Disney World Trip

Our first trip to Disney was pretty Magical. We spent the night before in the Saratoga Springs resort (courtesy of Aunt Laurie's connections and Papa Larry's generous heart). That morning pink was up with the sun ready to put on her brand new Princess Aurora dress. Yellow didn't wake up until much later. We had spent the previous day playing in the pool at the resort so we had a nice layer of sunburn already started. 

When you wear your princess dress at Disney, the park staff all stop and bow or greet you "Good morning Princess Aurora!! Good morning Princess Belle!!". Our shy girlies were a little put off by this but pretty soon they got used to it. My favorite moment of the entire day happened when we stopped to get a drink about mid-morning. I had been encouraging the girls to smile and wave at those folks who greeted them. I turned around to find Margot, seated a little ways off from the rest of us, facing the stream passersby with a toothy grin on her face, waving and nodding to everyone. I have no photo or video clip on my phone but that little moment is one that I will remember. 

We met the fairies in Pixie Hollow. Vidia is not our favorite fairy, she tried to win us over. 

Tinker Belle!!

It was so hot. There was much ice cream consumption that day. 

And pickles.. who doesn't love a huge ice cold dill pickle. 

Margot enjoying the blast of cold air from the Hall of the Presidents. 

Obligatory family shot. 

My twinsies in their pink and yellow. 

You might have noticed that Frankie is missing from these pictures. Sweet Laurie and her boys and Elsie were watching Frankie so that Mary and Larry could join us at the park. We will take her when she turns 4 as well.

More ice cream. 

Grammy and Grampapa - Disney Trip Sponsors :)

Favorites.

It was a long day. 

Tears are short lived at Disney. They are also short lived in the arms of your Grammy. 

Headed home. Best day. 

This is a tired girl. A tired girl who may have loved the bus ride to and from the park as much as she loved the park itself. 

I have never been to Disney in my life. When we arrived, once we got through the craziness of getting our tickets checked and actually walked into that downtown area.... ya'll.. we started walking down the middle of the street with the rest of the crowd and there was music playing and fireworks going off and Mickey and Minnie were dancing down the steps of Cinderella's Castle. It was just as it should be. Magical. We rode It's A Small World, Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh and climbed the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. We saw the Dumbo ride and decided to skip it because Margot's best friend Liam said it was scary. We played in the splash zone. We saw the Tea Cups. We didn't ride the Tea Cups. Mommy and Daddy got to ride Space Mountain (which was AMAZING by the way) while everyone else rode the People Mover. We just had a fantastic day. Once we headed back to the resort at twilight, almost 9pm, we realized the pool would still be open until around 11. So we said goodbye to Grammy and Grampapa and headed to the room to get into our bathing suits. They were playing a pool side movie when we got there - Peter Pan.. our favorite. So the girls and Stephen swam and went down the water slide and watched Peter Pan under the stars while I read Game of Thrones and tried to stop giggling about what an amazing time we were having. We all got to bed just before midnight. I can't wait to do it all over again one day. 

Frankie Turned 2

Frankie turned two on May 23rd, 2013. Our girls two favorite things at that time were Curious George, and Cheerios. The big girls thought it only fitting for Daddy to make a "Keerio - Gore" cake. Frankie loves "Gore" so much that for awhile she was talking the way he.. talks. My child was making cute little monkey sounds. Which is cute at home.. not so cute in the line at Trader Joe's. 

The baby of the family is also quite the builder. She will stack anything. These are her custom birthday blocks from Daddy. 

Once she made her tower.. she left it there on her tray while she opened her other presents. Frankie is also very fond of puzzles, often dragging us upstairs to the shelf in Ada and Margot's room where the more complicated puzzles are kept. She is really good at puzzles big and small. 

She has her sisters' love for imaginary play and loves mommies and babies of all shapes and sizes. She also has a thing for beavers. A beaver mommy and baby were a double whammy. 

Things I want to remember about you at this age sweet girl:

-You are so loud. So loud Frankie. Your joy is infectious and it also sometimes hurts our ears. 

