Trail 5K

On a cool, wet Saturday in early May, Natalie and I participated in our first ever Trail 5K race! It was put on by my friend Maya's horse rescue, Hope's Legacy, on the farm where they keep all of their rescues. Since Natalie and I have been walking so much, and we do occasionally add in some running, we thought we would tackle it! Plus, the money all went to a very good cause.

All 4 of us actually signed up, but when the morning of the race was wet and muddy the boys backed out of going. So Natalie and I put on our layers, packed another set of socks and shoes (as we knew our feet would get wet), and headed out to Afton for the event!

It was drizzling on and off as we arrived, and we definitely had to be careful of some muddy parts on the trail. But we had a great time looping around the farm, and made decent time. Was it my fastest? No. But there were a lot of hills, it was quite slippery, and I couldn't run the whole thing. Natalie actually beat my final time by about 10 seconds, as she put on speed at the end in order to beat me. Ha!

 

We were both very proud of ourselves for doing something new like this!

After the race, they posted photos on FB and I found one decent one of each of us.

Look, she's out in front of me here, too!

Afterwards, we changed out of our wet shoes into the rain boots we brought, and went around to meet some of the horses, check out the vendors who attended, etc. Natalie loved getting to pet the donkeys, horses, and even mini horses. In fact, she fed a treat to a mini horse who Maya said had not let anyone get that close before! My girl loves animals, just like her mom.

Best thing from final week of dance class

One of the very fun things our dance studio does at the end of the semester is below. During the last week or so of classes, at the end of the class, they pull all of the students who are in class at the moment (so could be up to 5 classes at once) into the big studio and have them do their recital piece for each other. That's pretty usual for studios (LSB did the same)...but what CBA does that I love is that after watching each other, they then all take turns "dancing" each others dances!

The main group stays in the front to guide, while everyone else tries to dance along after watching. So you get an older tap group trying to do a much younger class's ballet piece... or in this case, older jazz dancers trying to do Henry's class's tap piece. I love this video clip so much - the older dancers all watching Henry to learn tap from him! And he's just doing his thing. All the feels!

And I find this especially relevant with the hubbub last week over comments made on GMA about "boys being embarrassed to take ballet". Dance, any sort of dance, is just as much of a sport as any other physical activity, and it should be recognized as such! I'm proud of my dancer, and this video shows that.

Foxfield 2019

In catching up on events from last spring, how could I have nearly forgotten about Foxfield?!

This year, we had absolutely lovely weather. We were due after so many terrible years, weather-wise, out of the past 6 or so! Either ridiculously cool and rainy, or WAY too hot. This year was juust right.

I managed to corral almost all of the kids together for a photo before leaving for the event (Rosie was being stubborn and didn't want to come out). Aren't they all so cute in their hats? And also ever so slightly old fashioned and creepy?

I seriously loved Henry's old man cardigan and hat this year. Since it's so hard to get him to dress up EVER, this made me so happy.

 

So then, Foxfield! Horses! Food! Drinks! Much fun in the sun!

We Old Ladies, getting our annual photo. Sadly Beta couldn't make it this year, but she was with us in spirit!

And then Old Ladies with our brood! There's a lot more of them than their used to be, and they are a heck of a lot bigger. Zabby is taller than me!

And the obligatory family photo, of course! Unfortunately this was the best one, and it does have the bus behind us, but in all the others someone had their eyes closed or was making a dumb face, so, bus photo it is!

This year, as happens every few years, Foxfield was on Evan's birthday! So he got an extra special Foxfield cake.

 

As always, a lovely day with our friends made even easier for us by living here in C'ville now, and getting to go home after! Next year will be WAY more fun when we can host all of our friends at our house (they rented a house, as see in the top photos). We can't wait!

My photos of UVA

In my previous post, I showcased favorite photos that the kids took while we walked around UVA on a spring afternoon. Now, I get to share my favorites that I took, and I think the timing is great since the students are moving back in this weekend! I've enjoyed the quiet of the summer, and miss being able to walk unimpeded through Grounds, but it's also nice to see it come back to life.

I've taken to shooting in both RAW and JPEG so that I have the RAW files if I ever have time to edit/process them, but I'm also focusing on camera settings so that I don't HAVE to process them afterwards; I'm happy with how they look straight out of camera. This was a batch that I did not have the energy to edit, and didn't really feel the need to!

She's such a pretty subject. And capturing her eyes without needing to edit is hard! Thankfully I think I'm getting the hang of it.

 

The kiddos were so cute. I loved capturing them capturing their favorite images.

Henry out there did understandably give me some pause...he was a bit precarious! But Evan was nearby, just out of camera view, ready to intervene. Plus, he was so excited to shoot from that perspective, it was hard to say no.

And I love this one of N and I taking photos of each other!

I really love getting to share photography with the kids. Natalie is reaching the point where she wants to learn more about composing an image, what she can do with the camera, etc. Henry still just wants to take photos without any interference from me, which is fine! But I'm hoping I can teach him a few things down the road too.

