Never could quite get the hang of Tuesdays

Today was a rough, rough day. It started out great - I spent last night with my friend Kelly in Maryland, as I was in Baltimore til late yesterday and had to be at NIH this morning for work. I had a great night with her and her family, and got to NIH with plenty of time to spare. I met my boss there so the two of us could do a training session, and it turned out that the install two weeks ago was not completed so we couldn't get the training done - neither of us were very happy. But, I had a couple of sales appointments at NIH later in the afternoon so I stuck around. About 20 minutes after my boss left, I got a call from Evan that he was taking care of it, taking him to the hospital, he'd called the pediatrician...I interrupted asking "What?!" Turns out that Henry slipped while rounding the corner at daycare today and managed to plant face-first into the corner of the wall/hallway, and did this to his beautiful face

 He really did himself a doozie, didn't he?! Just looking at that gash makes me want to cry. Luckily it stopped bleeding pretty quickly, and Henry didn't even seem that bothered by it, but looking at this I think it's fairly apparent that he needed to get it professionally looked at!

Evan called me while on the way, and said he'd keep me updated on what the ER docs said. I was completely torn over staying at NIH and coming back; we decided I'd stay until we knew for sure what was going on. I was mostly concerned about him being disoriented or possibly having a concussion, but you can see that he fairly quickly bounced back to his normal self. Here he is in the waiting room.

 And enjoying some goldfish while waiting on his bed.

 Evan took such good care of him - I'm still so upset that I wasn't there to help, but I know there really wasn't much I could do, and being an hour away I would have missed everything by the time I got there anyway.

The docs quickly ruled out a concussion (thank goodness), but confirmed that he needed stitches. I was hoping for steri-strips, but that's a pretty deep gash. So the next step was a lidocaine wrap to help numb it up - that took an hour.

 And then the actual stitches - 9 of them total. I'm torn on missing that part - I would have loved to have been there for Henry, but I'm also fine with missing seeing that. He was a trooper, according to Evan, and the pediatric department sent a helper to distract him throughout, which is awesome. Here he is after stitches and awesome super hero band aid!

 When I got home not too long after, he was doing great - out on his bike with Evan and Natalie. He's been so wonderful all evening. I wanted to give him some good mommy time (and I needed some cuddle time with him too!), so while Evan took Natalie to dance class Henry and I went out for some FroYo and a quick trip to Target. I wanted to get some Mederma for kids to try to minimize the scarring, and Henry had received $10 for his birthday from my aunt, so I thought we'd go get him a toy. He was such a great kid all evening! Chocolate FroYo really does perk you up.

So, that's our boy with his "war wound". A scary day, but it's over now and everyone is sleeping soundly. Here's hoping this won't happen again for a very long, long time...or hopefully never!

The Queen's Tea

Two weeks ago, I met my friend Kathy in Occoquan, VA for "The Queen's Tea" at the Pink Bicycle Tea Room.

I found a deal to this place online for two, and thought we'd have a nice time together. It was thoroughly delicious, and adorable, and we definitely need to go back!

I arrived a little early so I walked around taking some photos in Occoquan. Sadly I didn't have my real camera, but I think my iPhone did pretty well. Such lovely spring flowers!

 

I ducked into an antique shop and snapped this photo of the pretty purple items on display.

This sign was outside of a restaurant there (the Coq and Bowl; we've eaten there once before), and it cracked me up!

Then, it was time for tea! The tea room was very cute, with mismatched plates in all patterns and colors.

I had a white cherry blossom tea (I can't remember the exact name), and Kathy chose a peach tea, I believe.

Detail on my spoon; I used the attachable macro lens that Kathy got me for Christmas. It goes right onto the lens of your iPhone and lets you take macro photos! Very cool.

Tea consisted of three courses - tea first (and throughout), then soup or salad, then our main course and dessert presented on the tray below. It was almost too pretty to eat, so we did take a moment to snap some photos before digging in.

 

The finger sandwiches were quite yummy, as were the desserts. I would definitely go back there again; next time I have to bring more of my girlfriends!

Art exhibition at school

On April 12, Natalie's preschool held an art show to display a few special projects that the students had made over the past few months. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go; the show was on Henry's birthday and my parents were about to arrive for his birthday weekend, so one of us needed to stay home. I sent Evan to the art show with his camera to take lots of memories for us!

The students each made their own version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Natalie's is in the top middle on the left; directly above her head on the right.

 
 Another mom had her son's sunflowers framed; I'm thinking I may do the same! I really like it.

Next up is her take on Seurat's Pointilism.

 

Here are their Concentric Circles.

