{"id":544,"date":"2007-12-22T08:15:05","date_gmt":"2007-12-22T14:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/?p=544"},"modified":"2007-12-22T08:18:53","modified_gmt":"2007-12-22T14:18:53","slug":"family-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/family-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning!\u00c2\u00a0  For the record, yes I feel chipper this morning.  The kids *could* sleep in if they wanted to but of course, they didn&#8217;t.  And me?  I got up earlier than I ever need to when they are in school.  They&#8217;re off for the next 2 weeks and I am so excited to have them home with me (check back with me at the end of the 2nd week and see if I still feel this way!  LOL).<\/p>\n<p>Last night we went to Navy Pier for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.winterwonderfest.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Winter Wonderfest<\/a>.  We had a blast.  It&#8217;s nice because Friday and Saturday nights they are open until 10 p.m..\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0  The fest is one of our family&#8217;s annual little winter outings (the other is the windows on State Street) I think we&#8217;ve gone five of the past seven years.  The first year the Fest was in existence, we happened upon a sign\/billboard thing near Children&#8217;s Memorial Hospital in Lincoln Park advertising it.  We were down there visiting a physician for one of the kids when it occurred to us that this indoor thing is a better option while toting a newborn in a stroller than doing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lpzoo.org\/events\/zoolights06.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zoolights<\/a> display at the Lincoln Park Zoo (which we still, almost seven years later, have still not done.  it&#8217;s so mild temperature wise in Chicagoland these days, perhaps I should get the kids bundled up and just do it!  I&#8217;ve been at the zoo more times this past year than I care to count, I think I should just take the advice of one of my clients and get a membership just for parking purposes!)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Winter Wonderfest was amazing last night.  They&#8217;ve added several attractions that weren&#8217;t there before and the girls and I went ice skating.  I used to ice skate (A LOT)  when I was a kid, took lessons for a number of years and entered competitions.  How is it that I forgot HOW MUCH I love to skate?  Seriously weird how I just totally forgot that I love skating.  So last night was a great reminder of that.  We went on this amazingly fun glider ride that made Maddie &amp; I feel like we were flying.  It was way cool.  We did the usuals&#8230;the cookie decorating (Maddie has given the icing they use a serious thumbs down, Duane joked with her: &#8220;What did you think it&#8217;d be like?&#8221;  I did everything the kids did, I love being a kid again, climbing up the inflateable HUGE slides and sliding down with no worries, riding the train, rocked on the big ginormous rocking horse&#8230;I probably was the biggest dork there.  No matter, I had fun!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a few with the point &amp; shoot camera (for the record, YES, I am still having a blast just pointing and shooting.  Now that I&#8217;ve read the instruction manual (hehe) I get the camera features a bit more so I feel a little less chaotic with figuring it out.).  Fair warning, I&#8217;m not doing anything to these files , just uploading them after resizing them.  That&#8217;s the whole point of this little camera! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for stopping in, enjoy!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0347.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[pics-1198331763]\" title=\"All the Pretty Trees\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0347.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"All the Pretty Trees\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" height=\"325\" width=\"416\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0352.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[pics-1198331763]\" title=\"The Big Tree\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0352.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"The Big Tree\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" height=\"416\" width=\"322\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0360.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[pics-1198331763]\" title=\"3 Girls on the Rocking Horse (and they sell the pix too, I bought one even tho this p&amp;s shot isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 1\/2 bad)\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0360.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"3 Girls on the Rocking Horse (and they sell the pix too, I bought one even tho this p&amp;s shot isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 1\/2 bad)\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" height=\"325\" width=\"416\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0374.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[pics-1198331763]\" title=\"L Girl on Skates (for the first time)\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0374.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"L Girl on Skates (for the first time)\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" height=\"325\" width=\"416\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0399.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[pics-1198331763]\" title=\"On A Train\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/img_0399.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"On A Train\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" height=\"325\" width=\"416\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Doesn&#8217;t Maddie look THRILLED?  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">xoxo, Mare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning!\u00c2\u00a0 For the record, yes I feel chipper this morning. The kids *could* sleep in if they wanted to but of course, they didn&#8217;t. And me? I got up earlier than I ever need to when they are in school. They&#8217;re off for the next 2 weeks and I am so excited to have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[661],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicago-child-photographer","tag-miscellaneous-non-photography-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marmaladephotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}