August beach photos

In trying to get through this backlog of events that I've racked up, let's head all the way back to mid-August (almost 6 weeks ago now), when we went to the beach to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. I already posted the photos that my sister took during the kids' week with my family, as well as the first couple of photos I took there while practicing with my new lens. Next up - photos on the beach!

On Saturday we all (except Dad, who was at work) took the kids to the beach for a couple of hours. Despite being there for 5 days, my mom & sister hadn't been able to get the kids over to the beach (it does require a pretty good amount of stuff, as well as energy!), so we wanted to enjoy the nice weather. This was the first time I'd taken the 50mm lens out in the sun, and I was very happy with the photos!

 Carrie took this one of Henry and I. 

Update: I've posted scenery photos from the same day on my photography blog. Click here to see.

Genevieve Seibold 1913-2012

Late Monday night, Evan's grandmother Genevieve passed away at the wonderful age of 99. For someone of that age, she was amazingly healthy, but had been unable to live on her own for the past couple of years (a situation which continued to frustrate her through the end). She unfortunately suffered from a severe stroke on Sunday and survived approx 24 hours afterwards. We're missing her terribly, but I for one am glad that she did not have to suffer long, and we can instead remember her the way we'd prefer (and honestly, the way she'd prefer as well). Here's a link to the obituary, which includes information on the service this Saturday in Queens, NY.

Evan was able to get there to see her on Monday before she passed, which I know meant a lot to him and I hope to her. Even better, he took the kids up there last weekend while I was in Amsterdam and he told me how great it was to see Henry and Gram (as I called her) talking and laughing together. I'm really glad that Evan now has that memory.

I didn't know her before 13 years ago, but today Evan posted a photo of her as a young lady - she was lovely.

99 years on this Earth is an amazing feat that many of us are never going to experience, particularly (mostly) illness-free. Evan knows how lucky he is to have had a grandparent in his life for this long, particularly the one that he was so close with.

Personally, I feel lucky that my children got to know their Great Grandma, as she's the only great-grandparent they had left. Even in the last few months, when she was having a hard time concentrating on things and not feeling well, she always made a point of talking to the kids and interacting with them.

Evan asked me to find a few photos of her that I had taken over the years and send them to him (he's in NJ now) for use in the service this weekend. I wanted to share my favorites here.

 Gram wasn't really a dog person, but she actually took to Calla pretty quickly after we got her. Calla quickly learned that Gram would sneak her treats, and used to sit right near her. It was adorable. This was from Christmas 2005.

 Gram and Natalie in May 2009.

 Christmas 2009

4 generations of women (even if I'm not by blood!) - January 2011

Great Grandma with her great grandchildren, January 2011

Lastly, the most recent one I have, taken in May 2012.

We'll miss you, Gram.

I'm back!

I took my portable hard drive with me on my trip to The Netherlands, fully expecting to get at least one blog post done while there...but since it's been 10 days since my previous post, I think you can see that didn't exactly happen! The trip was great - I had a blast with my coworker Kristin (and a couple others) in Amsterdam both upon our arrival and after working all week. I of course have tons of photos of the things we did/saw in Amsterdam, and will get my favorites up asap! 

Even better, as much as we loved sightseeing, the work part of my trip was also really great. We learned a lot, both in terms of product knowledge and sales, and it was great to finally see the home office and meet the personnel there. I could not have asked for a better week...excluding the part where I got a crappy cold on our next-to-last day, so came home with both jet lag and the cold.

Today I'm feeling better - I think the jet lag is pretty much dealt with (coming home is far easier than going over there!), so now it's just the battle to kick this cold. I'm tired of blowing, coughing, and spitting out icky stuff every 5 minutes. Gross, I know, but sometimes the truth is. At least I was able to celebrate Kathy & Eric's daughter Katie's baptism today - it was a lovely day with friends, celebrating a beautiful baby girl and her adorable cousin Gavin!

This week I'm here for most of the week, and then not traveling anywhere the next two weeks, so hopefully I'll finally get caught up from August and September events! At least it gives me something to keep me busy, right? Cause there's nothing else on my plate at all!

And I'm off!

Tomorrow (Friday) I leave for The Netherlands! I'm very excited...I'm heading to our European headquarters for a week of training with a few coworkers next week. While we don't need to arrive until Sunday, my colleague Kristin and I are going early to enjoy a day and a half of sightseeing in Amsterdam before heading up to Wageningen, where our headquarters are located. There are 5 of us from the US going, and 2 from our China office - it will be nice to finally meet so many of my Dutch colleagues that I've only chatted with over email! We're also going to see a couple of facilities - the Restaurant of the Future (which I hope to have some really cool photos of), and an animal research facility that my company owns. In addition, we'll get some in-depth product and sales training that I think will be useful. It will be a great trip...but wow am I going to miss my family!!

