This weekend was a busy one. Jordi went to PAX east to learn about new video games and me and the girls went to my parents to combine two holidays into one.

We dyed eggs first. Although Celia took it more to be a science experiment than egg dying. She had no interested in how it was supposed to be done. Instead she started by first throwing the egg into the dye and splattering everywhere. While I cleaned that up, she picked up the egg again, examined it and again threw it. By this time it had started to crack. She proceeded to peel the egg and then try dying the inside (which was very effective actually). Then she ripped the egg apart and also dyed the inside little pieces. She also tried scooping the dye into the egg (drying) carton and mixing the colors by the end.

Josie was surprisingly sedate and made many brightly colored eggs. We encouraged her to do some multi-color ones and try combining things and by the end she was into mixing colors as well. Once they’re all together they made a pretty dark green blue color.

Later we did two quick egg hunts, Celia again focused more on destroying the eggs she found instead of collecting them, but Josie had a blast finding them and hiding them.

After the eggs we focused on the passover story and ate a semi-traditional sedar dinner!

Our little family doesn’t have too many traditions or rituals, we eat dinner together, and we go to Quebrada Baking Company most every weekend for breakfast one of the days. We’ve been told they have some of the best croissants in Boston and we really love them ourselves.  Mostly we get the spinach and cheese for breakfast, but the freshly made ones are fantastic, especially the chocolate. Since we won’t live here forever, I wanted to document our morning trips. I took some photos last fall but my set from last weekend was definitely better, yay for improvement!

We walk, carry or stroll our way over. We’re trying to get Josie to walk mostly now as she’s gotten a bit big for carrying, but carrying Celia is usually the best since we can share between me and Jordi. Last weekend the flowers on the trees in front of the church were in beautiful white bloom.

And on to the eating… When Celia was a baby she had to wait until 1 year to get her first butter/milk aka croissant but now she can gobble a whole one down herself. It’s the girls best serving of green vegetable all week I think as it’s loaded with spinach.

Sometimes Celia sits on the counter, Josie did when she was a baby, but now mostly she’s in our laps. There aren’t a ton of places to sit so we try not to take too many places. Josie likes to sit where she is in the above photo, which is the corner, lots of counter room to stretch out on.

When new people come in and see the sign you’ll often hear them laughing.

Once the eating is done, we usually chat up the baker and see what she’s making and how she does it. I like to ask her questions about how to improve my own skills and learn from what she’s doing. Josie likes to share her latest activities or what we’ll be doing that day. The morning before giving birth to Celia we actually were down at Quebrada talking to her about our soon to arrive kid!

Then it’s time for the long walk home. We usually let Celia walk and so it takes longer as they both get distracted by almost anything. Sometimes I’ll skip ahead home and get some chores done while they dawdle and explore. We come home full and ready to attack the day which is sadly already 1/3rd of the way done because we sure take our time at breakfast 🙂

Monday morning excitement:

Last week after spending altogether too much time in the car I took the girls out to a field near my parents house that I’d had my eye on for a long time. Big patch of weeds in several directions, a little brick building and green grass. Josie was in a good mood, Celia not so much. But we all got some good running in.

To get these shots I have to run up ahead of the two of them far enough that I can stop, turn around kneel down and focus before they run past me again. Otherwise I end up with a lot of shots of the back of their head.

One of my favorite full body shots of Josie now. Right up behind the wall on the hill we saw two bunnies eating the grass! They stayed around long enough for Celia to find them!

I put the camera on the timer and actually got a picture of the three of us! I ran and stood at the wall and somehow this enticed them to do the same and actually look at the camera.

I love the single splash of color. These pictures I also learned how to bring back the sky a little, meaning when I take the picture to make Josie’s skin look right, the sky looks just white because it’s so bright. I learned how to use lightroom to bring it back to a bit of blue and some clouds. But it really was a cloudy day.

This was Josie’s idea for a pose, I don’t think she believed I’d even take the picture. We do a lot of play with sticks and dirt lately.

When it was time to go Celia just took off and ran in the opposite direction and so I had to bring her screaming back across the field. The only highlight for her was finding this ball and watching the lacrosse players setting up for practice. But she was not happy when I made her give it back.

This year we returned again to Honey Pot Hill Orchard for hay rides, apple and pear picking, goat feeding, and apple cider donut eating. It was a hot day but we were out pretty early thankfully. With Josie and Celia getting bigger now the actual apple picking portion of the event is over very quickly and right at the end. We liked the hay ride and remembered how I only hoped the previous year the bumpy ride would have sent me into labor! Both girls loved the animals and enjoyed some lunch, but oddly were not interested really in the cider donuts. More for us grown ups!  Celia walked around the orchard mostly just eating an apple, dropping the apple, us grabbing the apple to clean it and her taking it back again for more eating.

We decided against sending Josie to preschool at age 3 for a number of reasons, we thought she’d be happier at home, we can use that money for other things since I’m home already and she’s clearly as very sociable little girl already. She will be going this next fall to prepare for school the following year. But for this year I’ve been working with a neighbor and friend Saralynn doing a homeschool preschool once a week with our kids. Her kids are both just a bit older than both of mine, with her eldest being a girl too. We’ve been meeting once a week all year studying a big range of topics, mostly derived from what interests us and what the girls ask for. We’ve studied different animals, plants, maps, terrain, government, currency, foods and use those topics to pick books to read and arts and crafts projects to make. We have made copious use of our libraries and their lending system. Some topics are a hit, others not so much.

We go on field trips when we can, to the aquarium and science museum as well as just the great outdoors. It does seem a lot easier to handle 4 kids with 2 parents instead of just 1 parent on 2 kids. We divide and conquer well! We stick in math and letter lessons wherever we can and the girls seem to be making great progress. They can identify most if not all of their upper and lower case letters as well as write most of them. Addition and subtraction has been our latest work and Josie is starting to recognize how to put letters together into words in books as we read.

Generally Celia wants to be involved in all the art projects and activities whereas Blake is often content to have all the toys to himself. Here’s a few pics from the school year, pardon the low quality ipod ones.