A December snowstorm in Charlottesville

On the day before Natalie's birthday, we got hit with quite the snow storm! Unfortunately for Natalie, that meant that her birthday party had to be cancelled (since no one could drive anywhere), but we managed to still make it fun for her (more on that in the next post).

It did mean that we had a very gray snowy Sunday together as a family! It really was a perfect snow storm - light weight, fluffy, and deep enough to have a lot of fun in. I think in total we got about 10" of snow; definitely the most we had seen in a couple of years.

The kids, Lucy, and I bundled up and headed out for some fun, even though it was still snowing. Can't stay inside all day!

One of Natalie's friends (who was supposed to come to her birthday party) was able to come over to play for a while, so at least she didn't totally lose that time with her friends!

Oh yeah, I did manage to drag Evan out in it for at least a little while :)

And we discovered just how much fun our yard is for sledding - just as much fun as we thought it would be!

Lucy loves the snow (no surprise there!), although I will say those giant snow balls that adhered to her fur were NOT fun to take off. But I couldn't keep her locked up inside, knowing how much she loved playing in it.

Holidays 2018

A quick overview of our 2018 holiday season... which frankly was a bit of blur, after having just moved! We moved into our house the week before Thanksgiving, so we were definitely in no shape to host. Luckily, Carrie and Chip wanted to host (since it was their first holiday since getting married!), and now it's an easy drive for us to get to their house - not even two hours away! This made for a really easy day trip there on Thanksgiving.

We had a lovely holiday with my parents, aunt, and Carrie & Chip. Henry was particularly delighted to spend some time in Chip's music room. Chip really enjoyed that too, and the kids and he had a great time jamming out. Henry and Natalie made up a song, and once Chip heard Henry playing "Feel it Still", they all played and sang together!

For Christmas, we wanted to host since it would be our first Christmas in our new house. Luckily, everyone agreed, so we had a full house - my parents, Evan's parents, my aunt, and on Christmas Eve Carrie and Chip. So nice to celebrate with so many!

We had to figure out how to put up the Christmas lights at the new house - turns out we don't have nearly enough, and will have to get more next year! But I think Evan and Natalie did a nice job.

We had the house all decorated inside as well - and while we've needed a new tree for a couple of years, our vaulted ceiling living room really reinforced that. Time to get a taller tree! Also, next year this will all look a bit cozier now that we have things on the walls.

The kids woke up Christmas morning to their new body pillows and stockings ready to be opened on the couch! I loved that for one more year, their matching pjs from Scott & Amanda still fit.

I think everyone really liked their presents - I loved my "big" gift from Evan. Friends Funko Pop set #2! Specialty characters. I think I'm going to need the original set now as well. But I do love these hanging out on the shelf behind me as I work!

Oh, and just after Christmas I finished my latest cross stitch project - Angels of Rockefeller Center. I have an idea for seasonal cross stitches in our foyer, so this one will be framed and ready to go for Christmas next year.

Exploring Charlottesville - family walks

So, we got to Charlottesville ok, but needed to start exploring our new town! Of course, Evan and I know it quite well already, but it's one thing to remember locations from nearly 20 years ago, or from visiting for a day or two here and there since then - it's another thing to now live here! Plus, the kids don't know C'ville nearly as well as we do, so we wanted to take them on some local walks so they could really get to enjoy their new home.

We ventured to Walnut Creek Park, which is only a few miles south of our house. I'm always on the lookout for new places to walk, and it has a ton of trails. It turns out that, like a lot of the places I've found to walk in C'ville, these trails are actual woods trails, not paved, which is tough with all of the rain we've had (hello, mud!). But...when it dries out this summer (we hope!) they'll be fun to explore more.

We drove through Walnut Creek and explored a few of the paths, and also found the lake beach area that will be really fun to enjoy this summer!

Of course, you can't live in C'ville without walking around Grounds. UVa has perfect places to walk (when the sidewalks aren't overrun with students, that is), and the kids have really enjoyed our walks there (mostly because of getting Starbucks drinks from the Corner, I'm betting). The Lawn is just beautiful pretty much any time of day. This first sunset walk was a real stunner!

