Natalie's new room

As I mentioned in my previous post, our bedroom remodel was necessary to create a home office for me. Letting Natalie take over the guest bedroom, which is larger, made more sense than turning the guest room into my office. That meant she got to pick quite a few things about her new room, including new paint color! But before we get to that, here are the before shots of the room. Starting off with the view from the door.

It was pretty sparse - bed, night tables, storage ottoman, and family/friends photos on the walls.

And a view of the bed/closet from the opposite wall.

As I mentioned, the first big change was the paint color! I let Natalie pick a color she wanted, and she went with her favorite color: teal. I would call it more aqua, but it made her happy, and matched her bedding perfectly! Natalie did not get any new furniture - we moved everything from her old room. However, she did get one piece of furniture added: the light-wood cabinet next to her dresser. We needed to store a few more things for her, and it was going to be unnecessary once I moved all of my things into my new office (more on that soon). So, we added it to her room!

Oh, she did get one new thing - the canopy! She really wanted one over her bed. I found one on Amazon that had good ratings and looked like it would work. We strung it up with the pink lights she already had in her room, and now she sleeps with those as her nightlight every night! The netting can be pulled back as it is in these photos, or can be expanded to cover the entire bed (which she has done at night a couple of times). I think she feels like a princess in it!

I like that (for now at least) her walls are a lot less cluttered (no wall decals everywhere) and the room seems more grownup and uncluttered. She loves it, and it suits her well!

Henry's new bed

I apparently can't go more than a year or so without some kind of big change at the house, and this summer while on my month off, apparently it was once again time. This time, however, the change was somewhat spurred by external events, and not just me wanting to change things up!

My new job (which I'll talk about soon, I'm sure!) will eventually allow me to work from home pretty much full time (starting around December). And for right now, I work from home every Friday (that I'm not traveling), and sometimes an extra day each week. Because of that, I need a work space - the kitchen table just doesn't cut it. So, we decided to create a home office for me. The ideal room in which to do that was Natalie's room, as it's the smallest bedroom. This meant moving her into the upstairs guest bedroom, something she was very excited to do. However, that meant finding something equivalently fun for Henry. We ultimately opted to get him a new bed! His current bed (below) was Natalie's hand-me-down, after she upgraded to a full size.

In fact, every bed he'd ever had was a hand-me-down from Natalie, so why not get him one of his own? Henry loved the idea of a loft bed, so we searched around online and found one for a great price (amazon.com!) that would fit in his room. But it did necessitate a room remodel. So, here are the before pics. The above picture is taken from the doorway.

And then across the room from the doorway (above), and then closet to the right.

Here's a shot of the bed from across the room.

And...here's his new room! This shot is taken from the same place as the first photo - in the doorway.

Isn't it beautiful? My dad came up and helped me put it together in one afternoon. The instructions were pretty good, and the quality was one step up from Ikea, so all in all a pretty straight forward project. Plus, it was fun to use an electric drill and put furniture together for a day!

Since he can't really have a bedside table any longer (although he uses the pull-out desk for placing all of his books on!), we had to get a new light for him to read by. Enter the bendable LED light you see attached to his bed below. Oh, and he also got new bedding to really make it a Star Wars room!

The loft bed is not TOO high, which is nice given the size of his room. Underneath there is room for a fun reading book, which we set up with some blankets, pillow pets, and a dorm-style pillow I found on clearance at Kohl's.

His dresser is now where his bed used to be, and next to it is the small dresser that came with the loft bed. We had originally put it under the bed, where it was "supposed" to be (according to photos), but we liked leaving under the bed open instead.

Henry absolutely loves his room, and has settled in nicely. What goes in the drawers and on the top of the dresser and desk has changed since I took these photos, but that just means he's making it his own! 

Musical Theater Camp: Aladdin

It's the final post on the kids' summer activities! For the first two weeks in August, Henry continued to attend Ida Lee Summer Fun camp while Natalie went to musical theater camp with a few of her friends. We (the parents) discussed, and with the kids' input chose to sign them up for Aladdin. In the course of two weeks they would cast, rehearse, and put on a full 30 min version of Aladdin of the show!

Because I was off work those two weeks (which was not planned when we first signed up for the camp), I was able to help with the carpool. In fact, I drove 5 girls to camp in Purcellville almost every morning. That was quite the experience - listening to them was very entertaining! But I was proud of them - they worked hard and helped to put on a fantastic show.

The girls actually put on 3 shows: one afternoon performance, and two evenings. I went to the first evening performance and offered to take photos to then be used as desired by the organization, and also to be distributed to all of the parents. Here are some of my favorite shots from during the performance - well, of the scenes that Natalie was in, at least!

Can you spot Natalie? She's a little hard to find in the above photo. In the next one, she's on the bottom right, wearing orange (next to the girl in blue).

Ok, Natalie's not in this one, but I love this shot. It's at the end of "Friend Like Me", and my friend Danielle's daughter Mia was cast as the genie (in the front in blue).

Natalie was then in "Prince Ali", complete with ribbon!

And here are a couple of shots from the big finale. Natalie is all the way in the back, in the middle.

This last one is definitely one of my favorite shots!

The girls all did so well; I know Natalie loved being on stage. She was even complimented by some friends who came to see the show on how much energy and stage presence she had! We may have a musical theater girl on our hands in a couple of years.

Here she is with her friend Carson after their show.

And after her last performance (the one we watched), I took some photos of her and her friends with my phone.  Carson, Lila, and Natalie were all in the show together. :)

But they had a bunch of friends from dance who came to watch them perform, which made them all so happy!

I like that in our family photos, Henry is wearing his tie-dye tshirt that he made in camp :)

Henry's Rock Band Camp

During the same week Natalie was at jazz camp, Henry had his specialty camp of the summer: Rock Band camp! It was held throughout the summer at his music school, Bach2Rock, and was definitely something he was looking forward to.

The kids spent all week forming their band, learning songs on different instruments, and ultimately inviting us to their end of week performance. All 3 of us were able to go watch Henry and his band play!

For their first song, Henry was on drums for a rousing, rambling, can't-quite-find-the-beat performance of "Can't stop the feeling" by Justin Timberlake.

We actually took full videos of each song, but I trimmed them down to just post about 30 seconds of each here. While these kids worked super hard, that's probably enough to listen to :) 

 Second was the girls' choice of "Love me like you do" by Ellie Goulding. They gave it a bit of a rock vibe, instead of a pop sound. I think this one was a bit more on beat; Henry was on piano this time, which we know is his favorite and best instrument. I clipped out a part where he had a very tiny solo.

Their third and final song was "Believer" by American Authors. Henry loves this song, and he really loved playing bass guitar for it! As you can see in the video below, bass guitar is very serious business.

Jazz Camp #2: July 2017

I posted previously about Natalie's first week of jazz camp from June; the same camp was offered a month later at the end of July, and despite it not being mandatory we signed her up for that one too. The teachers encourage more practice, and since we needed a place for the kids to be anyway (thanks, work!), we decided the expense was worth it. And darn if that wasn't true! Natalie loved both weeks, but I think especially week 2 for a couple of reasons.

 She knew the dances already (they were the same both times, with a few minor changes), and she was given a solo portion in the lyrical dance - I was so proud of her!

Since during week 1 I had used my iPhone to take video (and a few photos), this time I brought my camera with me to photograph the routines. Here are a few of my favorite shots of her during both dances.

And here's the video of that dance, shot and shared by my friend Danielle.


Then was their fun one - sassy girls!

They love their teacher, Ms Mercke! I love how much effort the girls put into learning for the week, and how devoted the teachers are to the dancers.