Celebrating 20 years together

In January Evan and I celebrated 20 years together since we started dating by spending a few days in Boston! I had to go there for work, and my parents were nice enough to come to our house to watch the kids so that Evan could join me. Since I had client visits to do during the day, we didn't spend the whole time together, but that was ok as Evan has colleagues in the area and he was able to go work with them.

We were able to do a couple of fun things, in addition to working! We had a free few hours on one afternoon, and at my colleague's recommendation we checked out a place called the Mapparium. It's in the Mary Baker Eddy Library (founder of Christian Science), and is a 1/35 scale glass sphere of the world as it looked in 1935. You walk through it, and the room is completely silent...it's just really cool. They don't allow photos inside, so we took this selfie at their "selfie wall" outside.

 

Definitely a cool thing to do that I'd never heard of before, and am glad we saw!

I had also made us a reservation at Ostra for dinner - wow, it was delicious! And who doesn't love an excuse to dress up? Evan surprised me with flowers delivered to our hotel room as well.

 

We were early leaving for dinner, so we went to Top of the Hub to have a drink before dinner. Beautiful views of Boston!

Dinner was absolutely delicious - I even loved their horseshoe crab plates!

Evan had sneakily told them that it was our anniversary, so this is how my dessert came out. So nice!

We were supposed to stay through the weekend, and spend all day Saturday with Evan's brother and his family. Unfortunately, a giant snow storm was coming through and Friday evening our Sunday flight was already cancelled. I had thought ahead, and managed to get us on early morning flights on Saturday. It was good that we were able to get home, but we were really sad to lose the whole day with them! We made the best of the one night that we got, but we were bummed to miss the time with family. Hopefully we can get back up there soon.

Proud to be their mom

I had a lovely Mother's Day this year, but that's not really what this post is about. It was wonderful to have the breakfast I wanted, enjoy a relaxing massage and facial, go see a movie as a family, and gorge on Thai food for dinner.

But during the down time I had last night, I had some time to reflect on being a mom to these two kiddos, and I realized there were a few things that I wanted to write down before I forgot. Things that make me really proud to be their mom. They have really grown a lot in the past year, with big life changes thrown at them with moving, and I'm really impressed at their maturity lately.

1. Traveling to Australia. We asked a lot of them on that trip: over 24 hours of travel each way, pretty constantly go-go-go doing things for two weeks, exploring new places, trying new foods...and they were with us the whole way. They barely complained at all on the crazy long flights, they understood when we had delays, and even when we got soaking wet in rain, shivering outside and then on an air conditioned boat, they went along with it. They understood that it was all a part of this incredible trip, and we all got through it.

2. School. The kids are really rocking it at their new school. For the first time ever, Natalie earned straight As for two marking periods in a row (both of them at her new school), and Henry earned all top marks too (all 3s out of a scale of 1-3). We're all really enjoying their new school, and it particularly makes me happy to see how much confidence they both have, especially Natalie who has definitely struggled in the past.


3. Dance. Leaving dance was the hardest thing for Natalie with our move, but she's found a good home at Charlottesville Ballet Academy. We really like the atmosphere there, and she's made friends over the past few months. She earned a spot in Cinderella over about 30 other dancers, and was given responsibility to lead her group, after only dancing there for a couple of months! The teachers could see her dedication and great personality, and have put that to use. Then, just this week, we learned that she made it into the CBA Pre-professional program, which is an elite program in the school designed to train those who want some sort of a career in dance. I'm so proud of the work she has put in, and so happy for the additional self-confidence boost it has given her.

And I don't want to leave Henry out of dance, either! We put him into a tap/jazz class where frankly the tap was more advanced than the level he's at. He struggled a bit towards the beginning, but stuck with it, even practicing his harder moves at home, and he went from wanting to quit after the recital to wanting to dance again next school year! Really proud of him for sticking it out.

4. Maturity. I know this whole post is about their maturity, but in general they've gotten to the point where we feel comfortable leaving them home alone for short periods of time. It's not good to put too much of this out on the internet for anyone to see, but I'll say that they've done quite well and have proven themselves to be very responsible. 

So this year, in particular, I find myself incredibly proud to be their mom. I can't wait to see what the next year brings.

Fun with friends from Leesburg

In February, we were fortunate to host three of Natalie's Leesburg friends! Her friends Bella and Bridgette came first, to join Natalie at a modern dance workshop at CBA and then to spend the night. The girls all agreed that the workshop was not exactly what they were looking for, but they were glad to have tried something different.

And of course, no sleepover with friends is now complete without some time in our hot tub!

Followed by movie and dog cuddle time on the couch!

Then, a couple of weekends later, we did a kid-swap with the Carlsons - Lily came to our house for the night, while Henry went to their house for a sleepover with Lily's brother Garrett. We had a lovely dinner out, and the girls stayed up late having lots of fun catch-up time in person.

What did I say above? Gotta have hot tub time!

And the boys had a blast too! Love this photo of them :)