Gavin's 1st birthday

Last weekend we went to celebrate the first birthday of Gavin, our friends Chris & Lisa's son. The party was at Chris's father's house in Herndon, and was a nice mix of their families and a few friends. It was a pleasure to be invited! I of course used it as an opportunity to take some pics of everyone having fun, as well as Gavin eating his first cake!

There were quite a few kids at the party, so Lisa purchased bubbles for everyone. Bubbles make for some fun photos!

 Eric with his nephew, the birthday boy, and his daughter Katie.

Chris and his son, the birthday boy.

 I don't focus much on food photography, so I'm sure there are better ways to photograph the cake, but I did my best! Both the full size and smash cakes were adorable!

 I particularly love the jungle animals that Lisa picked out to put on top of the cake.

 Then the purpose of the 1st birthday party - first time eating cake! Gavin wasn't very messy (and for a bunch of the time he wanted the balloon more than the cake), but he definitely enjoyed it.

Dinosaur Park with friends

This weekend I'm on my own with the kiddos - Evan headed to Richmond for two nights of political events yesterday, and since I was traveling earlier this week (I also spent two nights away, but for work) it was nice to have the time solo with the kids! They've been really fantastic for me - some fussiness from Henry last night at bedtime (no real surprise there), but for the past 24+ hours we've had a great time. They've been very helpful, mostly listened, and (best of all) have been eating their food! This isn't really an issue with Natalie, but to have Henry reliably eat 4 meals for me, with a minimum of pushing on my part, has been really wonderful and made the weekend that much better!

As much as we've been having fun, I wasn't exactly looking forward to spending the whole day playing in the house today, so I wanted to find something to do. My friend Lydia let me know that her and her husband were taking their kids to the dinosaur park in Ashburn, and that sounded like a great way to spend a couple of hours! My friends Jen and Justin met us there with their kids as well - Natalie, Carson, and Alie all know each other from dance class and had a blast playing together. I mostly spent my time following Henry around, as he needs a bit more supervision in that sort of environment!

After playing briefly on the fire truck

 

Henry and I headed down to the creeks behind the park to look at the water. Gorgeous, right?

Henry did go in the water very briefly; after about 2 seconds (just enough to get his feet wet and a bit muddy), he decided he was done. When Natalie joined us, however, she and Alie spent quite a while wandering in and out of the stream.

 

I then got two FANTASTIC shots of Henry playing on the playground equipment

 

(I've posted other black and white edits of the kids playing on my photography page; I do love this effect!)

I didn't only take photos of Henry - here are Natalie and Alie playing together

And Carson and her brother looking adorable.

 

Memorial Day = Princesses!

On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we headed to a bbq at the house of our friends Kelly and Chris. They had a small get together (about 6 couples were there, and our kids), and we all had a blast! They've got a really great back yard for hosting a group of kids, and the food and company were fantastic.

After everyone ate, the girls decided to go upstairs to Sydney's room and pull out some dress up stuff. They came down in full princess regalia!

Sydney's brothers did not want to be left out, so they dressed up as well. They have construction worker and super hero outfits, but those weren't the hit...the princess dresses were!

 These boys are totally secure in their masculinity!!

 

The girls were of course also excited to show off in their outfits

Sydney and her brothers

Henry, meanwhile, wanted no part of dressing up. Instead, he found a SpiderMan bubble blower that he was greatly enamored of.

 

Followed by a pretend weed wacker that he's still talking about a month later. Looks like that will be the next outdoor toy we look for!

 He then proceeded to run around with the princesses, doing some sort of game where he was the "weed wacker man". If he were an adult I'd say he was the serial killer chasing the princesses, but he wouldn't really know that reference, would he?!

Concert #1: Of Monsters And Men

This past Tuesday, I went with a few girlfriends to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD to see Of Monsters And Men. If you don't recognize them by name, you may very well recognize their big song "Little Talks" (video below), as it's been all over the radio the past year or so.

I hadn't been to MPP in about 20 years, since I saw James Taylor there with my family. Bit of a different experience this time! We did have seats each time (no lawn for me!), but the type of show and company was definitely different. Both were really enjoyable shows (at least from what I remember of the JT concert!), so I wanted to share some photos & videos of the recent one here.

We arrived while the first of two opening acts was on (Houndmouth, I believe?); instead of going to our seats to watch them we decided to wander about the venue. We'd gotten dinner at Beth's house before hand, and almost wished we hadn't, there was so much food there! Yummy drinks (both alcoholic and non, including milkshakes. Mmm, milkshakes), too. Despite the crowds, getting in and out was easy and we never felt too mobbed by the crowds of people. Definitely looking forward to going back there next month to see fun.

