So. Much. To. Do.

I know, so does everyone, right? But I'm the one writing this blog, so I get to write about all of the  things *I* have to do. Write your own blog about how busy you are, and I promise to read it too! :)

Anyway, things have been nuts. I really enjoyed the fact that from just before Thanksgiving, through last week, I only had one trip (and that was at the end of January). So for almost 3 months, I only had 2 work trips! It was so nice to be home, and I felt very caught up with everything. Now, even though I haven't had a ton of work travel, things just seem to keep piling up! I guess luckily for me I get more stressed out when I don't tackle things than when I have a long to-do list (I just can't really push things off for too long), so that means that I have to tackle as much as I can. It's 9pm right now, and I literally just sat down.

Work is incredibly busy (which is not a bad thing), and I'd love to be able to get some work done at night, but there are too many personal things to take care of. I'm a little stressed about everything that I need to get done work-wise in the next 7 days, as on March 8 I head over to our Dutch office for 9 days, and it'll be difficult to get much done while I'm there since we have a pretty packed schedule. I also need to make sure everything is set for Evan before I head out for that long! Oh, and pack too. Plus I'm going to Charlottesville twice this week, which keeps me away from the house more. Sigh.

While I might be sitting now, I still have this blog post to finish (and frankly, others to write, but they involve figuring out which photos/videos to post, and I just don't have the mental ability to do that tonight), many photos to edit, photography blog posts that I *should* write, photos to transfer to my computer, and a craft project to finish for a family member. At least I did get a bunch of stuff put away at the house tonight, although of course there is still more to do.

Photo business is doing really well - I'm finding my groove with dance photos, I think. Not only are my clients happy, but I really enjoy it. Like, REALLY enjoy it. I've done two dance portrait shoots and I love them so much. I'll be posting them soon on my photography blog. And I have three dance shows from the past 3 months that I need to post as well - I've really enjoyed it. Not only that, but I get to take good photos of my own kids during the recitals too!

In fact, right now I'm flipping back and forth between writing this blog post and editing photos from the latest dance showcase. Luckily, only 4 days after taking the photos, I'm halfway done, so that's a good timeline I think! Trying to get further tonight...shouldn't be too hard. In fact, back to it.

One of these nights I'll get to just sit and cross stitch again, I'm sure! Although as some of my friends have reminded me, if I didn't have 1,000 things going on, I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself. If you've read this far, thanks - and I promise to post something more interesting next time!

Snowzilla 2016 - Part 3

On Day 4 of our long weekend at home, after 3 feet of snow had fallen, we ventured outside on a gorgeously clear, sunny, cold Monday. The kids were dying to go play in the snow again, and this time I took my camera with us as we walked around outside. Since we finally had some clear (well, relatively clear) road to walk on, I felt less worried about something happening to my equipment, and I really wanted to get good pics of the kids in the snow. Plus, these two were too cute!

 

Seriously...SO. MUCH. SNOW.

The kids wanted to go back up the street to our neighbor's sledding "hill" they had built. Once again, Natalie towed her brother...too cute!

Henry was a little nervous to sled, particularly after his wipe out of the day before, but once he tried it, he LOVED it! I got a couple of great shots of him.

 

These two are just too cute :)

Snowzilla 2016 - Part 2

On Sunday of our massive snowstorm, after being mostly stuck inside Friday and Saturday, we were able to get out. The sun was out, and it was finally time to dig out as best as we could. Evan was a trooper and actually shoveled out most of it, but I did do my part too! The kids were so excited to go outside and play in the snow; I walked with them down the street to where a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood were sledding down a snow mound they had made in their front yard. Both had so much fun sledding!

We then kept going, hiking through our as-yet unplowed street to go over to the big sledding hill.

Natalie and I went down the hill together, and so did Evan and Henry. Henry was definitely scared to do it, after getting a face-full of snow last year, but with some trepidation he went. You'll see that he was NOT very happy at the end!

When we were done, we went inside to warm up, clean up, and have lunch. Later on we went back outside a bit more, and Evan and I snapped this selfie of ourselves. Not bad, right? :)

Snowzilla 2016 - Part 1

As pretty much everyone knows, last month we got walloped with 3 feet of snow. Yes, just under 36" hit Leesburg, the highest amount in the area. It was absolutely nuts, and because we were snowed in for about 4 days, I was able to document the whole thing!

The snow started on Friday, Jan 22. I stayed at home to work, the kids had off in anticipation of the snow, and after lunch it finally started. So, we went outside to walk around some in it... 