Kid Photographers: At UVA

Back in the spring, we took a family excursion to UVA to walk Lucy. Not unusual for us anymore, right? But this time was a bit different in that part of the reason we chose to walk there was because the kids both wanted to take some photos and we knew it would be a great place for them to find fun things to photograph.

Henry used my slightly fancy point-and-shoot camera. I believe it was set to auto, and it has a pretty good auto adjustment in terms of ISO and focus. I sat down with him after putting them all on my computer, and he picked out a few of his favorites for me to share here.

MY favorite photo of Henry's wasn't one of his favorites, but I'm sharing it anyway. I am really impressed with how STRAIGHT the lines are in this photo! I didn't edit it at all. Nice job kid!

Natalie was shooting with my Canon Rebel, which she's used once or twice before. It has a non-kit lens attached to it currently which lets her do some good zoom, and it does take better photos than the kit lens (better glass). Here are her favorites that she chose after looking through everything.

My favorite photo of hers was also from when she shot through the tree branches. A good photographer knows sometimes you have to climb into a tree to get the shot you want! I just love these colors and patterns.

Since this class, Natalie has taken a photography summer camp and is now saving up to buy my Rebel camera from me - I'm giving her a great deal :) She even set up a photo studio in her bedroom yesterday and took some photos. I love that she's enjoying this as a hobby!

Contemporary on the floor

After Natalie's summer dance classes were over (they have a 6 week session prior to the 3 week intensive that she is currently 2/3 of the way through), Charlottesville Ballet sent us parents whose daughters were in the summer contemporary class a video of one of the floor routines they were working on. It's a bit repetitive, as they were really practicing getting the motions correct going both left and right across the floor. So, I cut it down to show just the movement, as I thought it was really love especially with the music.

As I said, Natalie has spent the past two weeks in a 7 hour a day dance intensive, and I know at the show this Friday they're going to show us multiple pieces, including a contemporary, that they've learned. I'm really looking forward to seeing it!

We went to Australia!

That's right, we spent the first two weeks of April this year halfway around the world, in Australia! The kids had been asking to go for a while, since we have family there, and we decided that this year was the time to go - the kids are old enough to enjoy and remember the trip, and also to not be a nightmare on the very long journey. The timing worked out very well with both our spring breaks and spring break in Australia, so we could see Evan's brother and his wife and spend time with them, and I was able to get a great deal on 4 tickets, so off we went!

And of course, like every big trip you take, it did NOT start out well. We were due to be at the airport around 1:30pm that day, and the kids had a half day at school, so we took Lucy for one last good walk before taking her to the dog sitter's...and of course I managed to do this to myself.

 

I didn't do it in any fancy way - I tripped on a part of the asphalt I didn't even see, almost managed to catch myself, and ended up "sliding into home" on my left side. Which resulted in a badly banged up pinky (I was worried it was broken for a while, but luckily just badly bruised), a really banged up chin, and eventually a bruised left shoulder (that took longer to show up). My fingers swelled up pretty much immediately, which I can tell you was not fun on the 14 hour overnight flight!

So, I bandage up, kids come up, Lucy gets dropped off, and we go to the Charlottesville airport. The plan was C'ville to Dulles to LA to Melbourne. We arrived, and of course our flight out of C'ville was already way delayed, which meant we would miss our flight to LA, which meant not getting to Melbourne. NOT going to happen! We rented a car, and Evan FLEW us up the road to Dulles. It was tight, but we made it! Can you make out the worried faces of the kiddos as we went??

Everyone was MUCH happier when we had checked bags, gotten through security, and were waiting at the gate.

And after that, the trip really went smoothly! We spent an overnight in Melbourne, meeting up briefly with Todd (we would see him, Claire, and the kids again after our week alone). We checked out the Melbourne museum (which we had not seen on our last trip), and wandered the city before passing out due to exhaustion.

The next day, we got BACK on a plane to hundreds and hundreds of miles north to Cairns, a town along the northern coast so we could see the Great Barrier Reef and all the beauty to explore. This was literally the view from our hotel room on the first day!

We had a great time in Cairns - the harbor and lagoon were incredible.

And when we went swimming in the lagoon, we had the whole thing almost to ourselves! Very cool experience.

We were in Cairns for 5 days, and did a lot more than just hang out at the hotel, walk along the water, and swim. We also went out to the Great Barrier Reef, had a very wet adventure on Green Island, spent a day in Kuranda (a town in the rain forest), and spent one rainy afternoon at the Cairns Aquarium. I'll definitely be sharing photos from those first 3 as there's a lot of cool things to see! And then we had another week with our family outside of Melbourne and on Phillip Island. It was an amazing two weeks for sure!

Cinderella: On Stage

In my previous post I shared photos of Natalie and her friends backstage at Cinderella; this post are my favorite photos I took of her on stage during the dress rehearsal.

Leaping elves and fairies!

Now is when the elves warn Cinderella that midnight is approaching...

And at the end of the ballet, I captured these more close-up shots of my girl. Her placement on stage was perfect! (I was trying to stay out of the way as I took my shots)

What a beautiful finale to a beautiful show!