The second opening act was Haim - I'd heard one of their songs on the radio, but didn't know much about them (3 sisters comprise the band). They were pretty good; not necessarily my cup of tea, but I did enjoy their performance. I didn't bring a camera with me (and apparently I'm not allowed to bring a camera with a detachable lens, so point and shoot it is for the next one!), but I had my phone. That didn't result in the best quality photos, but I think you can still easily see the lovely stage setting for Of Monsters and Men!

I liked the addition of the twinkly lights at the end

I would have loved to take at least a snippet of every song (particularly my favorite, Dirty Paws, but we arrived to our seats just as that one started - it was the first one song - and I just wanted to enjoy it, not worry about getting out my phone). However, that would have quickly filled up my phone as well, so instead I just recorded from the two songs I know that the kids know, as I knew they would enjoy watching them later when I got home. I was correct; the sing-along part for "Little Talks" was viewed on my phone about 20 times!

Note: I apologize in advance for the fact that you can hear me singing in almost all of these videos; I did try to keep it down, but, well...I like singing, particularly when I enjoy the music!

Natalie's recital!

I had planned to write this post just after the previous posts about Natalie' last dance class and her dress rehearsal. However, I got a little side tracked this week with our bird saga (which, for now seems to be done - after the second visit from the exterminator we have not seen any signs of further birds in the vent, although we yet again had one fly into our garage; we have to remember to keep that door shut!), so I am only now getting to the photos from the recital.

As I think I mentioned previously, there was no photography or videography allowed at the recital, so I took a few photos of Natalie at home before we left. The light coming in through my front window, and the new couch we have there were a perfect spot! I did realize that afterwards I should have had a reflector positioned to her left so that side wasn't in shadow, so that's something to remember for next time!

 

 I asked Evan to take a photo of my mom, sister, Natalie and I.

The recital went so well - Natalie's class was first, and then we got to watch the rest of the classes perform. All of the performers were kept together in the cafeteria until the big finale when they came back out. She did so well! We were all quite proud.

Despite the looming clouds in the sky, we took the opportunity to grab some family shots outside of the school afterwards.

 The grandparents don't necessarily all like having their photo taken, but that's too bad! Gotta have those memories :) Plus, I'm super proud of my mom for losing 50 pounds (and still going!), so I want to show her off here!

 

 My sister's friend Lindsey came with her for the recital; Lindsey has spent quite a bit of time with my kids and they really like her, so it was very nice of her to come and see Natalie dance!

 And one last shot of my beautiful dancer on her big day.

THE BIRDS

I love our new house. It has pretty much everything we could have wanted, and we've been so happy here for 2.5 months. And we've discovered this week that apparently the birds do too. I'm assuming that our house contains some sort of bird-nip that draws them irresistibly into it; truly, this is the only explanation. My previous post detailed our experience with birds last weekend, and we thought everything was taken care of with the exterminator's visit yesterday (Wednesday); hence my blog post last night. Yay no more birds!

Except, not. This morning, Evan left the garage door open for the ~10 minutes in between walking the dog and all of us leaving and what happens? Sparrow gets into the garage. Luckily this one was able to be chased out with a broom after about a minute, and we quickly shut the garage. Ok, lesson learned: our garage door has to be kept shut as much as possible. Kind of a pain, but doable. No more birds, right?

Tonight after dinner, I was walking past our (closed) back door and heard what sounded like a bird chirping very close to our house.

"That can't be right - they covered the vent. There can't possibly be a bird up there"

I open the sliding door, and a bird flies away from the vent. WTF?! I look up at the vent, and see the cover still intact...with a BIRD INSIDE OF THE VENT. Trapped inside of it.

My assumption is that the one stuck in there is the female, and the one that flew away (who is larger) is the male, and he's pissed that his booty-call is stuck in there. At least, this is what I'm hoping...because otherwise, if it's his mate and there's a nest of babies somewhere deep in my house, that's a much harder thought to take. This does explain why we're still getting some icky smells in our bathroom!

I promptly called the exterminator (who was of course closed at 7pm) and left one of the sternest messages I've ever left. "You will send someone here tomorrow to deal with this, and it will be free. You've helped to make the situation go from bad to worse." Exact words.

I wouldn't be so pissed at the exterminator if they hadn't pulled the entire vent out, cleaned it, and gave it the all clear. Obviously not. Fantastic job, fellas. Glad I spent that $250 on you.

At this point, I'm hoping that they send someone small enough to climb in through our vent system and sandblast the whole thing, cause otherwise I'm not going to feel at all sure that the problem is finally dealt with. Barring that, anyone got some cat urine they want to give us to spray around our house? Or maybe just an outdoor cat to prowl around. Something other than birds shitting all over my house.