Disney

While we were spending the week in Argentina, the girls went with each set of grandparents for a week of fun. Lauren headed to New Jersey to spend time with Mom Mom and Pop Pop. Here's the happy girl...

And Sophie went to Disney World with Nana Nana and Pappap, where she was in princess heaven. Here she is with Princess Jasmine (I like the attitude)...

And Snow White.

 And she celebrated her birthday (again) with a Cinderella cake during her lunch with all of the princesses. I'm not sure we'll be able to top this birthday! 

Viva Argentina!

Although it still feels like winter, we all took a week off for our "spring break" trips. Dave and I headed WAY south to Argentina - and it was amazing! We started the trip in el Calafate, Patagonia. It took us 25 hours door to door, but it was totally worth it. We arrived Saturday night, checked into our hotel, which was more of a bed and breakfast, and headed right to dinner, where we enjoyed some amazing wine (Malbec of course) and local beef. We spend Sunday exploring the town, which is small and tourist-based, with lots of little shops and plenty of places to eat. And then on Monday we took our first big excursion, where we hiked the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Here's what it looks like from the water...

 And here's the group (8 of us and 2 guides) about an hour into the hike (it took us about 2.5 hours to get to the middle of the glacier)

At the center was a pool, where we sat and ate our lunch (which was a quick lunch, b/c it's pretty cold sitting on a glacier)

The next day we took another excursion to Estancia Cristina, a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, it was a three hour boat ride to get there, and we passed nothing but icebergs on the way. Here's one of them...

Once we made it to the Estancia we did a 9 mile hike down through a canyon, which at one time was covered by an ocean, so there were lot of fossils. Here's a shot of the group (there were 12 of us and a guide) hiking down into the canyon. 

 Dave and I with some mountains in the background. There's a hanging glacier on the one right above my head. Unfortunately no pictures really do either of these hikes justice. The scenery was really breathtaking. 

On Wednesday we left Patagonia (sadly) and headed north to Buenos Aires, where we spent the rest of the week. The weather was warm (unlike Patagonia or Philly) and the city is incredibly vibrant - although not many people spoke English, so we had to bumble along with our very poor Spanish (mine much worse than Dave's). 

We did the tourist thing - mostly wandering around to different neighborhoods, checking out the the sites and eating... lots and lots of eating (lucky we were doing so much walking). Here are a few random shots...

Happy 4th Birthday Sophie!

This weekend we celebrated Sophie's 4th birthday. On Friday she had a celebration at school. Dave and I got to come in for a special Circle Time, where she presented to the class a poster she made.

She picked these pictures and glued them on herself (luckily I wrote the words on first).

Here we are helping her present it.

Then they do a special ceremony where the birthday kid takes a globe and walks around a candle (to represent the sun) as many times as they are old - so Sophie walked around 4 times while her teacher, Ms. Dhar, talked about significant moments each year in her life. (Yes, she's wearing a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt. She like's it because it has a rainbow...and it's badass). 

And then she shared cookies with all of her classmates. 

On Sunday we had a birthday party for all of her classmates and a few friends from outside of school at a kids gym called Philly InMovement.

Uncle Dick was there with balloon entertainment. 

Sophie did her first handstand!

And I made strawberry cupcakes - a personal request :) 

And at the end of the party she thanked all of her friends for coming. It was a really fun day and she had a great time being the center of attention and FINALLY getting to turn 4 :) 

Valentine's Day

We had a very snowy Valentine's Day and school was closed, so we had yet another day of finding indoor activities. Dave made the girls a GIANT valentine and hung it on the fridge. What artistic ability :)

The girls in their LOVE shirts, thanks to 'auntie' Aleen! Right before this picture was taken, Lauren bit Sophie pretty hard, so Sophie wasn't too thrilled to get in close again. You can see the hesitation in her eyes - and the look of glee in Lauren's! 

There was a Valentine's Day party at Nest, and indoor play center. Sophie went to the face paining right away, and asked for, what else, but a Princess. 

The little princess