With all the snow lately we’ve gotten the opportunity to play with lots of our toys (I did a major cleaning/rearranging of the basement yes!), this weekend Jordi took out his amp for his electric guitar and sang for us all. Celia liked to play with the pedal and Ewan liked the plugs.

Signs of our real life include the laundry baskets piled in the corner, all clean, but still piled up on top of the air filter. I think we’ve got a record four stacked there. If you come to our house and there’s not a laundry basket on the air filter you can be very sure that I cleaned up for you.

We are currently in the midst of another blizzard (yikes 2014-15 winter has been crazy!) and here’s some photos from earlier stuff. I’m not letting the kids play outside in the winds and cold  today.

This is last week’s snow with Josie on the snow pile and Ewan on the porch. Now the snow is level with the top edge of the porch near the porch, and halfway up the front windows for the top part of the pile. Time to hibernate.

Here they are, standing on the front lawn! That’s our porch railing, the one that’s say 7 feet above the ground below them. We’ve been doing a lot of playing in the snow in the front yard that is our giant snow pile that now reaches above the first floor windows.

a.k.a. I’m a terrible mother who puts her children outdoors barely dressed in snowstorms to take their photo, photo series.

This was one storm ago, let it be known that I refused to do it two storms ago when she was sick! You can click on the image (twice) to see it big.

Let’s get back to November, when it was warm and there was no snow! Although actually it got rather chilly in Orlando and rained a lot of the day we went to Disney too. On Monday of our visit Jordi’s parents took us all to Disney World! We amazingly got up plenty early and even parked and arrived prior to the park opening. As we pulled up on the monorail from the parking lot we got to see the cast of characters waiting to arrive by train to the opening gate! We got our first (and only) glimpse of Anna and Elsa and some other characters. We arrive to the main gate, get our tickets checked and the show starts right away complete with song, dance, and fireworks!

We walked straight up main street, trying to see if we might be able to meet up with Anna and Elsa in fantasy-land, but didn’t want to drag the kids in a race and ruin the beginning of the day. So by the time we got to the line it was over an hour and a half. Basically the only way to get to see those princesses is to stay at a disney resort so you can get a fastpass many months in advance, none were available by the time we could set our fastpasses. Instead our first stop was the winnie the pooh ride!

We spent the morning going around from ride to ride, using a few fast passes but mostly things were moving pretty quickly since we weren’t going on the more intense rides (snow white, or space mountain). We got onto dumbo and flew. One of Josie’s favorites was the smaller roller coaster, the barnstormer, I think she went three times with different groups of adults. Ewan was not particularly fond of most things as he didn’t like the dark, or loud noises, or being restrained and he was in a clingy phase as well. We visited the tea party cups too. It was a lovely morning visiting a number of rides, including the driving one, and sending Jordi and his siblings off to space mountain which Josie opted out of riding this time. We also visited Buzz Lightyear and played the space game which Ewan loved, but the girls just hid from. It was very unpredictable which ride would please each child.

Then we headed across the park to frontierland to ride splash mountain. I had to physically drag Celia onto the ride as she was quite nervous, but I kept her safe as she will attest! And Josie hid herself to keep from getting wet too! Then we headed off to lunch and found some great options for us vegetarians at Columbia Harbor house. Then we headed back towards fantasy land and got to see Ariel’s ride before it started to rain on us. We snuck into the Carousel for a quick ride while other grownups went to other scary rides.

Sometime around now, it started to pour cats and dogs, and unfortunately continued for the rest of the day. I think we had short line waits because of the predicted rain, but it did rain on the upper end of what was predicted sadly. So we dashed between rides and the camera didn’t get out much anymore. We saw small world, and the favorite ride for all three kids was Enchanted Tales with Belle. No actual ride, but a cool storytime with real people and animatronics. Javi got roped into being a guard up front, my girls couldn’t be convinced to play a role but hung back with us in the audience.

Belle was nice enough to look at my camera too, not just their professional photographer! Celia was rather wary of getting near any of these characters and had to be convinced to hold hands. We also found that the line for Cinderella and Rapunzel was only half an hour (still over an hour and a half for Elsa and Anna) so we waited to see them.

Ewan kept running to the front of the line and I had to retrieve him. Waiting in line is not a strong point for a 1 year old! The princesses were very kind and friendly with the girls, but Josie and Celia didn’t really know the Cinderella story too well and definitely didn’t remember Rapunzel. We taught them some more stories when we got home, but next time I’d review the stories before the trip so they get a bit more into the ideas! Such lovely costumes and decorations. Towards the end of the evening, all wet and tired we had a nice dinner at the italian takeout place. Then we wandered back toward tomorrowland and enjoyed the laugh floor from Monsters Inc. That was very clever and enjoyed by the adults. Finally we watched the castle which still looked beautifully magical in the rain before we trudged up mainstreet thoroughly exhausted, with a few small shopping errands to do. We got a treat and they spent the end of their Disney money.

The park closed by 7, which turned out to be just right for us as the kids were definitely ready for bed from such an exhausting and exciting day at magical kingdom!

Yes it’s February (and January last week) but man have we been seeing snow. The sidewalks are narrow passages with snow up both sides up to my elbow. The kids can jump off the porch into the snow (and Ewan can be picked up and retrieved from it by just reaching over). Here’s a mid-day Monday snowstorm pic from yesterday.

This week we’ve been stuck inside and at home with colds, pink eye, and snow, lots and lots of snow. So we brought out all the pillows and blankets we could find, and had them all jump onto the big pile to get out some good energy. Love how each has their own style of flying! Today Josie and Celia took turns jumping off the front porch onto the snow pile since it was so high up.

Hibernating inside for winter, it’s a been cold and the kids are all a bit sick!

This past Friday we got to enjoy having dinner with one of our longtime family friends. Josie and Celia love to play with both girls and especially enjoy when someone older pays them some attention. The older sister is reading a book to everyone. The younger sister asked her mother if Ewan could sit on her lap, and Ewan heard this and immediately climbed up onto the couch next to her and dropped his bottom onto her lap, ready to be her baby.

(hey there’s a chicken on his head!)

While we were in Orlando we kept things pretty low key except for the one day at Disney World. The house and company were plenty to keep us having a good time. We enjoyed the pool, getting in it almost every day. The day before we left when it went below 60 even I was unwilling to get into the pool with the girls, Josie was severely disappointed. We did lots of reading, cuddles, bubbles, swimming, playing and just hanging out talking. Several of Jordi’s paternal relatives live in Orlando and they came to visit us several times.

On Sunday morning, Tere through Celia a belated 4th birthday party. We had in fact found good reason to celebrate most every day as many birthdays were right at the same time! Josie made Celia a tres leches cake, but Celia insisted that she didn’t like tres leches cake, so we left off the tres leches from her cake, hence the missing corner of cake from the picture. Otherwise we also got to visit with Sean, a friend of Jordi’s from high school and his own little girl. She liked watching the big girls and playing with Ewan a bit.

I did the makeup on one of these people, take a guess which one 🙂 I think Tio Javi went home with a bit of a red nose that day even after all the scrubbing.