Leesburg town tree lighting

On the first Friday in December, there was a ceremony on the town green to light the town Christmas tree. We've tried to go every year since having Natalie (I think we've only missed once), as it's a nice holiday experience to share with the kids! And luckily, unlike the previous two years, it wasn't too cold this year!

Once festivities got under way, first up was the lighting of the town menorah. I really really love this photo that I took of the menorah after it was lit; something about the light is just beautiful to me!

There were songs by a high school show choir (luckily just singing, but they were really good!), and a local community choir (sadly, less good). But live Christmas music is always fun.

 After that, Evan used his "connections" to get Natalie up on stage with Mayor Umstattd for the official tree lighting (really, the mayor is just a lovely lady!). That's the mayor below in her Santa hat :)

 Voila! The lit town Christmas tree.

 The mayor's daughter used my camera to take this family photo with the whole light display behind us.

 I then managed to wrangle the kids into posing for one nice shot for me in front of the tree. Pretty cute!

 I then saw a couple who looked like they wanted a photo in front of the tree, and she was holding a VERY nice Nikon camera, so I thought she would be a good choice to ask to take one of us in exchange for me taking one of them. WRONG! I'm amazed at how many people know nothing about framing a picture, especially when they own a nice camera! I was able to do some cropping and adjusting to get it to look like this, which still isn't exactly what I wanted but was the best I could do.

And now, only three holiday-related posts to go!!

Christmas 2012 roundup

Well, I certainly hope that everyone else had a more relaxing Christmas than we did. Last Friday, Evan started not feeling so well suddenly, and ended up with a pretty rough case of the flu. His parents arrived on Saturday for Christmas, and he powered through with us on a holiday tour of the White House (which I'll have pics of soon on here), but Sunday he just crashed. I took the kids with his parents to the Udvar-Hazy space museum so he could relax and rest, and Sunday afternoon he started feeling a lot better...around the same time I started to feel really cruddy all of a sudden. Monday (Christmas Eve) was rough - I was shivering from a fever pretty much all day, but felt ok on and off. I got a few pics of the kids outside enjoying the start of the unexpected snow fall

and I pushed through some last minute shopping with my sister in the morning.We had dinner plans out that evening, and I made myself get dressed up and go with everyone, despite feeling absolutely awful (which I think is fairly apparent when I look at myself in these photos).

 After getting home from dinner, I basically missed the rest of the evening. I have no idea how high my fever was, but it has to have been pretty bad. Evan forced me into bed, despite my sadness at missing Christmas Eve fun, and I know it was for the best. Luckily my sister took some photos for me of what they and the kids did while I was asleep. First up was setting out the cookies and milk for Santa

 Then was Evan reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas", as he does every year (it's his favorite tradition).

 After the kids went to bed, Evan did wake me up to help set out presents...I wasn't a big help but I was able to direct which gifts went to which person when that was in question. Pretty decent hauls for the kids, huh?!

 Natalie of course could not get through her pile fast enough on Christmas morning; Henry couldn't really care. We had to push him to actually get everything open, and he seemed really overwhelmed. Because of this, I'm going to ask everyone to go really easy on presents for him for his birthday. Opening gifts just isn't a high priority to him. It's actually not a bad thing! I did get a few shots of them opening their presents, of course. Natalie's favorite "set" of presents was her "big sister" doll from Santa. She was so excited to open it! To go with the doll (who we named Anna), Natalie had also asked for the chair she is sitting in, which is a beauty salon chair and accessories to do hair. Natalie loves it!

 Henry got a ton of little presents, mostly dinosaurs, trucks, and Mickey Mouse books/toys in various forms. I got this cute pic of him with the Mickey Mouse stuffed toy I got for him.

I lucked out and received two of the photography-related items I really wanted: Lightroom 4 software for editing photos, and an external Speedlite flash for my camera which is going to make photos requiring flash so much better! I also received this fantastic iPhone case.

