Saying farewell to the Fall & Winter – Sort of! | Becoming Mom

Saying farewell to the Fall & Winter – Sort of!

March 30th, 2015 by ariana

Here it is, March 30th and technically spring, but it snowed. Yes SNOWED this morning! Not sure why I’m shocked honestly, this has been the loooooooongest snowiest winter ever. But I’m not just here to talk about winter, I’ve still got to tackle fall as well because it’s been so long since I last posted. Shamefully long. Jasper is almost done with Kindergarten, and Sasha & Willow are 2 and half. In three short months they will be moving up to the preschool room at daycare! I can’t even believe it. This whole year has gotten away from me. Every time I think of something I want to post about I think – wait, I can’t post that because I didn’t post yet about such and such that happened before it. Case in point, I never posted about Jasper’s 6th birthday, so I didnt’ want to then post about his first day at Kindergarten. It’s a vicious cycle so I decided today I’m going to do a catch up post so that I can commit to memory some of the highlights of this fall and Winter.

The thing is that I don’t want to forget this year in particular for the girls because two is tough yes, but also MAGICAL. Partly because I just love the toddler stage SO much – the cute way they say things, their chubby checks and round necks and diaper butts. But also because this whole year has been a series of firsts for them. Yes, their birthday party was technically their second birthday party, but it was the first one where they got really excited about the cake, and their party hats, and their presents!

Ditto with Christmas, and their first time playing in the snow. Pure magic.

But let me back up a bit to where the gaps in the story started forming.. right around this guys sixth birthday:

It was the culmination of our family vacation week and one of my favorite days of all time. Close on the heels of that it was time to send our first baby off to school for the first time:

The girls came to see him off:

And then I headed back home to nervously wait for him to come home on the bus…

And then he came RUNNING off the bus, happy as a clam. Jasper totally had this school thing down! And I’m happy to report that he’s really thrived this year. The most exciting development being that he is now reading!

And thus began our fall, which Sasha & Willow were so enchanted with.. from their first time visiting a pumpkin patch to their first time getting dressed up for Halloween:

And somewhere during this time the girls started taking ballet lessons. Which really, is the cutest darn thing ever. I mean they are a total DISASTER in class, they don’t listen or do anything they are supposed to, but I don’t even care because they love the idea of it, and playing dress up, and I figure the actual following direction part will come eventually right?

And somewhere in the past few months Sasha FINALLY grew enough hair for the two cutest little pigtails ever:

And the other amazing thing that happened is that the girls started playing together. Like really playing.. and watching their bond grow makes my heart explode with happiness every single day:

You can see by the clutter around them that keeping up with two active toddlers and their big brother generally gets the best of me every single day. I can’t possibly keep up with the mess. And when big brother gets in on the action which he regularly does to play “space ship” “camping” or “train” (which b it’s even more chaos:

But there is a lot of love and a good deal of exhaustion and patience and somehow everything finds it’s way back to it’s place somehow.

And now that spring is in the air, I am just now finally able to look back at this winter and appreciate the fun:

And the beauty!

One of the bright spots of the long winter was Valentine’s Day. One of the ONLY annual traditions that I’ve actually stuck with is doing a Valentine’s day themed shoot with Jasper. In the past I’ve used the images to create a custom valentine’s day card for his classmates. This year my travel schedule and Jeff’s were so busy that I didn’t manage to shoot early enough for the cards, but I did instead do the shoot ON valentine’s day with Jasper and his girlfriend Eleanor. I almost didn’t pull it together but I’m SO glad I did because these two are just the cutest together and I’m so happy I got to document this first puppy love!

(You can see the complete session on my photography website here: http://www.arianafalerni.com/2015/02/14/happy-valentines-day-3/)

In another huge milestone Jeff and I took Jasper to Disney/Universal for a whirlwind 3 day trip WITHOUT the twins! It was so incredibly special to focus just on Jasper for three days, he’s such an amazing big brother and has never once been jealous of all the attention the girls get. In fact, he wanted the girls to come with us on the trip and was devastated when we told him they were staying home. We didn’t have the best weather, but we DID have the best little Harry Potter impersonator at the whole Universal studios! Seriously, I stopped counting how many people asked to take a picture with him, he was quite the rockstar!

Eating Burty Bot’s Everyday Flavoured Beans!

We spent our last day at the Magic Kingdom and I was freezing, so didn’t take too many images. But the ONE image I wanted to recreate was this one from our last trip to Disney when Jasper was only 2!

Too bad I couldn’t recreate some of those blue skies and warm temperatures!

But we did make some amazing memories and I’m already looking forward to a few years from now when we will attempt this trip WITH the girls in tow. I can only imagine how excited they will be to meet Cinderella and Snow white who they so strongly identify with since dressing up like them for Halloween!

So, that, in a very long nutshell brings us pretty much up to date with what’s been going on in in our neck of the woods this Fall/Winter. I can look back now with a bit of fondness, but I am very VERY much looking forward to getting outdoors again this spring!