As is typical in our house, we have at least three birthday parties for the birthday kid. One family, one with my grandmother who rarely leaves her assisted living, and one with friends. For Celia’s third birthday I gave her a choice of either a gymnasium one or swimming and she picked a playtime one in a gymnasium. We decided to take it easier on ourselves given the whole little baby and having three kids thing. So we booked the local gymnasium that includes a bunch of toys and fun with a parachute. I ordered a cake from a local bakery and even got them to put the owl themed picture onto it. It wasn’t fancy, but we had yummy food, a few good friends and easy fun. Celia had a smile on her face the whole time and loved it, which is just what I was aiming for, a happy birthday girl! She also requested chocolate dipped strawberries on her menu so I made those too.

One of the favorite things was the parachute. We’d twirl it around the people in the middle (which was always Celia plus everyone else got a turn with her too). Then we’d all pull out at once and the people in the middle would spin and twirl and flip for fun!

Best of all, it was cleaned up and relaxing for all of us, including my parents whose house we usually take over for the whole weekend to throw our bashes.

The above one is from a few weeks ago. Below is today.

We celebrated fall with our usual activity, apple picking. This year we were even on the ball enough to go almost in September! Usually we’re a bit later in the season. I remember going three years ago waiting and waiting for Celia to arrive while we went. We went again to Honeypot hill orchards and picked lots of great apples. Josie decided she likes the honey crisp ones the best for eating out of hand. The rest were mostly baking apples so I definitely agreed with her. They were sweet and all the apples were very juicy. Both girls were great at picking this year and following proper picking etiquette. Celia’s favorite part may have been throwing the half eaten apples under a tree once she was done trying them.

We started off our day having a picnic breakfast of dunkin donuts on my parents front lawn. It was the fastest way to get us moving on the way out to picking.

Then we all headed out in our minivan, me and Ewan in the back row, which thankfully made him a much happier traveler. We got there and headed out to pick apples first.

And then I handed Ewan to my dad so I could take pictures and pick apples and he could get some quality baby time in.

Pictures are of course the point of apple picking. And it was a very lovely day for it all.

On the way out there was a gorgeous tree in full fall transition and so I had everyone pose in front of it for new pictures for my walls.

After picking the apples Jordi brought them back to the car so we could go to the hayride and all the other amusements.

Then we got to go on the hayride.

We saw the three little pigs, the goats, the chickens and bunnys. We ate donuts and veggie burgers before heading back home.

Those apples made their way into a yummy crisp and applesauce, both of which were devoured quickly. The girls helped me do the chopping withe some butter knives. Josie’s got a real technique.

100% attitude. Happy Birthday to my exuberant Cecilia!

They were both disappointed there was no salad for lunch. No, I’m not kidding.

Well Josie’s learned one new thing at Kindergarden at least, spider swinging. And Ewan about two weeks ago learned to roll over! But he’s taking a page from Josie’s playbook and although he did it multiple times, over more than one day, he’s now stopped entirely. He pushes up, but just lays down if he gets tired instead of rolling. It’s like he forgot.

0 and 2.

Goose egg on forehead. Road rash next to her eye. Cuts on nose and lip. Two black eyes this morning. Saturday evening and Sunday evening. Neither on my watch.

Today I cooked my first ever whole pumpkin. It went into soup for dinner, and muffins for tomorrow.

Josie had her first sick day from school.

As overheard on the way back from the park. Celia hit her hand on a stone wall. “Oww Josie I hurt my hand. We have to play doctor when we get home.”

And I caught Ewan on camera with his new trick.

When I asked Josie what she wanted to do this summer on vacation she said she wanted to get dunkin donuts and go to the beach really early. This came about because last year we did just that because the girls were getting up soooo early in the morning so I thought it might as well take advantage and go get some of that nice morning light. Plus coffee. Apparently she thinks of it now as tradition as that was what she repeatedly asked me to do. So one morning I got us up and out and we went. Problem was we barely had any clear skies. I literally took about 5 minutes of pictures with some sun and then the whole place was covered in clouds again. Which doesn’t make for such pretty beach shots (yay lightroom). Thankfully they decided to cooperate for those five minutes. They loved jumping off the ledge and making sand castle ‘cakes’. But without any shovel or buckets (I had my hands full enough with food and three kids) the morning was short lived and we came back to bring the rest of the household back to it’s normal loud level.

For the photography geeks. These were taken with my 35mm DX lens because I didn’t want to have to step back far from Ewan while the girls held him. But now on my full frame camera it produces a vignette (the black around the edges and corners) which I’m actually finding to be kinda cool and a neat vintage effect. Or perhaps I’m just too captivated with the instagram look like everyone else. Maybe Santa will bring me a 50mm that’s for full frame.

when will we go back to vacation? She really liked it apparently. Not hard to imagine why! One of our favorite things to do is have a picnic on the beach for dinner or just have an early dinner and play on the beach after dinner. Most nights there was wind, although not for a few of them oddly enough. Unfortunately on our last night Celia was flying my dad’s kite and let it go and it went into the power lines. This time we got a backup system so that won’t happen again!