St. Louis Zoo workshop

I spent a lot of time during March and early April on a workshop that my company held at the St. Louis Zoo in mid April.  During this workshop (which I cleverly called “Noldus and You at the Zoo”, haha), we provided an intensive two days of training and information on one of our software solutions, The Observer XT. We had done a workshop like this once before (where people paid for two days of training and information), but it had been about 5 years. Since I had the time to organize it, and we knew what a hit it was last time, I thought I'd restart this here in the US! It was a lot of fun to put together, and even though it ended up being smaller than we had hoped (about 11 people registered and came), that actually worked to our advantage as we could devote a lot of one-on-one time to them. Everyone agreed that it was a success, and so I'll be working to put on another one this fall, her on the east coast. 

I've only been to St. Louis once before, about 8 years ago, and that was for a wedding so I didn't see much of the city. I have to say, the setting was gorgeous! The St. Louis Zoo is quite small, but very well kept with a lot of animals in very nice environments. In the center of the zoo is the River Camp facility, which is where our meeting was held; specifically in the Missouri Room, which featured a floor to ceiling aquarium on one wall containing fish that can be found in the Missouri River. 

The workshop went really well; we got a lot accomplished in our 2 days, and very happy clients! I won't go into details of what we did here, as, well, none of you really care :) But, I will mention two fun things that we go to do. At the end of day 1 I arranged for our host to give a behind the scenes tour, as the zoo closed, of the research and veterinary clinic. We couldn't take any photos inside, but it was quite lovely outside!

 We learned at the end of day 1 that we had missed the 3 sea lion feedings that take place during the day, so we made it a priority to take a break during day 2 and watch. It was a great feeding! We had excellent spots to watch, and the sea lions were beautiful.

Lest you think it was all work, we did have the opportunity to explore the zoo at the end of each day. Again, it's rather small, but we saw some very lovely habitats and adorable animals! I'm posting my more "artistic" shots on the photography blog.

 I know I already posted a sea lion photo, but look - I captured her catching the fish!

 They also have an awesome indoor (very cold!) penguin habitat.

The zoo wasn't the only really pretty place I got to explore. It's actually located in a very large park that also includes running trails and the St. Louis Art Museum. After our first day, my colleagues and I went for a run through this park (they quickly left me in the dust, but I held my own and ran a 5k as well!). During my run I stopped at a couple of points to take some photos with my phone, as it was really pretty! I could see myself doing so many photo shoots here...if only it weren't so far away from home!

Definitely a fun trip all around! 

Henry turns 5!

Since Henry's birthday was on a Sunday, we did his party the day before. But that didn't mean there was nothing to celebrate on his actual birthday! We were kind of chill: started off the day playing with some of his new toys from his birthday party, during which I was able to capture this. Even better was how long it took the two of them to realize that I was recording them!

That afternoon, I took the kids to the Ida Lee playground for a bit. They'd been dying to go, and how could I say no on Henry's birthday?

 

It's always nice when the two of them will pose for photos for me. And they were being so ridiculously cute!

Later that night, after dinner, we had a special event that just happened to coincide with Henry's birthday: family photos! My friend Blaire at Second Ave Photography was doing spring mini sessions that weekend, and we managed to get the very last spot! We showed up while the session before us was just finishing, so I snagged a few photos of my gorgeous kiddos while we were waiting.

Because it was Henry's birthday, I thought we would include balloons from the birthday party.

Happy, happy 5th birthday to my beautiful boy!

Henry's 5th birthday party

This year, Henry had a musical birthday party! Earlier this year he started taking piano lessons at Bach2Rock in Lansdowne, and we've had such a good experience there that we thought we'd do his birthday party there as well. He loves music (and is getting pretty darn good at the piano, I must say!), and the school did a fantastic job with his party.

We arrived a bit early to set everything up...Henry couldn't wait to start playing instruments!

After our prep, and all the guests had arrived, it was time to start the party. The first thing Ms. Taylor did was have the kids each take a stool and drumsticks and practice different beats.

I took a few videos of this, but they definitely did the best job on this Queen song! Great beat to play to.

Then Henry got to come up front and pick out patterns for the kids to follow along with.

The other kids did as well (whoever wanted to); here's Evan helping Henry with some of the patterns.

What musical birthday party would be complete without freeze dancing?

Then it was time for more instruments! This time was Henry's favorite: guitar! He really enjoyed plucking out sounds on the strings.

The other kids enjoyed it too...Natalie looks like she belongs with one!

Then they brought out a special surprise for the kids - parachute! This thing is truly a hit whenever it gets brought out. It's the one part of elementary school P.E. that I still think on fondly. This was definitely a highlight!

Particularly when they put things on the parachute to throw around...

Henry even got to be in the middle! He absolutely loved getting spun around by everyone. Look at that happy face!

Oh - note the costume change on Henry. We had brought other clothing cause we thought it might happen; he got tired of wearing his costume and wanted back into regular clothes. 

Now time for more freeze dance - and who doesn't love when it's played live on a drum set?