 

And by night, it had really picked up. I could still get out the back door, so I went outside to take some photos with my iPhone, as everything was glowing so beautifully.

 The next morning we woke to this in the backyard...yep, we got a fenceful.

 Just before lunch we all bundled up to head outside for a bit. Natalie in particular was itching to go out in the snow. Henry was a bit more hesitant (particularly when we realized that his snow pants are actually a little too short, so he was getting snow in his boots).

 

Evan was a trooper and kept up with the shoveling pretty well. He and Henry did go back inside, however, while Natalie and I stayed out for a bit longer.

 

I had seen some ideas of "things to do in the snow", and one of them was to use markers to draw in the snow. I don't think it worked as well as the Pinterest idea showed (shocking), but we still had fun drawing and writing our names.

 I had to include this, because I still had this up on the door from Christmas. It finally looked Christmas-y, with the snow blown all over it! If only we'd had this on Christmas, instead of nearly 70 degree weather!

 That night I could NOT get out the back door any longer (there was too much snow up against the door, so I grabbed this shot through the door.

 Sunday morning we woke up to...an even higher fenceful!

 Really beautiful, with the clear blue sky and sun shining on the snow, but where do you even begin to go with this much snow?!

 Evan was smart, and on Saturday he had cleared a path to our HVAC system to prevent it from freezing up too much, so the heat wouldn't shut down. This provided the kids with an area to walk in, and a giant pile of snow to climb on.

 

That's a first-floor window behind them; Henry is standing on at least 3 feet of snow, probably more like 4.
The kids thought it was too much fun to lie down in the snow.

 And then they wanted to bury themselves in the snow. Once Natalie started telling me she was actually feeling warm, I made her get out. No hypothermia! But I have to say, they do look rather cute.

Next up: sledding on Sunday, and fun outside on Monday (as we were still snowed in; plows hadn't arrived yet).

Henry's Dance Recital - Jan 2016

Because of the impending Snowzilla storm scheduled to hit the weekend of Henry's dance recital, his teachers had to scramble last minute to reschedule in order to be able to hold the recital. Instead of it being two weekends ago, they held the recital Thurs Jan 21, with the rehearsal the day before. I was once again asked to take the stage action shots for the rehearsal, so luckily I was able to get there to take the photos. I'll be posting them up on my photography blog soon...but in this post I wanted to highlight my big guy, because Henry did SUCH a fantastic job!

He helped me out when we first arrived so that I could test my settings with the stage lighting.

 Then I took photos of the other classes, and finally we reached the point where it was time for his class! Look at how happy he is :)

One of the interns who I know (she's helped out in classes with both kids) was nice and took a video of the recital performance with my iPhone. I'm posting it here so that all of our friends and family, who couldn't make it due to the date change, are able to see him!

He actually was slightly bothered that he "messed up" at the beginning of his jazz square (where they put their hand over their eyes like they are searching). So he took that little "mistake" and at the recital (I had to miss it due to work, sadly), he was 100% right and made no mistakes! I'm so very proud of him, and so was his teacher. I even had other parents tell me how he stood out to them for doing such a great job. As you see in the video, he's the only one who is right on beat and count with the intern; he takes it so seriously and does such a good job.

This semester he's doing a different jazzy hip hop class (more kids, and another boy), so I can't wait to see what he does in the next recital!

How we broke the internet

Late last week, while I was in San Diego (pics to come from that soon!), Evan sends me a text that a reporter he knows, who writes for the Washington Post, tweeted about having "resting anxiety face", as she called it. He tweeted at her a study that my colleague Jason and I did last year, and published on our Noldus blog, in October 2015. The study was looking into "RBF", or "Resting B*tch Face". You know, when you think you have a normal, neutral face, but everyone asks you all the time why you look pissed off. Since we have software that analyzes the emotion in the face (FaceReader), we thought...let's see if we can find something in a neutral "RBF" face that doesn't exist in a "regular" neutral face!

Caitlin (the reporter) loved the study and wrote up a fantastic article for us in the Washington Post, which debuted online Tuesday morning. Tuesday was a relatively normal day - my colleagues thought it was cool, we all shared it on FB, etc. When we got up Wednesday morning however...it turned out that the story went viral. News outlets around the WORLD had picked up the story, posted their own rewrites, and were trying to contact us. Yesterday was insanity. Jason and I were bombarded with people who wanted to have us test their faces (as of today, Jason had received about 1,000 photos from people around the world!), and we've been contacted by so much press.