Late Tuesday I started to feel better after a Christmas day nap (after Evan's parents and my sister left); it was nice to have my brain back! Since then I've continued to develop a wracking cough (with lovely green stuff to go with it), so I finally made it to the doctor today, and after 2.5 hours was given 3 prescriptions to help with it. Blech! It's nice to feel better, but it still hasn't been relaxing the past couple of days. My parents came on Wednesday, and they were really great - very helpful with the kids, and we had a really nice couple of days together. However, Henry has just been a pill. Which is a nice way of saying he's been a bit of an @$$hole. I hate to call my own child that, but it's true. He's been screaming for no reason, defiant, willful, and just generally a pain in the ass. I know this is fairly standard for his age (closing in on 3), but after a week at home together and Evan and I both recovering, it's more than we really feel like we can handle. My parents were very understanding, as they dealt with the worst of it, but there's not been much anyone has been able to do. We're trying a new thing tonight where his favorite toys get taken away when he screams, and that actually seems to be working some, so I'm going to try that again tomorrow and see what happens. The idea of 4 more days at home with this is utterly exhausting, so I'm hoping we can creatively come up with ways to distract him without resorting to electronics, which seem to be the only things that prevent him from freaking out. Wish us luck...and hope that the worst part of this phase is going to be over soon.

Christmas at the National Harbor

On the first Sunday in December we met up with some friends of ours at the National Harbor in DC. There was an event I found there that turned out to not be at all what we thought it would be - from the description, I was expecting a "winter wonderland" type of event, where the kids would be able to run around through a Santa's Village (for example). Instead, what we found was an overgrown craft fair, and not a very good one at that. We were able to set up a super cute photo-op for the kids!

 Henry wasn't willing to get into the first few with all of the kids, but I did convince him later to get in with just Natalie.

Afterwards we headed over to the actual National Harbor (this event was about a mile away) with Beth, Jason and Ellie for lunch and some walking around. While the event was a bust we were able to hang out with our friends for a bit, and get some super cute pics of the kids, so definitely not a total loss!

Preschool winter party

Friday was the last day of preschool for 2012, and it ended with Natalie's class's winter party. Each year there are 3 parties (fall, winter, and Valentine's Day); previously the teachers had been solely responsible, but this year they changed it up and asked each of the parents to sign up for one of the parties and run them. At the beginning of the year I signed up for the winter party. I also ended up being the "lead" parent for it (not that I really ended up doing any more work than anyone else!), and I think we put together a pretty great winter party for the kids!

A couple of other parents were in charge of the goody bags, which they put together beautifully with each child's name

One mom also made these great 3D snowmen for the kids' tables! 

 I was in charge of the craft; I found these great kits at Michael's for snowman, penguin, and polar bear ornaments. The kids got to decorate two of their choice.

A couple of moms had a great idea for snack: cut up pieces of banana, pretzel sticks, raisins, and clementines. 

What can you do with that? Make snowmen! The kids were able to use their imaginations as to how to put the pieces together - either vertically or horizontally on the plate. This was Natalie's masterpiece!

The game we played was "Snowman Says", as suggested by another mom. One of the dads did such a great job running it - complete with stove top hat and corncob pipe! The kids loved the game

Next up was the performance! The kids have been practicing their songs for a while; these two videos represent my favorite performances.

And lastly a couple of photos of my big girl

 
Natalie and her friend Caroline

Kid photographers

As I've posted previously, in the past year I've let the kids (Natalie in particular) play more with my Canon point-and-shoot camera since I have my DSLR that I now use almost exclusively. Natalie really enjoys taking photos; I think her interest has grown as mine has. She almost always wants to take photos now when I am! Recently, Henry has expressed a greater interest in the camera as well (although I think most of his enjoyment remains with the camera lens going in and out when you turn the camera on and off), and he's finally learned how to push the button far enough down to actually snap a picture. I've been keeping their photos, as I think they'll really enjoy looking back on these when they're older and seeing their first forays into photography! I've finally organized all of the photos that they have taken over the past 4 weeks or so, and wanted to share my favorites here. The first one, to the right above is of our Christmas tree after we finished decorating. I like that she took a photo of me as I was taking photos of the ornaments!

Later that night Natalie wanted to do a "photo shoot" which really just meant boss me/us around for a while as she took photos. The outcome was pretty cute though!
  

 From just last week Natalie took these of all of us.

 

 You'll now see the difference between a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old taking photos. Natalie's look like priceless works of art compared to Henry's....but at the same time, it's really cool to see what grabs his attention while he has the camera! I could try to be witty here with these pictures, but this dad/comedian is much funnier and encompasses all that I would write. It's so very true!

 I like the artiness of the blur on the photo of me, and the angle of the photo of Natalie!

love the blurry self portrait!