Photos by Natalie: Christmas Lights

Friday night I headed out around our neighborhood to take some photos of my neighbors' Christmas lights. I was worried that some of them might take the lights down over the weekend (turns out that was a poor assumption, but you never know!), and I didn't want to miss them. Natalie really wanted to go with me, so I thought it would be a nice chance to start teaching her about exposure times and using a tripod. I luckily have two tripods, and the smaller of the two is perfect for my Powershot camera that she was using. 

We started out in front of our house, attached our cameras to the tripods, and started playing with exposure times. We settled on about 2 seconds, and I talked to her about not moving the camera during the exposure to prevent the photo from being blurry. I'm actually happier with how her photo of our house came out than I am with mine!

 We then moved down the street to our neighbors' houses. I really like this photo; the only change I made to this one was to crop it some, as she had a lot of empty space in the foreground.

 Here she wanted to get multiple houses in one shot, and did so quite well.

 But I almost like the blurred one better!

 At this house she took the camera off the tripod and we discussed using a shorter exposure time when hand-holding the camera. The lights were bright enough that the photos still came out quite well!

I like the angle on this one. She wanted to get the moving icicle lights in the tree above and to the left of the snowman.

 She did a fantastic job of framing these couple of photos!

 Love how she made the lights twinkle.

 For the last part of our walk, she took the camera off the tripod again and took some regular exposures. Because of that and the lack of street lights near these houses, the only things that can be seen in these photos are the Christmas lights, but I really like that look! It's as if nothing else is there.

My photos will take a bit longer to go through and edit, and I'm about to leave for a three day trip to Key West for a friend's wedding, so I'll have to share them in the new year. It's nice to be able to leave you with one last Christmas 2013 post, and to have it be photos that Natalie took is even better! Happy New Year, everyone!

Broadway, baby!

I've previously posted about Thanksgiving 2013 and our first excursion of that trip, to the Crayola Experience. There was one more event that took place that weekend, and it was the biggest part: a very special trip into NYC! What made this so special? We went in order to take Natalie to her first Broadway show! We didn't tell her until that morning, as we knew that if she knew ahead of time it would be nothing but questions for days. She was so excited! I even surprised her by bringing her Cinderella dress to wear, which put it over the top for her. So, we all got bundled up (it was ridiculously cold that day!) and headed into NYC.

We parked near the theater, and had a few hours to kill before the show at 2pm. So, we braved the cold and headed across town to Rockefeller Center in order to see the tree (even though it wasn't lit yet). Along the way we ran into Minnie Mouse, which excited Natalie to no end.

As we neared Rockefeller Center, I spotted a great setting for photos across from Radio City Music Hall.

 Radio City looked beautiful, and seeing Rockefeller Center was also a lot of fun, even without the tree yet lit

 

Evan and Henry were too cute to not grab a couple of photos!

 We then headed to Hale & Hearty Soup (one of my favorite NYC restaurants that is so perfect on a blustery cold winter day!), and then split up from the boys. They headed up to the AMNH (natural history museum) on the subway (which Henry loved), as well as spent some time going through Central Park. We made a quick stop at the gigantic Disney Store in Times Square, where Natalie picked out her birthday present from us (a Cinderella dress up set), and then walked the 8 or so blocks north to the show, right through Times Square. There was a lot for Natalie to take in, and Lynn and I had the best time showing it to her!

 

Photography is not allowed inside of the theater, but before the show started we were able to grab a couple of shots with my phone.

After the show, we met Evan and Henry in a Starbucks right across the street for one last coffee/hot chocolate to warm up, and then it was off to the van for the drive home. The day was so much fun  - we love taking every chance we can to expose the kids to NYC, and all of the experiences there! Thanks so much to Grandma Lynn for the tickets and the chance to go.

Christmas Day fun

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, we took the kids out on Christmas afternoon for some fun on their bikes. Henry took a little convincing to try out his new one, but then got much more excited once he realized it was a "big boy" bike. He's actually slightly too small for it, which is great - he'll have lots of time to grow into it!

After some practice, he was off and down the street!

I posted yesterday on my photography blog some Christmas portraits that I took, and I included the photo below. But Henry is so cute, and I love this shot so much, that I included it here again!

 Can't forget a portrait of my gorgeous girl.

Evan got in on the biking fun too. Henry was somewhat confused, but found it amusing...briefly. Then he wanted his bike back!

After the biking, the kids took a nice Christmas afternoon nap (yay for us!), and then we started making dinner. We set out our nice china on the dining room table, and cooked up a Christmas night feast of steak for Evan, shrimp and scallops for the ladies (pictured next to the snowman below), crunchy potatoes, and green beans. I made everything but the steak (with some prep help from Evan on the sides). See, I can cook, even if I don't like to very often. It helps a lot to have had Linda here to occupy the children while Evan and I finished the cooking (and for them to set the table at the same time). Maybe once the kids get a bit larger and don't bug us so much during dinner prep time I will cook more!

Unfortunately dessert didn't get cooked until after dinner (honey almond cheesecake), so we didn't really get dessert that night. That's ok - I've been eating enough! We were all more than happy to eat some the next day, and I sent some home with Linda when she left. 

So, that's our Christmas! Yesterday, our last day home all together without work, we headed back outside for some more biking.

