but there’s a bear behind you!

I had some fun this weekend with my friend Chrissie and her family trying to get some family shots and those of the kids! Here’s some of my favorites.

And oh yeah we had a lot of this too…

It’s a tough time to get small children cooperating when the sun is looking it’s best!

Going way back again… as part of our Christmas celebrations I did a number of projects over the month of December while inviting friends over to join us. I wanted to make sure the holiday season was about more than just a big pile of presents but about sharing and making memories with friends. We did cinnamon ornaments (note to self: use glue), string balls (note to self fill water balloons with water), gingerbread houses (note to self: awesome job using milk cartons!), and a mommy gift of hand scrub.

The cinnamon ornaments burned Josie’s hands and rather fell apart. So I think next year we need to use rolling pins and add glue to the mixture of applesauce and cinnamon, or maybe just skip them all together. They sure made the house smell good.

The string balls proved to be a little difficult for the kids. (Basically you dip thin string in glue watered down and wrap it around a balloon and pop the balloon after it dries. Viola, string ball) But Josie enjoyed making them and we had a good party. Next year not only will I get water balloons, but I will fill them with water, not air, so they are actually round. They were more pears shaped. They are pretty though and Josie liked hanging them up and pointing them out. Maybe next year she’ll be able to do it more herself.

And our final project was the classic gingerbread houses. I wasn’t going to buy a bunch of kits at $20 a pop so I made my own gingerbread and royal icing and bought the candies to go on top. This was a project the kids really jumped into. We used small milk or cream containers to be the basic structure so it would stand up to preschooler-applied-candy-pressure, this was KEY. Then they squeezed and decorated to their hearts content. Celia loved it too, although I had to keep pulling candy out of her mouth. She’d put it on the house and then take it off and lick it. Josie had a particular favorite candy as I’m sure you can see from her house. Chrissie and Charlotte joined us for construction. I had to guilt Chrissie into coming over after all the work making the gingerbread, because it turns out she was in the early weeks of pregnancy and super sick, so I feel bad now, but I think they had some fun.

We’ve had an incredibly warm March and winter here in Boston this year. A few weeks ago we got fantastic weather and so I invited friends to a nearby park to play and let me take their picture. We brought some balloons because I wanted to have some fun photos with them, which didn’t quite work out according to plan. We lost half of them 30 minutes or so into playtime as they came untied from the weight they were attached to, which was a BIG TRAGEDY for the three year olds. It was this set of photographs that made me convinced something was wrong with my camera too, as I was focusing behind adults sitting still and not getting the results I was careful to make sure it was set up to do. So the photos are a bit soft sadly, but I like a bunch of them still and enjoyed playing with the light and shadows!

To continue with my super-late posts… We went to Cape Cod last summer too! With my parents, and Christina and family joined us for half the week too. We rented the same house with the pool on the lower cape and had a blast swimming and enjoying the outdoors. Right before this trip I just got my 35mm lens which was super fun as the house had a lot of light for taking some decent pictures. I shot over 1000 photos that trip through the week. Now I’d like to think I could do a better job this year but some of these weren’t too bad.

We did our usual fun things. Swim in the pool, go to the beach, flew the kites, go to a baseball game, and eat lots of ice cream. Sadly I really do need to write these posts more quickly because now I’ve forgotten most of the details. I do remember Celia constantly walking off with people’s shoes. The flies were bad this year on the south cape beach, we couldn’t even eat on the beach unless we were in the tent or in the water, the previous year it had been the seaweed. Both years going to Old Silver Beach proved to be a good choice! I’ll let the photos do most of the talking… we had good clean fun and it was nice how the kids enjoyed each other!

I enjoyed getting to photograph my parents, as they follow directions much better than my children!

So I’m way behind with several fun things we’ve been doing over the year. One of which was going to Storyland last summer! It’s now so late that we are already planning our trip for this next summer! Last year when we went, Celia was just starting to walk and was still taking two naps. We went with our friends and neighbors Christina, Chanh, Ethan and Zach and another family of friends too. Ethan was big enough to go on all the rides but Josie and Zach weren’t yet. We drove down, stopped at Panera and played in the grass after eating. I snapped one of these photos that somehow I keep taking, Josie has a habit of grabbing Celia around the neck.

The first ride we got on was a variation of the tea cups. Josie was not experienced with those kinds of rides and so she neglected to let go of the center spinner and go dragged around the circle. Not the best of beginnings but after she dusted herself off we were on our way to find some more rides including the polar coaster (an artic themed roller coaster).

Celia spent a lot of time in the stroller taking in all the people and sounds of the area. She loved a little clock in the middle of a garden and the milk-able cow. One fun spot was this indoor place that had balls flinging all over, falling from the ceiling through tubes and vacuums.

It is a very small-child oriented park, at the beginning of every ride they tell you to give a ‘thumbs down’ if you want the ride to stop. The most intense one where I almost stuck out my thumb for Josie was the spinning turtles. The green on Josie’s face was a color cast from the ride, but she was a little overwhelmed.

Josie was pretty excited all day and it was nice to get big smiles like this!

A big highlight for Josie was meeting Cinderella. The castle was sadly dark and horribly lit for photos, which is odd considering the castle is nothing BUT a photo opportunity place. Josie has said her current career aspiration is to be Cinderella at Storyland when she grows up, telling people that the park is going to close at 5:45 every night and taking pictures with little kids. She also plans to market and sell a pillow with her picture on it, one set with her as a little girl (aka now) and one as a grown up. These business plans have been a recent development.

