We went to Australia!

That's right, we spent the first two weeks of April this year halfway around the world, in Australia! The kids had been asking to go for a while, since we have family there, and we decided that this year was the time to go - the kids are old enough to enjoy and remember the trip, and also to not be a nightmare on the very long journey. The timing worked out very well with both our spring breaks and spring break in Australia, so we could see Evan's brother and his wife and spend time with them, and I was able to get a great deal on 4 tickets, so off we went!

And of course, like every big trip you take, it did NOT start out well. We were due to be at the airport around 1:30pm that day, and the kids had a half day at school, so we took Lucy for one last good walk before taking her to the dog sitter's...and of course I managed to do this to myself.

 

I didn't do it in any fancy way - I tripped on a part of the asphalt I didn't even see, almost managed to catch myself, and ended up "sliding into home" on my left side. Which resulted in a badly banged up pinky (I was worried it was broken for a while, but luckily just badly bruised), a really banged up chin, and eventually a bruised left shoulder (that took longer to show up). My fingers swelled up pretty much immediately, which I can tell you was not fun on the 14 hour overnight flight!

So, I bandage up, kids come up, Lucy gets dropped off, and we go to the Charlottesville airport. The plan was C'ville to Dulles to LA to Melbourne. We arrived, and of course our flight out of C'ville was already way delayed, which meant we would miss our flight to LA, which meant not getting to Melbourne. NOT going to happen! We rented a car, and Evan FLEW us up the road to Dulles. It was tight, but we made it! Can you make out the worried faces of the kiddos as we went??

Everyone was MUCH happier when we had checked bags, gotten through security, and were waiting at the gate.

And after that, the trip really went smoothly! We spent an overnight in Melbourne, meeting up briefly with Todd (we would see him, Claire, and the kids again after our week alone). We checked out the Melbourne museum (which we had not seen on our last trip), and wandered the city before passing out due to exhaustion.

The next day, we got BACK on a plane to hundreds and hundreds of miles north to Cairns, a town along the northern coast so we could see the Great Barrier Reef and all the beauty to explore. This was literally the view from our hotel room on the first day!

We had a great time in Cairns - the harbor and lagoon were incredible.

And when we went swimming in the lagoon, we had the whole thing almost to ourselves! Very cool experience.

We were in Cairns for 5 days, and did a lot more than just hang out at the hotel, walk along the water, and swim. We also went out to the Great Barrier Reef, had a very wet adventure on Green Island, spent a day in Kuranda (a town in the rain forest), and spent one rainy afternoon at the Cairns Aquarium. I'll definitely be sharing photos from those first 3 as there's a lot of cool things to see! And then we had another week with our family outside of Melbourne and on Phillip Island. It was an amazing two weeks for sure!

Cinderella: On Stage

In my previous post I shared photos of Natalie and her friends backstage at Cinderella; this post are my favorite photos I took of her on stage during the dress rehearsal.

Leaping elves and fairies!

Now is when the elves warn Cinderella that midnight is approaching...

And at the end of the ballet, I captured these more close-up shots of my girl. Her placement on stage was perfect! (I was trying to stay out of the way as I took my shots)

What a beautiful finale to a beautiful show!

Backstage at Cinderella

Natalie's first big performance with Charlottesville Ballet was in March 2019. She had auditioned for a role in January, and got one of the 40 spots that over 70 girls auditioned for! We were so proud of her, especially for being new to the school.

They performed Cinderella, which was choreographed by the head of the Southwest Ballet Company (including using his costumes and some of his male dancers for a few roles). The girls worked very hard for 3 months, as did the company members, and then gave two performances in Charlottesville and two the following weekend in Lynchburg. I volunteered backstage both weekends, which let me get a lot of fun backstage photos of the girls!

The Charlottesville performance was at the Paramount Theater on the Downtown Mall. We had about 24 girls plus a couple of parents wedged into this small dressing room for the show, but they did great!

They were excited by the mirrors lining the room in which they could get ready.

 

One of the coolest things at the Paramount is that through the backstage hallways, people who have taken part in performances have signed the walls. It's so cool to walk through and experience! Even cooler, is at only 11 years old, Natalie's name is now there!

 

In escorting them to/from the stage, I was able to grab a couple of photos with my phone from the sidelines.

 

You'll see Natalie appear in the video below with her fairy friend in blue.

Like I said, the following weekend we headed down to Lynchburg for two performances there. Natalie and I stayed in a lovely hotel on Friday night, after dress rehearsal, and had plenty of time on Saturday morning before we had to arrive at the theater to go for a nice walk! There's a beautiful walking path over the river, and it turns out there was a St Patrick's Day 5K that we inadvertently took part in.

I have a lot of photos from Lynchburg that I took from the sidelines but they didn't all come out that well; this is a collage of the 3 I took that I liked the most.

I did take a bunch of photos with my actual camera during dress rehearsal in Charlottesville; I have gotten those edited and will next post my favorite stage photos of my girl!