Then lunch and a wonderful 2.5 hour nap from both kids! It was a Boxing Day miracle. We then had a pizza picnic in the living room while watching Despicable Me 2 (the kids got it from Santa - super cute!), and then off to bed to get up normal time this morning, as Evan and I headed back to work. It always ends too soon, but we love to do as much as we can while we have the time off. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas 2013

What a fantastic few days we have had! First the time with my parents over the weekend, then a day to rest and get the house back in order, followed by more family arriving on Christmas Eve! This year, both my sister and my aunt Linda came to celebrate the holiday. I love that for the past three years Carrie has come up on Christmas! It means so much to me that she's been here to be with us. Two years ago, Linda was also here (last year Evan's parents were, along with Carrie)...it's just great to get to have basically two Christmas celebrations every year: once on the day, and once with my family either before or after!

Anyway, back to this year. After everyone arrived, we settled in for some relaxation on Christmas Eve. I snapped this with my iPad and had some fun with adding text.

 The kids didn't nap that afternoon as we wanted them to be nice and tired to get to bed, so we watched Despicable Me (for the 800th time!) and then all got ready for dinner. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get my camera out as we were running a little late for our reservation, so we just used my iPhone to grab a few photos on the steps.

 

Can you tell that Natalie took the one on the left? I still like it!

 

 Evan took this one of Carrie and I at dinner - two years ago, also with Carrie and Linda, we also went to Travinia in the Village at Leesburg. We intended to go to Firebirds (where we went on Sunday with my parents), but unfortunately there were no reservations to be had so Travinia it was!

 After bedtime (which the kids were really good about, despite their excitement about Santa), we waited a bit and then put out all of the presents. This of course involved putting together the big present under the orange sheet (Natalie's princess castle), as well as getting everything laid out. It was a nice spread this year, but the best part was how much less there was than previous years! No one went overboard, which was really great. It's good to try to rein it all in!

 Christmas morning was very exciting. The kids slept until about 7am, and then came in our room to have us come see what Santa left. Natalie knew she was getting the big present from her aunt and grandparents, and was good about leaving it under the sheet until the end. There were still plenty of other things to open! I took a few photos with my phone at the beginning - how cute are these kids?!

 

And then, once I had opened my presents and got my new camera lens (yay!), I switched to my camera to have some fun figuring out the sweet spots on the lens. It takes beautiful photos!
Henry received a number of new cars and trucks, and had the best time playing with them. This was one he had seen at Target and was very excited about, so Santa had to pick it up for him. I like this photo because you can see Evan in the background playing with his new toy: a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

 After unveiling the castle, Natalie was understandably very excited and got her Barbies out to play.

 We ended up moving it into her room today, which involved moving the furniture around (it's actually a much better arrangement now). She's so excited to have friends come over and play with it!

The kids were really good about sharing all day - they even helped each other to open the last couple of Henry's presents.

 One of Natalie's favorite new toys was her new salon tools. The kids spent quite a while yesterday afternoon styling my and Linda's hair! I had to get this shot of Henry, as he had no idea that we were sticking bows on his back.

And where was Calla through all of the excitement? Curled up in Carrie's lap for a good chunk of the morning. The light coming in through the window begged for some photos with my new lens!

Coming up in the next post: photos from our time outside on Christmas Day, as well as a delicious home-cooked dinner (of which I actually cooked a large part!).

Christmas with the Hoffmans

Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone had a fantastic day, in any way that made you the most happy! We had a fantastic Christmas Eve and Day, which I will detail in a later post, as that involves quite a bit of photo cataloging before I can get them up here! So, instead I will first go through our prelude to Christmas: our weekend with my parents!

My mom had to work last night and tonight, so instead of being here on the actual holiday we celebrated with them over the weekend. They arrived on Saturday, and after settling in and running some errands, we spent the afternoon baking cookies! Natalie was very excited to get to use her apron, and to help us pound the dough and shape it with cookie cutters.

Henry sadly slept through the cookie making, but I had a great time making them with my parents and Natalie!

 

Here's the finished product! We made 3 kinds: sugar cookies (decorated mostly by Dad and Natalie), chocolate with candy cane pieces, and mint chocolate chip

Although Henry missed making the cookies, he certainly enjoyed eating them when he woke up!

 After a home made dinner (we went out on Sunday night), we exchanged Christmas presents with my parents. Natalie's big present was joint between them and my sister, so she had to wait for hers until this morning, but Henry got his big present that night: a big boy bike!

He'd been so great about riding Natalie's old princess bike, which is wonderful, but he deserves his very own and my parents were excited to get this for him (they also got Natalie her first big girl bike). It's 14", which is an unusual size to find. He had fun riding it around the house for a while, including the kitchen. Evan took a video of that and posted it on FB; if you can see it, here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/paradox13?fref=ts.

On Sunday, the weather was nice enough that we could take the new bike outside, which made Henry very excited! We had to adjust the training wheels to make the bike less wobbly, and he was still a bit nervous to ride it in the street, but he did pretty well for his first day out! 

Riding it in the garage seemed to work a bit better, and made him less nervous. 

The bike is definitely bigger than Natalie's old bike, so it will take him some time to get used to it, and grow into it! However, that means this bike will last him a long time, which is great. 

Note: We went out today for a bit, and he did great on his new bike! He's already getting much more used to it. So proud of our big kid!

We thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of our time with my parents: delicious dinner out on Sunday night at FireBirds, seeing the computerized Christmas lights at Edwards Landing afterwards, and a few more solo errands with my mom. I was very sad to see them go, but it's so nice to make these memories!