I'm not sure I fully remember the order of how things happened yesterday, but the biggest thing that happened was that I was contacted by CNN! I talked to a producer/writer there twice, analyzed some faces for her, sent her some images, and the end result is this piece:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/health/resting-bitch-face-research-irpt/index.html
I can't believe it's my name and audio for a 1 minute video on CNN! I'm still in a bit of shock.

It's currently on the front page of cnn.com - turns out, you have to see this:

Look - we're right above the "Friends" reunion story! 

This article spawned a LOT more - at our last count, based on google news, there are about 100 different websites who have done this story, around the world. UK, Australia, Canada, and a lot of foreign language sites too. It's been in NY Magazine, Jezebel, HuffPo (theirs is one of my favorites - look at the video they made!), Cosmo, Glamour, and more than I can possibly list here.

We've also done a number of additional interviews
- Jason and I were contacted by CBC radio (Canadian public radio), who wrote an article and did a story (but we couldn't hear it here in the US, unfortunately).
- Jason ran a few photos through of news anchors for Global News Canada for a story that they wrote; congrats to them for wanting to be put through the software!
Note that the CNN anchors did NOT want to be put into the story, even though I ran them through per the writer's request. Some interesting results... ;)
- Today, Jason did a phone interview with Newstalk Dublin, public radio in Ireland.
- Last night at 11:30p my time I did a live phone interview with ABC radio in Melbourne, Aus. (which my sister in law and her mother were able to listen to live!)
- Tomorrow, Jason will be speaking to Business Insider
- Tomorrow, I'll be on video (via Skype) with the CBS station in Charlottesville (local girl makes it big!).
- Next week, we've been slotted into The Jay Thomas show on Sirius XM radio! That's so exciting. I haven't listened to his show, but I totally recognize him!

I keep thinking this is a flash in the pan, and it'll die out, and I'm sure at some point it will. But right now, we're still being contacted for interviews, the CNN video has been viewed over half a million times, and we even got my company to quickly amend our website so people can upload a photo of themselves and see if they get the RBF "spike" in contempt, to analyze their own faces.
http://www.noldus.com/test-if-you-have-resting-bitch-face

I could not be more amazed by this reaction, from around the world, and so happy that people have responded to this little study that Jason and I did. It all started from an idea Jason had while running - What if FaceReader (our software) can find something common in faces that show RBF? We had no idea what would come of it, or how it would play out. This has been above and beyond our expectations, and we can't wait to show everyone what else we can do.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone.

Starting 2016 off right

We definitely kicked off 2016 with a fun filled weekend! Once again, we hosted friends at our house for NYE. We have space to put up Kathy, Beth and their families (and have some other friends join us through midnight), and it's definitely nice to not have to go anywhere! This year I went a little more into the party planning than in previous years, getting some decorations, party hats and leis, and of course having a very well stocked bar :)

We had not one, but TWO babies at our house for NYE (both within a couple of weeks of each other) - and both went to sleep pretty easily! But before that, we had them playing together. Look how cute!

Then, it turns out, I took absolutely zero photos during the actual party. We had a great time after putting the kids to bed - games (including a new card game version of "Never have I Ever" that was a blast!), hanging out, eating, and of course watching the ball drop. An excellent night with friends!

The next morning was time for yummy breakfast (thanks Evan!), and playtime. Henry received a set of Star Wars playing cards for Christmas, and they've been a big hit ever since. Ellie and Henry have gotten better and better at playing together, and the two of them playing Go Fish with these cards was too cute!

Natalie loves having babies around, and was very excited to play some with Rosie. Stella had to get in on the fun too! Too cute.

Definitely a favorite photo :)

On Saturday, it was really gorgeous out, so we thought we'd go have some fun outside. I really wanted to go for a walk, so we took the kids over to Ida Lee and let them play on the playground while Evan and I walked all around. It's great that the paths are set out such that we could walk a pretty good way, circling around periodically, and still be in sight of the playground. The kids did a great job playing together too!

And of course, family selfie at the park <3 p="">

Then, we had a sitter that night so that Evan and I could attend a gala event for the new Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. So much fun to get all dressed up!! We didn't stay at the event too long after dinner was over, instead choosing to go get a drink at a bar just the two of us. A good choice, I think.

 

I took a couple of selfies, cause I felt pretty darn good about myself, and I think this one was my favorite.

I also have to highlight my nails, because I did them specifically to match my dress!The fingernails were absolutely perfect with the dress, and the purple in my toes complimented pretty well too. Evan loved it, and they made me feel extra sexy - just what I was going for! Definitely a good way to start off 2016 :)