A sunset walk with Henry

On a rather warm February evening, Henry and I went for a walk up the street to see the sunset. I made him take a photo for me (love portrait mode on the iPhone!), and he asked if we could take a selfie together.

 

Of course, when I went to take a photo of the sunset, this cloud had moved in the way.

But, as we stood there, the cloud thinned and we were able to watch the sun sink behind the hill.

I enjoy these little moments with Henry that we get to have when Natalie is at dance class. 

NYC in February

I went to NYC in both January and February for work. The January trip was VERY busy - 5 visits over two days, throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Long Island. Because of that, and I since I was traveling with colleagues, I really didn't get a chance to take any photos while there (except of my client sites, and no one here will find that interesting!).

However, when I went in February, I stayed in Manhattan, did a lot of walking to my appointments, and was alone, which led to a lot of photos!

I stayed in a hotel I hadn't stayed in before, and unfortunately by the time I checked in they didn't have the room type I had reserved. So in exchange, they gave me a room with a view of the Empire State Building - absolutely gorgeous at night! I was literally lying in bed looking at this.

 As I was walking around mid town the next day, heading to my appointment, it was a stunning clear (if very cold!) morning. And I still had beautiful views of the Empire State Building.

 

I passed this church on the walk; I loved the mix of older church architecture with the barely-in-leaf tree and the brand new architecture going up behind it.

 Later, I walked through Madison Square Park, which was surrounded by very tall new buildings, lit from behind by the sun.

And of course, the Flat Iron building! I hadn't seen this one since we lived in NYC, as I don't often head to this part of the city while there for work.

My appointment the next day was at NYU, where I walked with my client around Washington Square Park. I would have loved to have gotten a photo of the famous arch there, but since I was talking to the client (as we walked and drank hot tea), I didn't think I should stop to do that. Hopefully another time! I am heading back to NYC twice in April (first next week, and then on a second date, TBD), so we'll have to see where my visits take me.

A wet and icy, but beautiful, Montreal

In January, I headed to Montreal for the first time ever. Of course, that's not the ideal time of year to travel to our neighbor to the north, but it's when my clients needed me to visit, so I packed heavy and flew up...into a right messy storm! The snow was blowing, it was late at night, and the weather for the next day two days was...not great.

I stayed at a hotel where I could walk to my first two client sites, which was fortunate because the roads were in bad shape. My first two appointments were in the morning; my afternoon appointment was cancelled due to the bad weather. So, I trudged through the slush in my boots (more on those later), met my clients, and then headed back to the hotel to work for the afternoon.

By about 4pm, I was going a bit stir crazy and had gotten all of my work done. The freezing rain/snow had stopped (or at least greatly slowed down), and I wanted to go see at least part of Montreal, since so many people had told me how pretty it was. I wasn't too far from the old town area, so I bundled up and headed out.

Despite the gray, slush, and snow, old town Montreal was very picturesque!

I walked down to Notre Dame; I thought about going inside but it turned out there was some sort of light display inside that was about $30 to go see, so I decided that wasn't worth it and didn't go in.

And here was the view across the street from Notre Dame. I think this was some government building? I'm not sure, but the square was very pretty.

It still wasn't snowing, so I ducked into a nearby Starbucks to grab a warm drink and check email. While there, thawing out, the freezing rain started back up. I'm a Lyft girl, so I didn't have Uber downloaded to my phone, and unfortunately Lyft doesn't exist in Montreal yet. This meant no way to get a ride back to the hotel (there weren't any cabs where I was that I saw either). So, I bravely headed out in the rain for my 1.5-ish mile walk back to the hotel.

Despite the rain (and rain it did - I got soaked!), it was beautiful.

 

The lights shining on the ice during my walk was too pretty, so when I could take my phone out to photograph it (without ruining my phone), I just had to. And oh, was it raining. I tried to take a "sad face" selfie to show just how wet I was. Honestly, I wasn't totally miserable - by that point, it was an adventure, right?

 

My jacket was soaked through in the shoulders (it's not waterproof!), and even worse were my boots. I had brought my tall black boots on the trip, and despite their being leather, they are also NOT waterproof. They've gotten wet before, but never like this. They were truly soaked through after this multiple mile walk through slush, rain, and ice. I dried them out as best as I could, including using the blow dryer on the inner lining, but they were still slightly wet the next day. I had to wear them to my clients and home on the plane, but once I got home they sadly had to be thrown out. A sacrifice to the travel gods! Of course just a week or so later I bought what would have been the perfect black winter boots (for $20 on clearance!), so at least that won't happen again.

