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.

Last October we had Celia’s first birthday party! It was one of our typical bashes in my parents backyard, although we tried to keep it a bit smaller. We were lucky to be joined by Jordi’s mom, maternal grandmother, aunt and uncle who came to Boston to celebrate with us! We bounced, ate, drank and ran inside for cake as it started to storm a tiny bit. Celia mostly just did her own thing, played with the balls, slid down the slide and did some bouncing. Not too aware of the friends around her yet.

I made carrot cake cupcakes, but as Celia hadn’t had dairy yet we just gave her a vegan one from Quebrada. She was not very interested. She was more intimidated by the huge number of people looking at her and singing. She did try to feed me some though. A few nights later when presented with another of the same cupcakes she was much more interested in digging in the second time.

All the kids as usual love the bounce house. We had to have separate baby and big kid times though as 3-6 year olds and new walkers don’t mix so well together.

The next day she had a bash opening her presents. And as usual, she loved the thing the stuff came in…

We got a big box from amazon, with diapers in it. Who needs fancy toys? this gave hours of fun.

Oh and we rearranged the living room because it’s been over three years without anything moving. Might have had a little to do with me wanting to have better light where the girls play for taking pictures too.

Last year for his birthday (in Feb) I got Jordi red sox tickets, for September. Just how the schedule worked out. We all went and so Josie and Celia saw their first red sox game in Fenway Park! The game was LONG and the girls carried on through it, eating, drinking, people watching, and cringing at the drunk guys behind us yelling. How is it that the people behind us are always drunk yelling guys? Must be a lot of them at Fenway. Josie got a new hat. Our team lost, painfully. But at the end we snuck down to the good seats and got an up close view of them losing. It’s still so awesome how the park is so small and close up, even if we are in the cheaper seats! I don’t think we’ll bring the girls again for a while as it was just too long for them but the weather cooperated and we had fun.

over the shopping cart color at the grocery store. Celia wanted pink, Josie wanted red. It was Josie’s turn so we went with red, but Celia literally stood up in the pink one and tried to cross over to the other one while they were next to each other!

Celia is currently packing her sister into a shipping box that just arrived and saying ‘yummy yummy yummy’…

And we’re all still sick. Jordi even took a half day at work today since we’re feeling so crummy.

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!