- You are not a super awesome eater.. but you are trying to be better. You have started taking your two bites of a new food in order to get dessert and your grin from ear to ear when the table erupts into applause as we all cheer your successes. 

-You love your sisters so deeply and they are so connected with you. 

- You squeal and run for the front door when daddy comes home every day. You love to play "Monster" on his iPad. 

-You love your Papa. Both of them. 

-You love to go and do. If we could go "bye-bye" every day, all day you would be thrilled.

- You are a pleaser. You can be difficult at times but when corrected you try to do the right thing. 

-You love working in the yard with me. I love that you love that. I am counting the seconds together outdoors and keeping each one locked away in my happiest place.

-You love eggs, grits, and all things breakfast related. 

-You are trying to jump and get both feet off the ground, practicing so hard.. you almost have it!

-You can and will climb anything.

-Despite the pictures above, you no longer sit in a high chair or even a booster seat. You were ready to be a big girl and now you sit next to Mommy at the dinner table in regular chair like the rest of us. 

-It takes very little to make you belly laugh. You just live life full speed ahead and at full volume.

- You are a delight. I write this every time we celebrate your birth but with each year it becomes more true. You are my little buddy during the day when you sisters are at school and I actually get lonely when I run an errand on the weekend and you aren't there in the cart in front of me. 

We love our Frankie. You make our world a better place. 

Five Months..

So it's been 5 whole months since I last signed on here. I have thought of this space often. Life has looked much like this picture (taken before school one morning - our contribution to a "Thank You" event for the children's ministry helpers at Vintage). Lots of laughter, many tears, and plenty of deer-in-the-headlights-frozen-smiles. 

Since this space was originally created to share our life and then to record it.. I really feel I need to record the major life mile stones that have passed while I have been on sabbatical.  These include a 2nd birthday, a couple of 5th birthdays, a 35th birthday and a trip back home to NY. So.. without further ado.. 

Found

 

Sometimes I forget I ever stood and waited for the train. I forget what the view from our conference room window was. I forget that look of absolute contented belonging that lived on Stephen's face there. That look that only returned when he held Ada and Margot for the first time in our apartment. Then I find reminders.. like my notebook of self indulgent observations that I carried around when we lived there. I think I am going to share some here.. unedited for better or worse. 

5-23-06

"Sitting on a bench in Central Park by a pond. Watching a couple have their photos taken together by the water. I passed them on the way here posing by the fountain by Bergdorf. Have they just gotten engaged and are taking pictures for the paper? The girl is very loud and sounds like a native New Yorker. She is talking about the fact that all the pictures they take together always come out badly and her head is always chopped off at the top. I wonder when the wedding will be?

From where I sit I can see 4 groups of people taking pictures. . . of eachother, of the pond, of the bench I am sitting on. I too wish I had a camera here if only to take pictures of the picture taking people! What a collection that would make. . pictures of people taking pictures of other things. 

I passed  a very striking woman on 5th just now. She was standing on the corner of a Catholic Church building with another man. She pointed at people passing by with a lit cigarette and mumble shouted negativisms at them. She had on deep red lipstick and she looked like she might have been on something. Her face was so striking. Dark skin and angular lines. She was beautiful in her way. I think her apparent madness made her even more appealing and fascinating. 

A group of British boys just passed my bench here in the park commenting on how clean it is here. I suppose I have to agree with them for the most part. More picture takers just now. It is twilight and soon there will be too little light for portraits and snapshots."

The Cabin

Ellen invited me to come away for a girls weekend at the cabin. I have been there exactly twice before. Once, when I was 12 and again towards the end of college. This time was like the last. Her precious father met us there. He had gotten everything opened up, cleaned and ready for us. This is the view. Close your eyes and imagine the perfect amount of balmy breezes blowing gently over tired eyelids.

Built at the turn of the century. The last one. 

The simplicity of the interior drove me wild this visit. I couldn't get enough visually. The simplicity and the light and the harmony of color, form and functionality. Mostly the functionality. Everything is so tight and neat and orderly. 

The color of the stain on the plywood. The way it made the rooms glow in the sunlight. 

Somehow it was like visual poetry that I couldn't put to words. 

Tell me you don't see it.. then look again.

One family's paradise. 

Grateful for the sharing.

Mother's 65 Celebratory Day Weekend Extravaganza

So.. when you are an introvert and you have a visit from your fabulous inlaws for special Grandparents Day at the girls' school plus your Dad's big 65th birthday mountain birthday extravaganza and it's Mother's Day weekend as well.. you find yourself pretty silent on the Monday that follows. You might even find yourself bursting into tears for no reason on Sunday night and sobbing on your husbands shoulder - despite having one of the best weekends imaginable. Us weirdos get a backlog of emotions taken in without time to process and reciprocate fully and that's what happens. Anyway.. I am not sure anything truly interesting is going to come out of this post since I can barely form a sentence today (I spent all afternoon playing playdough with girls.. playdough is a universal language). 

This is the quick family shot from Dad's birthday party. Pretty good looking bunch of folks I think.

The twinsies ended the day covered - head to toe - in mud. Best day ever. 

Yes, it is every bit as beautiful in person as it looks on "film". 

 

Babies love ice buckets.  Yes, she is still a baby.

Me. Visiting. Talking. And talking and talking and..

 The girls ran..

.. and ran.. 

.. and stopped just long enough to pose. 

We got this one shot of the birthday boy :) there were lots of folks to visit with and see

My lovely sisters-in-law. 

Lots of hammock time.. 

Frankie refused to nap but spent the majority of the day surfing from shoulder to shoulder being alternately cuddly or fussy. She was a super trooper.

Bluegrass bands, bar-b-que, this view and birthday cake? What's not to love right?

Then there's my new favorite picture of all time. My brother Page - fisher/hunter/outdoors man extraordinaire - borrows a left handed fishing rod (he's right handed) from someone there and started fishing while the rain was sort of gently starting to come down a bit. Pretty soon the girls and I are standing around watching him as he carries on a conversation with folks nearby and casually casts out and reels in the line over and over - expertly placing it in various deep spots. Every time he tossed in towards this one big rock face I thought for sure it was going to hit the rock and slide down into the water - silly Sarah. Of course it just went "plink!" right into the perfect little spot. Anyway before long he catches a little brook trout (??) and he turns around and hands me the rod and lets me reel it in!! Then with the girls watching he gets it off the hook (he asked me if I wanted to eat it and I choked under the pressure and told him to let it loose) lets them take a good look at that beautiful little creature and then off it goes back down stream. Well now I am all giddy and excited and the girls are HOOKED and want him to catch a fish for them too. So my sweet brother stood out there and fished for what seemed like a blessed eternity. I say blessed because during this time Frankie finally conked out and slept on my shoulder for awhile - so I got to sit and watch my daughters follow their uncle up and down the bank. Watch them put their little hands out and hold his jeans pocket to catch their balance going down the steep parts. Watch him put his arm out to steady them if they came down the wet grass too quickly. It was heaven. I couldn't even break myself away long enough to grab the camera and thankfully Larry snapped this awesome shot. I just stored the entire thing away in my memory. Can't really express how special it was. Sitting under the trees in the gentle shower of rain, holding my sleeping baby, watching my childhood hero - my big brother Page - fish with my big girls as though it was something they did together every day. It was a moment I won't soon forget. 

And then there was Mother's Day. I got the royal breakfast in bed with homemade cards and my favorite flowers treatment. Then I got the Whole Foods picnic lunch treatment (Yum!). THEN John and Mariel showed up with THIS. Mariel brought goodies for everyone as she usually does but she also brought loads of beautiful flowers for the girls to arrange in vases around the house. Plus three beautiful lavender plants for us to plant outside. One for each Shinglette to care for. 

How spoiled am I?!?!

What a fabulous aunt. 

If I had every flower in the world to choose from these are the ones I would have chosen - seriously. There is no filter or photoshop on these picture they were and are just that gorgeous! Now my house looks like a resort. 

Happy Uncle John in the background there. It was just the best day.. the best weekend. The best visits and late night talks with the best people and the best food and the best memories.