We also got Josie’s face painted, which we won’t be doing again, at least to that extent. It was a neat face design and she even waited pretty well in a long hot line to get painted. But it got into her eyes and it was a big crying mess to clean her up that night. Here she is with her tiger face paint milking the pretend cow.

I can’t believe how little Celia was last year compared to now, she’s grown so much so fast. Celia spent a lot of time in the carrier watching everything going by, like in this photo on the train. I think she’s going to be overjoyed to go this year and see everything!

It was a great trip, other than the ride up there and back in which Josie chose to cry and complain most of the time. She was so sad to go home she pretty much just cried the whole 3 hours home. Thankfully Celia was at the stage where she just slept.

The other little girl sadly was sick the whole time with what turned out to be Roseola which we didn’t catch. Hopefully she and Celia will be able to play more this year. Next year I’ll work on a better group photo, but keeping everyone looking and even in frame was a real challenge and none of the kids were too cheerful about going home!

Sunday we drove down to Rhode Island to have a visit with our friends and the Providence Children’s Museum. Using our nice shiny new Boston museum membership we enjoyed a free trip (except for the gas) and a new place for the kids to play while the grown ups catch up. Very different from the parties of yesteryear but we had fun and kept the kids busy and tired with new activities. Here’s a few photos from our fun! Josie liked the over-sized light-bright best. Celia loved the water tables and had to be dragged away kicking and screaming for lunch, she’s going to be happy in the summer with the water table.

The light was different all over the museum, so it gave me a real run for my money adjusting settings to try to get usable pictures.

Shortly after this picture was taken Xander turned the pipe and sent the water direction out of the table onto the floor (right near the drain thankfully).

This weekend we went for our quick getaway weekend at the Cape Codder Resort in Hyannis. Yep Cape Cod in the middle of winter. We swam outside, we went to the beach, and jumped over waves. Yes, really. OK so the waves weren’t at the beach, nor was the swimming but we did all three. Our lovely neighbors Christina, Chanh, Ethan and Zach joined us again.

We drove down Friday afternoon, hit some traffic from an accident so we stopped after 2 hours and got some yummy ice cream. Celia refused to eat any of it, looked at me like I was trying to poison her when I gave her some on the spoon. She ate some goldfish instead. We got to the hotel around 4 and unpacked and went to the pool before dinner. Celia hasn’t seen a swimming pool since last summer so she was a bit cautious about the whole deal, but often opted to send Jordi chasing after me (holding her) when I’d go deeper with Josie. We had dinner in the in-house Italian restaurant which oddly had very few pasta dishes, and a wine list twice as long as the menu. While getting ready for bed, I played with my high ISO settings on my camera with the girls to see what I can capture since my speedlight is broken.

For all of those photos but the third, there is only one light on in the room. We put the girls to bed, and later that night our neighbors arrived with sleeping kids, who promptly woke up and decided that a late night walk around the hotel was needed. Our whole family is sick and so we all crashed. Jordi got sick during the night, possibly food poisoning. In the morning we went to Dunkin Donuts and got some food before hitting up the pool again. Celia was less nervous this time and enjoyed herself more. Why aren’t there any pictures at the pool? Because the room is really humid and everything is wet and we don’t want to risk the camera. Plus we have all agreed to no adults in bathing suit pictures.

After swimming the men took naps while us moms took the kids over to the mall. Celia napped and the big kids went on the carousel as per tradition and then we lunched. Back at the hotel for more swimming. But when we finally went to get ourselves to the pool, it was closed for cleaning or something. So we went to the other pool, which is new. It’s heated, but it’s outside! Did I mention it was snowing on Saturday? By this time it was mostly freezing rain but we braved the outdoors and jumped into the pools. It felt good inside the pool, but of course your head was still outside and eventually Celia was done. I took her in with many howls till we got inside the door and Jordi and Josie hung out playing some more. Josie even made friends with another girl named Clover who was probably 6. The whole pool just steams constantly from the temperature difference.

Here’s some photos of the girls outside earlier in the snow. Remember how we’re all sick and they’re not wearing coats? Yeah I’m such an awesome mom when I want to get pictures. They’re wearing more than their bathing suits!

Friday night we tried to go to a Thai place, but it was full, so we went back to our standard Mexican restaurant which is loud and good for kids while serving food. That night when we got back the four of us went to roast marshmallows on the bonfire the hotel lights up every night! It was still freezing rain a tiny bit so brrr it was cold, but it was fun and we had the whole place to ourselves.

I also tried to take advantage of the natural light through the big doors and windows so I set up some photos out the door with the remote, and in the big huge bed since we’ve got nothing like it at home.

Sunday morning we had more of the same food and swimming before we got all cleaned up and went home. On the way out of town we swung by the beach, at a really bad time of day (noon) and it was freezing so we had a super short photo session, most of the time was getting the girls in and out of the car. Have to do more this summer!

It’s always good to be home, but it was a fun weekend getaway. Tonight going to bed Josie asked “Is tomorrow Sabado?” [Saturday for the non-spanish speakers] Sorry kid, but that WAS the weekend. Tomorrow we’ll all focus on getting healthier some more.

So I spent some more time this morning photographing my neighbors for their Christmas card too. Here’s Little Zach getting bigger and bigger. I didn’t make the same mistakes as last time, I’m definitely learning as I go!

Let’s go back only a few weeks shall we, to Halloween. We had a nice little party with the ‘Friday moms’ as I call them as I met them at the Friday morning new moms group. We got together last year and the year before too. This year we got to take photos of the big and little kids, the little kids one didn’t work so well though. So here’s the big kids and our best attempts to get them looking at us, and by us I mean about 8 different cameras in different locations so no one can actually get a picture with everyone looking at them. The group should just hire a professional photographer