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.

This week’s picture is from a facetime call with Tio Javi. Everyone wants to be up front and be the one who is talking and interacting. Of course no one can hear them all too well when they do this, shoving each other out of the way. Ewan and Celia often end up laying on the table. Celia is wearing her sleeping beauty dress, which she calls her Elsa dress. Javi ended up staying on facetime for almost two hours, even watching Josie make a whole bath of cookies herself.

And because I had a close runner up with this cool winter light that streams into our house in the morning, here’s the kids playing all with one single baby toy, a ball pounder over a xylophone.

Last November we had the pleasure of joining Jordi’s immediate family, plus his dad’s brothers families in Orlando. We rented a huge huge house and stayed all together enjoying the pool and getting to play together. On our first day there we went to Downtown Disney to do some shopping, see the sights and introduce the kids to the idea and style of Disney.

It was such great weather to walk around in. We enjoyed checking out the lego structures and all the characters that were permanently posed for us. We had lunch at the rainforest cafe, after having to move away from the all too lifelike gorillas. The kids found the rainforest cafe to be a bit overwhelming with all the thunderstorms but enjoyed it more once they learned the rhythm and repetition of the events. They most wanted to have one of the birthday volcanos, but alas it was not near their birthday. Instead we had a giant sundae from the Ghiradelli shop!

Finding Anna and Elsa was a major highlight! Celia picked out her blinking wand for a gift here, Ewan got some duplo blocks and Josie picked out a Frozen story book. The place was decorated so beautifully, but once we had enough shopping and eating, we headed home with our new toys, after acting too cool for Cinderella.

A bit late, but still from November!

Ewan has hit the jackpot with two fantastic older sisters, each with different styles, but each learning how to relate to him and teach him how to be a kid in this world.

For three weeks Celia had t-ball lessons! Should have been four, but she had a fever the first week so I kept her home. This information is _way_ old, but I’m so far behind, that’s where I am. She did this for the month of October. Celia loved her lessons and boy did they keep her running. A favorite of the coach was to name a child, hit a ball way out in the field and tell them to go get it. Celia occasionally would find a ball closer on the field and bring it back, not quite understanding that the coach wanted her to run, not just get him a ball.

Otherwise they did catching and throwing exercises, took a turn batting and fielding grounders. Celia got together with a few other girls and tended to dig up the pitchers mound when they were supposed to be fielding. It is pretty slow waiting for 12 kids to take their turns hitting! Celia wasted no time whenever she was up at bat, in fact the picture below is the only one I got of her batting because she’d just walk up and swing before I’d manage to get ready most days. Josie and Ewan watched with me but as the weeks went on, Ewan was desperate to get on the field and proved he had been paying attention at the end of the last practice by taking a turn swinging the bat. Celia had a great time and we’ll be signing her up again given the chance to play ball!

On the banks of the Charles River, but didn’t quite turn out as I had hoped.

I hereby challenge myself, to post one picture a week, of my three hooligans, doing their thing (P52 – project 52, as in 52 weeks a year). They’re growing so fast and I want to try to capture the everyday details of their play and life together. One picture a week, of three kids, not necessarily looking at me or happy, but real.

This is taken from the kitchen, watching the kids play, as I do dishes and clean things up after lunch. The room is trashed, it’s been too cold to play outside. Christmas cards on the door frame of the dining room. They’re standing up on the bench, Celia in the middle of helping Ewan getting down. When he wants to get down he yells ‘help, help, help, help…’ until someone gives him a hand. Josie is reading the program from the church service on Christmas Eve because it has the words to a few Christmas carols. She’s holding a choir rehearsal at home performing these songs, in anticipation of her real choir performance in a couple of weeks. Celia is wearing one of her favorite dresses that is altogether too short, but with pants on under, it’s not a problem in winter. Josie is wearing her fleece indoors because she’s recovering from a cold and has a bad cough so the extra warmth feels good. Ewan keeps climbing up and down, wanting to be included, as Josie tries to teach Celia the songs.