Kaio and Josefine: Happy 2013!

The last couple of weeks of 2012 and this first week have just gone by so fast! We have been very busy! First Karolien and her family arrived from Belgium and it was great to get the cousins to play together! It seemed they had seen each other last week, as there was no shyness and they started playing instantly. Victor, who is now 18months, was a bit cautious and it took him a little bit to loosen up, but he finally did and he is adorable. Kaio and Josefine were all over him and they kept asking for kisses and hugging him. We also had a lot of fun hosting and entertaining some dear friends from Belgium (Lesley is my friend since I was 12 she is married to Toon and they have a 7 year old daughter called Noor). We hosted our first Christmas dinner at our house, we didn´t have a huge stock of presents under the tree since we will be moving soon. After Christmas we went to the beach (Ibirquera) for 7 days, including NewYears. They kids loved playing with Noor and Kaio did a great job in speaking English (as they did not speak portuguese) and even helped translating for Josefine!
At the beach Kaio also started swimming by himself. (with no floaties!!!) We have wanted to work on that, as he is 5 years. One day Jason and Toon (who is a former competitive swimmer) took an afternoon and he got it almost instantly. He swam 5 meters at the end of the holidays at the beach.
At the beach, as last year, Kaio had a blast and loved playing in the sand, catching waves with his board and just the joy of playing with us. Josefine also enjoyed the sand, but was a bit more afraid of the waves; she kept asking to go to a beach without waves. But overall she had a lot of fun and often she would just lie on the towel and watch people go by and see the waves come and go.
Some pictures: