We left to Paris on a Tuesday night. After dinner and teeth brushing and pajamas, instead of heading to bed, we got into my parents car and drove to the airport. We had been hoping Celia and Josie would fall asleep given this was their normal bedtime, but no dice. The change of routine and excitement about the trip was far too much. There was absolutely no line in security so after checking our bag we had over an hour to wait to board the plane. Most of the stores were closed too as this is clearly a low traffic time at the airport. We walked around, used the bathroom, drank more water and otherwise hung around in the airport trying to keep the girls from being too loud and too unhappy.

Since the girls were awake I started working on one of my goals for the trip which was a number of family portraits. Nothing perfect or fancy, but plenty of pictures with the four of us in it, and especially me since I’m the one usually behind the camera.

We were flying to Heathrow in London and then had 5 hours till we got a very short flight to Paris. They finally called our flight and we got on board. We ended up having a whole row to ourselves as the gentleman near us did not want to sit with us and there were plenty of open seats. Both girls wanted to sit with me though which was tough, and basically Celia got on the plane and started screaming ‘NO NO NO’ for about 5 minutes until she just passed out since it was way past her bedtime. Josie was determined to stay up for dinner on the plane. We tucked her into her seat and not long after the plane took off she fell asleep too. Jordi and I enjoyed a bit of dinner which wasn’t too bad, except for having a sleeping Celia on top of me and we tried to get some sleep.

Breakfast in the morning woke Josie up eventually and so after 5 hours of sleep for her, instead of her normal 10, she ate some breakfast and we landed in London. We got off the plane, walked a long long way to a shuttle bus and then through another terminal to wait for our connection. It was a nice big terminal though with lots to look at and walk around. The only trouble was finding some water for our water bottles, seems the water in the sinks in the bathrooms is not safe for drinking, but there are no signs, I only knew because someone I asked for help told me. There was one water fountain in the whole place, they definitely want you to have to buy some. We ate our snacks and leftover breakfast while watching the Queen on TV speaking to parliament. We muddled around a little, did some drawing and stickers before grabbing some lunch at an asian place, trying to get closer to local time. Walked around some more waiting for our flight and got Josie an ice cream. Note at this point in our  trip Celia did not like ice cream and would not eat it.

Finally our gate was announced, we got to our flight, and settled in for the hour long flight. The girls fell asleep again immediately on takeoff. I got a drink and Jordi and I took some more naps too. In Paris it was an easy trip through customs where they did almost nothing other than stamp us, picked up our bags and grabbed our car service into the city where it was already 6pm local time. All in all, it was a long and tiring trip but the girls were excited about stuff enough that they were engaged with their surroundings.

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!

We left for our cruise on a Friday to give us lots of breathing room for a ship that left on Saturday afternoon.The girls did pretty well on the flight down there although we flew Spirit (aka nickel and dime air) and the infant seat could not fit in-between their seats even though we had tons of empty seats in which to put it. Had we actually bought a seat, they would have had to bump the people in the bulkhead seats for us to make us fit. Celia is not quite as good a flier as Josie was, she was more agitated but still did ok, just wore us out some more. We flew directly to Fort Lauderdale and stayed on the Sheraton on the beach (a nice splurge for us!) so we’d have easy access to fun play time in the sand and surf.

We got a room right next to the beach and we headed out for some play in the sand and surf. Josie had just about no interest in the water at all and Jordi declared the water to be cold (in May, in Fort Lauderdale). You can guess how much he likes the water here in new england in the summer! I got in the water a little, Celia hung out on the blanket and played with the towels and sand. We played in the pool too and got some food.

We got a reminder never to turn out backs on the kids near the pool because Josie just completely ignored the steps in the pool and dropped in over her head and I got to pull her out, thankfully I was only two steps away. I tried not to show how scary that was for me. It was an infinity pool and so we had to pull her back from the edge repeatedly too.

That night after dinner the sun was setting wonderfully and I dragged the girls outside for a quick photoshoot for 5 minutes and I liked some of the shots I got, even if she wasn’t terribly cooperative. In the morning we went back out onto the beach, played on the nearby playground, and checked out the lifeguard towers. Then we showered, packed up and headed to the cruiseport!

The driver for our trip to PA was attending Chad and Angie’s wedding and visiting everyone while we still only had one kid to cart along with us. It was Josie’s first wedding and she had a blast. She didn’t actually attend the ceremony as it was in the middle of the afternoon during nap time, which was definitely for the best as it was held in a hot room with major echoes. They had a moving and short ceremony in a beautiful building while perched precariously in the middle of a big huge set of stairs.

Afterwords, Josie woke up from her nap and we drove over to start to party! Everyone had a good time dancing, the little girls at the wedding mostly kicked it off. Josie was in the middle of the pack with a little girl who was almost 3 and a 1 year old also mixing it up. Chad and Angie had a lovely first dance.

Josie and Sammy also had a nice dance. Josie holds on tight. Josie got to try on Sammy’s hat and they showed each other their dance moves.

Oops, things got a little out of control

They had a traditional ‘who’s been married the longest’ dance. Jordi and I held out in good form for a while but my parents held out for second place!

And finally, got Abby in one nice picture.

Towards the end of July we went to Harrisburg, PA where my dad grew up and his side of the family still lives. We stay at my aunt Diane’s house with her family. Ever since they moved into their new house we’ve only been down to visit at Christmas time, usually they are charged with enjoying the long car ride to visit us in the summer. A number of years back they put in an inground pool, which we stare at longingly, in the snow at Christmas. This year, prompted by Chad and Angie’s wedding, we got to visit while the pool was open! We were in it every day and even got Diane into the pool with us, getting her hair wet once.

Josie really liked to pull other people around the pool on the boogie board. Eventually even I got a ride.

Josie got to be fast friends with Phoebe who took advantage of the available petting. The other cats, not permitted downstairs by Phoebe during the day, were not as interested in us.

We also made good use of a neighbors fire pit and made smores one night at the end of the driveway. Todd used a big axe to split the wood and everything. They were yummy, although somehow the chocolate and graham crackers seemed gratuitous, the marshmallows were good enough on their own.

All in all Abby did a good job avoiding my camera as she had a date night when we made smores, rarely joined us in the pool, and then left early for camp before we left town for the final goodbye.

I got some photos of Abby from the wedding… those next post!

the beach!

With the pool in our backyard we only made it to the beach a couple of times for a full beach day, but we took a couple of evenings for dinner or after to go play on the beach in the cool night air. It was a great time for flying kites and for going to the ‘resident only’ beach that we hadn’t bothered to get passes to. These photos are from South Cape Beach, which wasn’t a favorite as it had a lot of sea-weed at the time, but the guards implied that it was an infrequent event.

This is the photo I got after asking Josie to finally take her fingers out of her mouth (she’s been teething a lot on those two year molars, out out damn teeth!)

Josie loved to be bounced around and dipped into the water, to the detriment of her grandparents backs.

Flying the kite, we need to get one that won’t cause rug burn on Josie’s hands for next year if we were to just give it to her. This one the wind would have taken away and spun in her hands.

Now I’m just having fun with my camera and trying to be artsy.

Swimming! Our house in Cape Cod had a pool and we went in it most every day. The water was warm and felt good compared to the heat wave. It’s sooo convenient to be able to get wet without also getting sandy and having to drive somewhere.

Josie somewhat liked the water, but also liked to torture us by walking around the outside of the pool while we were in it and refusing to get it. This pool also had a really steep dropoff past the 8 ft wide shallow end. She got more familiar with it as time went by but her favorite activities remained throwing the beach ball animals into the pool and washing the lizard inflatable with a sponge. She also liked the outdoor shower where we’d hose her down afterwords with some warm water.

One day our friends and neighbors Christina and her two boys came down to visit us from home and spent the morning in the pool with us. Ethan (age 4.5) had a blast, Zach was a bit more cautious but got into it by the end.

Jordi somehow didn’t hear the ‘no pictures while I’m wearing a swimsuit rule’ and did take a few. I think they are determined to make only two kinds of maternity swim suits, ugly, and uglier. I went with ugly, although some people seem to like it, it just gets the job done so I can enjoy some time in the pool. I can still wear my regular tankini but it’s getting less comfortable now at 30 weeks along.

Josie has become obsessed with puzzles lately. She is currently mastering every 24 piece puzzle we give her (which are conveniently dirt cheap at dollar stores) and wants to do them again and again and again. We spent a significant amount of time on our Cape Cod vacation doing the two puzzles we brought. She wanted to do each of them with different people, and the minute she finishes she tears them apart again.

Unfortunately she’s also taken to pretending to hide a piece and asking us ‘where is it!?’. That backfired as she did it on the morning we were leaving to Chad’s wedding in PA and couldn’t find a few pieces and so that puzzle was left at home. Lucky for her, we picked a random Indian/Pakistani buffet for lunch which was directly next to a dollar store and I grabbed two more puzzles for her.

We’ll have to move up to the 50 piece ones soon to give her some more challenge!