Got a few fun ones by setting up the shot and having my dad take the pictures. I should really bring a tripod I guess 🙂 But he did a good job. This is over at Horn Pond in Woburn on a cold windy gray day!

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.

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…

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.

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!

Maybe I’ll work on taking a family portrait in every room of the house this year. Just for some challenge and variety. Still our light is terrible today as it’s raining and gray. I salvaged as best I could, look at that smooth skin!

My mom had her knee replaced last Thursday and yesterday we visited my parents at home where my mom is recovering. So far so good, although it’s still bleeding more than she’d like. The girls struggle a bit with her not being mobile and active, but at least she can still read lots and lots of stories.

I’m going to work on at least a monthly family portrait. Since I’m so often not in the pictures and all… terrible light so black and white with funky processing!

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.