January sunset in DC

On January 20, I went into DC for another Kennedy Center show (this one was a play, The Humans). But this post isn't about the play (which was overall ok, but the ending was...dark and kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole thing). This post is about the sunset that I saw as I walked from the Kennedy Center to the restaurant where my friend and I had dinner. Check out this beautiful sky!

 And ice on the Potomac! And birds! And reflection! And building silhouettes! Just beautiful all around.

And these were taken on my iPhone, with no filters applied or changes in post. It was truly stunning to capture.

I love this shot with the moon above.

And finally, a look back across the ice at the Kennedy Center itself. Such a gorgeous night!

Natalie's 10th birthday party

Because of all the craziness in December, it just wasn't possible to schedule Natalie's birthday party for then. I found out that the Rising Stars Interns host birthday parties at the dance studio, and Natalie loved the idea of having her party there. I loved the idea of her being able to have a big party with a ton of her friends not at my house!

The big studio was decorated, and some of Natalie's favorite older dancers were there to help. They started by making a craft - a ballerina out of popsicle sticks!

Such cute popsicle ballerinas!

The party included a delicious ballerina cake, which I managed to get a picture of before it was devoured.

After craft time, it was time for freeze dance.

 

And just some general fun dance-around-the-studio time. I think at this point Natalie and Lily were doing one of their performance pieces together? Something they'd made up, for sure.

They then played "4 corners" for quite a while, which I hadn't seen before but the girls had a great time and it was a lot of fun to watch! The interns (and Evan) sat at a couple of corners, and the girls all ran around between the corners. When the music turns off, the "chooser" in the middle picks a corner. Whoever is in that corner is out. This pic shows Natalie hiding her face before she made one of her choices. There was much laughing!

And then Limbo!

I managed to get all of the kids together for a group shot. It was a great mix of friends from dance, friends from school, and friends from our group (my friends' kids).

The last thing Natalie wanted to do was perform their Showkids competition piece for the rest of the party guests. These are my favorite pics of her.

This pic cracks me up because the girls were giggling while performing, and they're supposed to be super serious.

And finally it was time for cake!

We started the party with 5 older dancers, running the party, but two had to leave a little early. Here's Natalie with the other 3, including her big sister Arran (right). She loved her 10th birthday party!

January 2018 randomness

I found a bunch of random photos and video from the month of January, and since they were quite cute but not enough individually for their own posts, I threw them into a post all together. This goes roughly chronologically through the month, starting with New Year's Eve, and all of our kiddos being adorable together on Natalie's bed (before we made them go to bed so we adults could start our game night).

At Natalie's birthday party (more on that soon), one of her friends gave her a few bath bombs. So, for the first time in a long while she took a nice relaxing bath in our jacuzzi tub. Nothing like pink bubbly water!

While I was on one of my trips (and I was gone for most of the last half of January), Evan sent me this fantastic picture of the two of them after getting haircuts.

Evan also sent me this shot of Henry, which I absolutely love. He is just too darn cute.

At one of Natalie's Showkids rehearsals prior to their competition at the end of January (definitely more on that soon!), their instructor asked the girls to all come wearing gloves (or socks, as some chose!) since they do a LOT of touching during their dance and it was the height of flu season. The girls took some silly shots and their instructor sent them out to us. Too cute!!

One one quiet weekend morning, while Natalie was at dance, Henry and I spent some time reading at Starbucks by the fire. Love sharing this with him!

And finally, Henry in one of his partially improvised/partially choreographed dances. Love the creativity.

Atomic Jump during Christmas break

By December 27, everyone had cleared out of our house, and it was back to being just the 4 of us. My company is incredible in terms of holiday leave - the company is closed the week between Christmas and New Year, and with a couple of days off before Christmas, I think I ended up not working for about 11 days, without taking any PTO. Incredible! And gave us lots of time to recuperate after hosting everyone.

However, Evan did not have the whole week off, so the kids and I got to spend some good time together. One day during that week, the kids' school had a fundraiser at Atomic Jump, where 40% of the proceeds during that afternoon went to the school. I can get behind that! I bought an hour of jumping for the kids, and watched them as they had fun.

The best way to show their jumping fun isn't with photos, it's with videos! So, enjoy.