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.

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.

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!

Josie’s a real stickler for realism in photos.

Ewan now keeps me extra on my toes, as he got up into this spot by himself.

This year at the end of July we went on our annual trip with my parents to Cape Cod for a week. This time we tried out a new house, still with a pool, but it was overall a bit smaller. We had a great time, but it’s always a pretty chill and relaxing week for us. We get there, play in the pool, go to the beach a few times, do an early morning trip of just me and the kids to dunkies and the beach, play more in the pool, do some grilling, eat lots of ice cream and pretty much that’s the week! The kids get older so their habits change a bit.

This year Ewan could do something on the beach other than just nap in the tent with me. He loved to dig in the sand and found low tide to be super fun to run around in the small puddles, jumping and throwing balls into them. We spent two whole days at the beach and low tide was near the end and they still all loved it. The water was warmer and shallower to run in.

Josie and Celia enjoyed their boogie boards going way out in the water with a grown up. They also liked finding hermit crabs and snails in the tide pools. Celia is still very big on digging and making castles whereas Josie wanted to spend more time in the water and even practiced a bit of swimming.

For our morning trip to the beach we were all a little too late with the super-early sunrise in July (rather than late August) to really get the good light, but we made an effort and they had fun digging and eating some munchkins.

The house this year was further from the beach, and so that made evening beach outings not so frequent. We only made it out once to fly kites and take pictures. But two of those days we were just barely getting home for dinner anyway from the beach. We also made it to one cotuit kettleers baseball game. (Note to self: no vegetarian food, bring dinner next year) We fed them a well rounded diet of popcorn, nachos with cheeze Celia refused to eat, ice cream and a cheese on a hamburger bun.

As always we spent a lot of time hanging around the house, letting Ewan nap, doing art projects and generally relaxing.

One of Ewan’s favorite activities, typical of a 1 year old, was play with the pots and pans. The kitchen was super loaded with supplies and we only had so many cabinet locks so he had his pick of several pots and pans and enjoyed stacking and banging them.

On Thursday night we managed to get a beautiful day, an early dinner and got us all clean and out to the beach to take pictures. Last year was a serious flop, but this year we hit it right and didn’t have any diaper blow-outs. I’ll leave you with some of my favorite photos of the year so far of us all!

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.

One of our nights on the cape I try to do a photoshoot with us on the beach in fairly coordinating outfits in yummy sunset light. This year was not our year. Many nights it was obviously foggy, other nights we were too tired to get dinner done early enough and get out there all dressed. But it came together one night in the second week and we ate, the sun was up and we headed to the west-facing beach, a rarity around here being the east coast and all.

We drove over and on the way the clouds came rolling in. So heavy that the sun was so hazy that it looked like the moon. We arrived and there was almost no sun, just a thick layer of gray. Oh well, I start to set up and hope it will clear a little. Celia has fallen asleep, yikes it’s only 6:30. I let her sleep more while I set up, maybe with a little sleep she’ll wake up happy. Ewan eventually is taken out of his car seat after waking up too and he’s had a major poopsplosion. Up the shirt, in the car seat, and of course all over the matching outfit he is supposed to wear. The only other outfit we have is bright green and white stripes, not exactly the colors I was looking for. But it’s windy and not warm, so a mostly naked baby would be a crying screaming baby. We wake up Celia and the hazy sun has now completely disappeared and there is no light at all, just a huge sky of gray. We try to take a few photos but Celia is non-cooperative to say the least having been woken up and the light stinks anyway.

Never did manage to get one of just the five of us that night. I just gave up. Celia got away with not wearing shoes a lot of this trip too. Then we went down onto the beach and played with kites and dug in the sand. And the sun didn’t really ever come out from the clouds again in the evening for us, but I got a few pictures locally another night, just not on the beach I’ll put up later.

Everybody jump jump!

The scenery up around storyland is just lovely, big mountains, blue skies and lovely trees. I took some more pictures around the condo site and on our trip on the way home up high in the mountains. Josie enjoyed it, but Celia just lay on the ground and cried, she was not into having her picture taken, she just wanted to eat her weight in goldfish.

Yes indeed in the name of pictures (because that’s where the good light was) I told my children to stand in the road. But I was there too, and this was the back roads of the condo place, so no one came by.