We both went a little overboard with the presents and the turkey. Brian was so great and got me the best camera, a Cannon Rebel. He did a great job with picking it out! I unfortunately couldn't keep a secret until Christmas and surprised him a bit early with a trip to Mexico, so all he got on Christmas morning was a lousy T-Shirt.

Mexico!

A trip with the extended Lepine family was interesting to say the least. To start the trip my dad drove Elise, Brian and I to Seattle. Throughout the previous 2 or 3 days the snow had come down hard and we weren't sure that the trip to Seattle would be a very pleasant one, but we made it. We were flying down to Houston and met up with our dear cousins Matt and Phil, who had flown to Houston from Montreal, before heading down to the Baja of Mexico. The trip from Seattle to Houston went through without a hitch, but we didn't have the same luck on the way to Mexico. The computer system was down at our terminal so we had to wait to be manually checked in.

We made it to Cabo and headed to a hotel for the night before driving to Todos Santos. As a group we decided to head out for some street tacos. This turned out to be a very bad idea, Phil who may have had both one too many street tacos ended up projectile vomiting on the streets of Cabo and almost hit a taxi driver walking across the road. We headed back to the hotel for an early start to Todos Santos. Todos Santos is a small town on the Baja of Mexico about and hour outside of Cabo. We arrived to Todos and found the beautiful house that Matt and Phil rented for us and tossed our bags on the claimed beds and headed to meet up with the rest of the family.

We met up with our other two cousins Danny and Eva and our Uncle Marco. Later meeting up with our Aunt Anne-Louise and Uncle Peter. It was so nice to meet up with our family down there since it had been so long since the last visit for me. I was in Australia when the last family trip to Mexico took place.

New Years Eve was great, the whole family went to a nice dinner, headed to a local cafe and watched fantastic performers, and did the count down. We then headed to the small streets of Todos and watched the street performers. It had been a long day for all of us, and Brian and I headed home, the rest of the group went on to finish their crazy night of New Years Partying. I`m not exactly sure what the night consisted of , but when I woke up, everyone was passed out and in the fridge I found some strange meat. Turns out the boys, or should I say men turned all "French Canadian" on us and ran over a rabbit in the rental car and skinned it for dinner the next night!

We decided to spend a day in Cabo and hired a boat and driver to give us a tour of the area. It was amazing! We ended up seeing a huge whale so close to our boat. but couldn`t get the cameras out quick enough to catch a glimpse.

The next two weeks were filled with beach time and wonderful meals, and shopping. Brian helped us all to barder in Spanish, and tell us what was on the menus!
The beaches in Mexico were great! It was the first time that Brian had ever been in the Ocean out of Canada and it was so fun just playing the waves and lying on the beach! I was a bit worried about the two weeks with my crazy family and Brian but he fit it perfectly, and I was so happy that he could join us on our family trip!