St Patrick's Day

a.k.a day of all green things, and also potatoes, as it turns out.

Our very good friend and neighbor, Carlin, is from Northern Ireland, so we had to spend St Patrick's day with these guys and get the REAL DEAL. And this is what happened.
   

We stamped paint with potatoes. We race with potatoes. We ate potatoes. And green jelly. Guess the Irish never run out of potatoes :) The kids had such a blast - they did some Irish danced too, although I am still trying to figure out the different between Olivia's Irish dancing and her ballet dancing. Overall she seemed consumed by how she could make her skirt twirl around.
 

The potato racing was such a hint too! The more they dropped the potatoes, the more they giggled. Before we knew it we had potatoes flying across the living room.
 

And yep, that's the green jelly I told you guys about. Yummi, uh? The adults had yummi Irish stew with mashed potatoes and drank a lot of beer - duh, what else. Such a fun evening. We have the best neighbors in the whole wide world, I have to admit.
 

Crazy NYC driver

She's so little, but you should see her zooming her New York City with her scooter - there is no stopping her. And everybody that sees her can't help but smile because she's so damn cute. Also probably because she's usually wearing polka dots head to toes :) She's been obsessed with them ever since she started to crawl, and that's probably her favorite thing to do now. Can you hear me running next to her? I'm gonna need to get my own soon so I can keep up with her! How much I love this little girl...

Brooklyn, baby!

Sadly, we don't venture out to Brooklyn to much. Hubby doesn't like to go places that are dangerous. Uhm uhm. You can't blame him, he's been kidnapped, mugged and robbed a few times - so to him, any place that is even slightly potentially "dangerous", he'll avoid altogether. Don't ask me why this includes Brooklyn, I think he's stuck in a different decade.

 In any case, I had an appointment with a photographer for the girl on Saturday, so we decided we might as well make a little trip out of it. And it was brilliant. The warmest day we've had this year by far, and the girls played in the sun while we were waiting for the ferry. They were running around like crazy girls - I think they were so excited to be able to take their jackets off. Whatever happened to that, we're back to hats and gloves now.
    

Our first stop was the old carrousel in DUMBO. I can't believe it took us so long to go there - such a fun place for kids, and it's so gorgeous too! I believe the place gets very crowded in the summer though, but since we went on the first warm day of Spring we were able to get in super easily. The girls were in heaven.  
 

After a little cupcakes and the photo session (in which Madeline pouted almost the entire time, and Olivia played the model with her hands on her hips), we headed back toward the ferry. The sun was starting to set, and the light was beyond gorgeous. Such bliss.
 

My man. He's always so wonderfully supportive. I don't know what I would do without him. He recently got a promotion with work, and he ask me to take a couple of "celebration" pics for me, to capture this happy time.
 

Oh, and how he makes these little girls fly up high in the air. They love it just as much as he does :)

To end this perfect day, we went to our favorite little street in New York - Stone Street. So many memories, good and not so good, were made there, and for some reason it feels a bit like "home" every time we hang out there. Maybe because it actually looks like a street you could find in Europe, but I think it's because of all those memories. If you ever come to visit us in New York, you can be sure that we'll take you there!

Pretty girls

Angry uncle Jim

When life gives you lemons...

...go to Rocking Horse Ranch.

We could have decided to forget about the hard things in life with a bottle of Tequila, but somehow going snow tubing & horse back riding seemed a lot more fan. This girl is not a big fan of hangovers, obviously.



We had the best time there. Well, if I have to be honest, the girls and Troels had the best time there. I also had a great time, but spend a lot of it crying and trying to make sense of what happened that week.

But I am so glad we went away, because it gave me an opportunity to focus on other things. And that probably the best thing we could do with those lemons.
 


My favorite thing to do that weekend was probably tubing at night with Olivia while Madeline was roasting Marshmallows with Troels by the fireside. I mean, look at her face while we are tubing. Priceless.

I lovely love my family

Blizzard...sorta

Well, it was supposed to be a blizzard, at least. The thing is, it happens during the night so we didn't feel much of the high winds, and by the time we woke up, we had just about 25cm of fresh snow on the ground - rather than the meter or so they were announcing. In the morning Madeline and I went for a little walk to play with the snow - this little girl had a hard time with it at first! She wanted to walk in it, but she hated the texture. She wanted to touch it, but it was too cold. She wanted to hold it, but her gloves were making it too hard. Let me tell you, I had a grumpy little Madeline with me. And a grumpy Madeline is a whole lotta fun, let me tell you that...

But then we ran into Hamish and Flo playing outside. Hamish was throwing snow balls in the Hudson and Madeline thought that was the best idea in the whole wide word - so she joined him and started having a ball with it :)



In the evening she asked me to go on another walk - it was FREEZING out but she didn't care. She was having so much fun just walking around. The sun was setting, the light was so so beautiful with the pretty white snow. I really wish it would snow more here - most of the time, it's very cold anyway, and it would be a love more fun if we had all that pretty white stuff to play with!! Days like these make me miss Scandinavia.
 

Madeline

This is her proud face whenever she conquers a new thing! So freaking cute.

 I am so very deeply in love with the little girl right now. Not that I am not with Olivia, but I just want to savor every single thing Madeline does and says these days. She's growing up every single day, turning into such a fun, spirited, clever little girl - and she's hardly a baby anymore. But still, she's still a bit of a baby. My baby. And not quite yet a big girl. So I want to savior every moments. The last little baby things she does, and the new things she learns. Every single moment.
 

My little Picasso

Princesses and cheeseburgers