They each got to make their own "sculpture" of anything they wanted. Natalie's is entitled
"My Snakes" (Sorry about the photo being sideways; for some reason Blogger won't post it any other way).

 Lastly was their interpretation of the book "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.

 

When all of the artwork was sent home, I snapped this shot of all of them with my iPad. Proud of our artist!

And on a completely unrelated note, this is my 750th post!

Dolls are always at least a little creepy

Since I've been doing more portrait work lately, Natalie has seen me posing shots and wanted to set up her own mini photo shoot. What better use as subjects than her dolls? Enjoy the slight creep factor that I felt upon viewing these photos.

Watch out Henry...they're RIGHT THERE.

I can't decide if the dog makes it less creepy, or more so.

This one is the least creepy to me, maybe because it's the most obviously posed.

But then in this one, I feel that they're all going to turn their heads and look at me.

Kid photographers, part 5

I haven't cleared off my point and shoot camera in a while. I only use it very rarely, and for the most part just let the kids use it when I'm out taking photos of something else with the "good" camera. But when I picked it up to take a quick video this week, I discovered that there were over 200 photos on it, dating back to January. I thought it might be a good idea to dump them on the computer, see what's worth keeping, and do some sharing! Turns out there's a pretty decent amount of good shots (and some from actual events), so I've got a few posts to come from these photos! Let's first try to get all of the "random" ones into a post.

Back in January, I took the family hiking in Balls Bluff. I've already posted the photos I took here and here. What I didn't share were the ones that Natalie took, as, frankly, I forgot that she took them! Here are the ones I think are her best.

I also posted previously about our trip out to Harpers Ferry, WV on the day of our open house. I thought Natalie had taken a bunch of photos while there, but turns out that only a few were taken there, and they were of us, not the scenery

I'm kind of loving the focus on my camera! 

I know the white balance was off, but the blue color here is kind of cool to me.

Instead, she spent most of her time taking photos in the car on the drive home

This one's actually quite good! Good use of natural light, followed the rule of thirds...very proud of her!

it's so meta!

I think that's enough for this post! Plus, the next set that she took are actually pretty decent, albeit slightly creepy. I think I'll let them stand on their own :)

While mom and dad are away

...the kids will play with Grandma! While we were in Paris three weeks ago (I cannot believe it has been that long already!), Evan's mom Lynn came to watch the kids for the week. Grandpa Doug joined her for Easter weekend, but until then she had the kids to herself! I know it's a lot of work, and it was really great of her/them to do this for us. She was also nice enough to take some photos of the kids for me during the week, so I wanted to share my faves here.

Grandma got Henry this great coloring pad that paints with water. I love these things, as they let him color without me having any greater worries than things getting wet.

Prior to our trip, we went back to the storage unit to get some toys out that had been there for about a month (which we prepped the house for showing). One of the things we brought back was the easel, as we know how much the kids love drawing on it! Here's Natalie's lion.

The day before Easter, they took the kids to the Catoctin Zoo, on Rte 15 N in Maryland. It's kind of a rinky-dink place, but according to Lynn the animals are all very close to where you walk, making it very appealing to kids. Looks like they had fun!

On Easter Sunday it was time for an egg hunt in the backyard!

They also had some fun dying easter eggs. I particularly like the look on Henry's face in this one! Kind of a "I'm busy here; stop bothering me" look :)

And the lovely Easter baskets left by the "Easter Bunny" (i.e. Grandma). She did a really great job with Easter for us, since we couldn't be there.

First few days in our new house

I know that I need to post pics of our new house, but since it's not "done" yet (is a house ever really done?), I'm holding off until we get more up on the walls. Everything is pretty much unpacked, excluding our china, and last night we finally got everything up in the kids' rooms and a couple of pictures upstairs, but otherwise there are many piles of photos/shelves around the house, so it's time to start drilling/hammering!

The kids definitely know one of their favorite parts of the house - our bathroom jacuzzi tub! We promised them on our first weekend in the house that they could take a bath in there (Evan and I haven't even done that yet!). It's going to be way too expensive to do that too often, but they absolutely loved it. Most of the photos I took aren't entirely appropriate for sharing here, and many of them have bad lighting issues, but I had to share this adorable one of the two of them!

The other thing that they really love is going for a walk around Stratford Pond. The pond is about 6 feet from our back fence, and has a lovely 0.6 mile walking path all the way around it. We've taken many walks so far; on this one from April 7 I took my camera with me to capture some of the fun.
Note: these photos go along with my favorites that I posted on my photography blog

There's always tons of stuff to point to, whether it's water, birds, or airplanes!

The kids aren't always super amenable to posing for a photo for me, but I'm happy with how this one came out!

My family!

I love seeing them this happy. We made the right choice in this house for sure.