It's even more difficult because I was sick this week - so last night, on my next-to-last night at home, I ended up going to bed around 6pm and sleeping through til this morning! I was just exhausted and feeling awful. I made up for that today by being with the kids all afternoon from 3:45pm on - we had a blast. It's just going to be so difficult to leave everyone! Evan is excited for me...but we're going to miss each other like crazy.

To tide me over, here are a couple of recent fave photos of the kiddos. I'll miss my family so much! Yet I know that this trip is worth it.

 

Two completed projects

I wanted to quickly share two cross stitch projects that I completed recently. The first was for Kathy's little girl Katie for her nursery. Here's the completed cross stitch (sorry that I can't get it facing the right way; something isn't working right). I love the mom and baby animals, and the colors!

 However, you can see the many wrinkles - I couldn't give it to her like that. Plus, it needed a frame! So, I ironed the crap out of it (the kids thought that part was fascinating), and found a great white frame (the walls of Katie's room are yellow so it will stand out nicely), and framed it (which involved some alignment and trimming).

 And...voila! Final project. Sorry for the washed out colors - I didn't realize it wasn't super vibrant until after I downloaded the photos off my camera, and now it's not at my house any more to take a new photo! But I'm very happy with how it came out, and I think Kathy is as well, which is really the most important part.

Second, I found a fun, inexpensive ballerina pattern online. I changed a couple of the colors and decided to put it on a pink fabric background to make it even girlier. It turned out to be much larger than I realized, and luckily I was able to find a ready-made black frame to put it in.

If you look closely, you can tell that the ballerinas ended up not centered on the fabric (totally my fault - failure of counting it seems!). So, before framing, I wanted to add something to balance it a bit. Here's the final project with my additions:

I really love how it came out! And, instead of hanging this in Natalie's room as originally intended, I'm trying to sell it at Tiny Toes Dance Academy (there's a gift shop there). So far it's been up about 10 days, with no takers, but I'm hopeful that someone will love it a little girl in their life. I've started the same thing for Natalie, but on black fabric with gray silhouettes and bright blue, pink, and purple costumes, and would definitely do custom designs if asked. That's on hold for a bit as I work on something else, but it'll get finished one of these days! Thanks for looking at my work :)

First day of school 2012

Wednesday September 5 was Natalie's first day at preschool for the 2012-13 school year. She's at the same preschool as last year, but now she's in the "older 4s" room (last year was older 3s). She's been very excited about going back to school like all of the "big kids", and so we had to pick a very special first day of school outfit and take lots of photos. Here are Natalie and Henry in the morning before we left for Ms. Essie's (preschool is 12:15-3:15pm). Note that here her hair is in cute pigtails (and she's rocking the princess tiara), but neither of those made it to school later that day.

 After picking her up at Essie's we had to stop at the house to grab her backpack, so I took this same photo that I took last year (in front of the door).

 Since we arrived at school about 10 minutes early, I also grabbed a couple of photos outside of the entrance.

 Natalie and her friend Caroline saw each other, gave big hugs, and it was like it hadn't been a couple of months since they'd seen each other. Both Wednesday and Friday (school is MWF afternoons) they were inseparable, but apparently did allow others to play with them too which is good (we're trying to walk the line appropriately between getting Natalie to play with everyone, and letting her choose what she'd like to do and who she'd like to do it with).

 Parents stayed the first day (some in the room, but we also attended a first-day orientation). Natalie's hard to see in this photo - she's just to the left of the big blue calendar (with Caroline next to her).

After school was over, we did the now-standard "parents hang out for 10 minutes while the kids play in front of the building". Here are Natalie, Caroline, and Addison climbing on the rocks together.

It's really great to see her making these friends - she and Caroline are definitely close, but Addison and Madison seem to be close as well. I'm glad she's got this group of girls her own age, and I hope that they continue to grow in their friendships throughout the school year (whether with these 3, or others in the room).

Playing with a new lens

This post was supposed to be the video that I took just after the one in the previous post, but Blogger is STILL not letting me upload it. I don't know why that happens - maybe because Blogger is a free service and so can only handle certain videos? I know I shouldn't complain...it's just frustrating when I want to share something cute with everyone and can't!

So, instead, here are the first photos I took at the OBX when we went down to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday last month. I mentioned this two posts ago, when I shared the photos my sister took of the fun they had with the kids before we arrived. When we arrived on Friday, I came with my new camera lens that I had not yet tried, but was eager to use! I've got a ton of photos to show using it - here are my first ones, taken during our birthday celebration with Dad.