I've taken a lot of walks on Grounds in the past 4 months (it's probably my favorite place to walk so far). Mornings, evenings, even some mid-day...it's just a great place to walk, especially on the weekend when I can park for free on Grounds. And it does make for some stunning photos.

And don't worry - when we do these family excursions, we always bring Lucy with us! It's not always easy to keep her from getting too muddy/dirty, given all of the rain we've had, but she loves exploring with us.

In fact, I have a whole folder of photos on my computer now labeled "UVa" and the vast majority of those photos include Lucy. I'll have to do a post on those soon!

Hey, guess what? We moved!

If you've been living in a cave, you might have missed the fact that we moved in November 2018! We started the process almost a year ago, just looking at houses in Charlottesville to see if something might strike us. Would we want to actually move, or is C'ville just great in our memories? Could we find a neighborhood we liked? A house? What about schools? Well, in 3 visits down to C'ville (the last one with the kids, after we told them about the idea), we found a neighborhood, a house, and schools that we really liked. We put an offer in, and after about 7 weeks (and some moments of anxiety about selling!) we were able to sell our house, get everything organized, and head 2 hours south.

Leaving Leesburg wasn't easy; we'd been there for 12 years, which is the longest I'd ever lived anywhere. We loved our life there, our friends, activities - all of it. Leaving wasn't a decision we came to lightly, but it's been a really good one for all of us, even if we were sad to leave!

But we were able to find this amazing house, which has been one of the biggest pluses for all 4 of us. The kids absolutely love their rooms, I love how separated we are from the houses around us (an acre puts some nice distance between us and them!), and we've met some really nice folks in the neighborhood.

I can't wait to see what it looks like once everything is in bloom!

The move itself went off with nary a hitch - we lost one lamp and some pixels on our TV, but otherwise everything survived. The company sent excellent packers (yep, we paid to have ourselves packed) who did such a great job over the course of 3 days. The moving team was also great, as this was a pretty big job. Our new driveway is steep enough that the truck couldn't make it up, which made for a bit more work for them. The kids found the whole process fascinating.

But I think we all settled in pretty well to our new space!

 

I was going to do another post showing the modifications we made (mostly cosmetic, as we had almost all of the house painted; I was not into the southwest style colors that were in the house when we purchased), but again, I'm trying to streamline these posts! Plus it looks like I never took good after photos (but lots of the terrible terra cotta before!); if I ever get around to taking them maybe I'll put together a post. But for posterity, so that I can remember 10 years from now, we took away the cream color (such as shown in the kitchen above), and repainted the living room, kitchen, upstairs hallway, and guest room a lovely light gray (replacing multiple shades of cream, yellow, and terra cotta in the process). We removed the 3 shades of peach and cream in our master suite, and covered them with 2 shades of neutral mauve (although the bathroom is pretty purple!). And the kids rooms went from plain white to a Parisian blue for Natalie, and Star Wars-inspired gray, charcoal gray, black, and red for Henry. Exciting all around to make our new home really feel like OURS!

FDES Talent Show Fall 2018

This will be a quick post - the video from Natalie and Henry performing together at the FDES talent show before we moved last fall. I could not have been prouder of them both, but especially Henry - he typically hates any event when he is up in front of people, yet he had no problem singing and playing his guitar in front of an auditorium full of people!



The certificate ceremony afterwards.

Where they spelled the kids names...all kinds of wrong LOL.

Companies in Concert Fall 2018

I wanted to do a really in depth post on this, Natalie's final show as part of the Showkids company at Loudoun School of Ballet, but as I'm coming up on being 4 months behind, I've realized that I just have to start condensing posts. There just isn't any other way to get caught up, and given how crazy my next couple of months are, the likelihood of me spending the time needed each night to do this is pretty much nil. Especially when I have an awesome cross stitch to work on!

So instead I show here, with very little narrative, my favorite photos of Natalie and her friends from the show. She was so excited for her dances this year, and her energy on stage really showed.

 

I did my best to get photos of Natalie with all of her friends...

 And managed to get one of all of the Showkids together before they went on stage.

Because it was Natalie's last show, I asked and was allowed to take photos of her onstage during dress rehearsal. I was going to do a whole separate post of these, but again in the interest of moving things along, here is my favorite photo of her from each of her 3 dances.