Then each kid got to get up and play the drums

....even some who are not-so-kids anymore :)

After that we enjoyed cake - mmm, Wegmans cake. It was delicious; half vanilla, half chocolate! There was barely any left, but Evan and I made good work of what was over the next couple of days. 

One thing I did before the party was set up a small photo booth off to one side (you can see it behind some of the kids in the photos above). Throughout the party I had the kids take some photos there - they were surprisingly acquiescent!

I think we actually got all of the kids (minus the two babies) to be in the photo!

Big thanks to Aunt Carrie for taking this family photo of us. Happy birthday Henry!

New Hampshire & Cape Cod

On our last two days in the Boston area, we actually didn't go into Boston at all. Scott and Amanda had to work, and so we were a bit on our own as to where we wanted to go and what to do. Since we were only about 90 minutes from where Evan grew up in New Hampshire, it meant a lot to him to head up there and see his old house (he lived there through middle school), and show the kids Amherst and Nashua.

Unfortunately we didn't have the best of weather (it was actually snowing for most of our visit) but I did grab some photos in the Amherst town center.

 Could this town be more quintessentially New England? The weather just helped with that impression even more, despite the cold!

 We then headed into nearby Nashua to have lunch with Evan's cousin. It was nice to catch up with her for a while - I don't think either of us had seen her in many years! Luckily Facebook does help to keep up even when far. And if you're ever in the area, this restaurant was delicious!

On our last full day of vacation, we headed in the other direction (southeast, instead of northwest) to visit Cape Cod. I've never been there before, and the weather was so different from the previous day - definitely still very cold (especially when out on the beach, as below), but the sun was a welcome change from the weather over the previous couple of days!

I tried not to be too annoying with the photos, but I had to take some! Evan took a photo of me and then I instagrammed it - I love this photo!!

 After shopping in the town of Falmouth for a bit, and grabbing some lunch at Seafood Sam's (a little local place that was delicious!)

 

we then headed down to Woods Hole. I always wanted to see it, since there's so much scientific research that goes on there (and we have clients there!), and it was on the water. There's a ferry that goes from there out to Martha's Vineyard, but we didn't feel like using that much time to go out and back. Hopefully next trip! Instead we checked out the super cute Nabsko light house (just outside of Woods Hole). Cold but really pretty there!

I did take a bunch more photos of the lighthouse; you can find them on my photography blog.

Then we did some wandering through Woods Hole itself. It's very small, with lots of oceanographic research going on (below are two research boats).

There were also many places to get a yummy hot chocolate, including this one that we went to for a bit!

 It was a great way to end our trip. We were very sad to go...and Natalie let Scott and Amanda know just how much!

New England Aquarium

I managed to post up our activities from our first day in Boston, when we visited the Museum of Science with Scott and Amanda (how I got that up so quickly I don't really know!). Before I posted the rest of our adventures in New England, I wanted to get through the giant backlog of posts from January, February and March! Now that is done, I can get through Boston (and then hopefully get April done before we're too far into May...might I catch up at one point? We can only wait and see).

Our second day in Boston (Sunday) was spent primarily at the Aquarium.

We headed there with Scott and Amanda, and met up with our friends (from UVA) Emily & Andy  with their two little ones Dorothy and Ben. We actually had never met Dottie, so it was nice to finally do that! Who doesn't love a trip to the aquarium? I know we all had a great time. I think this is the third time I've been to the New England Aquarium, and it's totally worth it each time - it's a really great place! Even with the crowds (and it was crowded for sure), there's so much to see that you almost don't notice it.

We of course started out with checking out the main exhibit when you walk in: the penguins!

They're so freakin' cute (or maybe I should go full on Boston and say they're "wicked awesome"?).

Noisy buggers, too!

We saw all kinds of marine life: leafy seadragon, lion fish, cuttlefish, clown fish, and more! I don't really have room to show them all here (I'm sure I'll get a blog post up on the photography blog with my favorites soon), but I did want to show the other place where we spent a lot of time: the top of the giant tank! If you haven't been to this aquarium, the entire thing is built around this gigantic circular tank, and you walk up the ramp around it, to the top. Inside of the tank, in addition to the other creatures, were 3 giant sea turtles. While we were there, they decided to hang out near the top, including coming up for air repeatedly.

Then we got to see two of them right next to each other! They were really fun to watch, and in general the tank itself, especially lit at the top, is just beautiful.

After heading out to the market to get some lunch, we went back to the aquarium to see a few of the things we had missed. Just outside is a seal exhibit, and this time (unlike when we arrived), there was one lovely lady lying there sunning herself! She was very cooperative for photos. 

 

You know, you almost forget how deadly those seals can be until you see their mouths open like that...

We then hit the outdoor sea lion pool, which I couldn't really get any good photos in and it was really cold, so we went back in. That led to one of my favorite parts: the touch pool! This one had lots of rays (as they almost all do).

But also small albino sharks! Which I touched, multiple times! It's crazy how compact and powerful it feels (and also like sandpaper). Natalie and I were super excited for that...and this one kept coming back to us a lot!

 

Outside I had Scott take a family photo for us...definitely a fun day!