I had to figure out with the lens (a prime 50mm fixed lens, f1.8) how to focus. As you'll see in this photo (the first that I took), I hadn't quite gotten the hang of it - Natalie was supposed to be the focus, but her dolphin was instead. Since then, with all of my practice, I've learned what the depth of field needs to be to correct for this problem. Even so, I kind of like how it came out!




Second attempt at a portrait photo (Henry is doing his "cheese" face) - much better focus on the subject!

 Carrie took this shot for us - family fleshpile!

 And finally, Dad's 60th birthday cake. While maybe not super exciting, it was delicious and exactly what he wanted (he always asks for the same cake - vanilla with lemon pudding inside). The rest of us were pretty excited about it too!

August playtime video #1

When I want to take videos of the kids, I typically use my point-and-shoot, as pulling out my DSLR for videos is really more of a pain than it's worth. However, I often then forget to take the videos off; hence, a lag between taking these videos and getting them up here.

This one is from August 20 - the kids made up this entertaining game for themselves, and it was just too cute. Particularly Henry's choice of running shoe.

 

 Note: this is video #1 of 2. I couldn't get blogger to load them both on here in the same post, so I'm doing this one this morning and the other tonight.

A week at Grandma & Pop-Pop's

The week of August 12, Natalie and Henry headed down to the Outer Banks with their Aunt Carrie for 5 days with just Carrie, Grandma & Pop-Pop. August 16 was my dad's 60th birthday, so the kids were able to be there on the day; Evan and I arrived the next day (Friday). Carrie took some photos of the things they did all week, and I wanted to share my favorites here.

Night 1: relaxing with Pop-Pop and watching some  baseball.

Every night: helping Pop-Pop feed the fish. 

You'll note that just behind Dad on the left is Rizzo. She loves the fish-feeding ritual as it ends with her getting a Dingo treat. The kids were very good at alternating nights between who got to give her the Dingo; it was actually easier once we arrived because then both Calla and Rizzo got one!

At least 3 times: fun in Great Aunt Linda's pool

These floaties are a blessing - I'm so glad I bought them. $1 each, and the kids don't need to be held all of the time in the pool. So wonderful!

More pool time: this time the lion wading pool purchased by Aunt Carrie

A special treat: frozen yogurt!

Aug 16, Pop-Pop's birthday: Dolphin tour! The kids loved being on the boat and saw tons of dolphins. I'm jealous that we weren't there to join in on the fun!

It means so much that the kids can go and have these experiences with extended family, despite how hard it is to be away from them. It's a wonderful treat for them and my family, and a nice little break for us. It was so great to get down there to pick them back up - photos of our day at the beach next!

FVPB Pool Party

Three weeks ago we had our (now annual) Friends of the Va Pep Band alumni BBQ. It started last year, and as always, if we do something once it becomes tradition, right? Both years it's been held at the house of an older pep band alum (he graduated in the early 80s, I believe) who lives in Vienna. The house is gorgeous - old Victoria style - and has a lovely backyard complete with pool. Last year the turnout wasn't fantastic (I thought I had a blog post to link to, but apparently I didn't do one), but this year a lot more people came, and we had a pretty great time.

We of course spent the first part of the party in the water with the kids (getting them out of the pool was a challenge!). Natalie learned how to do something new: jump off of the diving board in the 10-foot deep end (with her inner tube float on); she still went under water some, but came right back up and thought it was just fantastic. Henry continues to have almost no fear in the water which requires us to keep two eyes on him as he'll just launch himself out into the water!

Once we ate, the kids wanted to go back in the pool but we'd already put on dry clothes, so that wasn't happening. They of course were still near the water, of course, and we had Bryan supervising from the water

 This photo cracks me up.

 Henry doing his "cheese" face

 Reese & Chase running around in my kids' floaties. Too cute!

One of the alums who graduated well after me (I don't remember her name) brought some hula hoops with her, which the girls thought were just SO much fun. Unfortunately they were adult size, so a bit hard for the kids, but they still had great fun.

  I love this shot of Henry, Evan and Katie!

 Chase & Reese wrestling - too cute! But of course I can say that cause I'm not their mom :)

 Natalie instructing everyone on a dance lesson.

These next two are candid shots of the adults - I'm trying to be better about not just taking photos of the kids. 

 Kathy & Kaite

The ladies! Rachel, Kathy, myself, Beth

 

And I think this guy may have been the hit of the party, at least with the kids. My friend Erik needed to bring his Great Dane "puppy" with him (he's not two yet, so still technically a puppy) - he weighs more than I do, and his head was a bit taller than Henry. For perspective, Bryan is about 6'7". Huge dog, but so sweet! The kids were loving him.

Overall, lots of fun - great way for those of us alums who may not see each other all of the time to have a second excuse to get together every year (the first excuse being Foxfield every April).