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!

NYC December 2018

After just having gotten back from an adventure in NYC (more on that soon), I thought it was finally time to post photos of my last NYC adventure, from December 2018. I had to go to New York for work, and was able to take my sister with me! We arrived in the afternoon, got checked in and changed, and then walked through Rockefeller Center before dinner. I love the chance to see the holiday decorations!

We then found a really yummy sushi restaurant nearby (and quite inexpensive, particularly for the area!), and headed over to the show we'd bought tickets for.

I finally got to see the Rockefeller Center Rockette's Christmas Spectacular! And wow, was it amazing.

Love the building, love the art deco decor. There was something beautiful to look at everywhere!

 Our seats were over here very close to stage right. Our tickets were inexpensive because we did have a partially obstructed view (we couldn't see the full side of stage right, but that was ok), and I liked being so close to the stage.

Don't we look pretty all dolled up!

The next day I had some client visits, and then we went back out to walk around more. We got to see Rockefeller Center during the day!

 

I love this view so much!

 

And of course no trip to NYC is complete without walking through Times Square at night, even when it's crazy cold out!

What an awesome couple of days we had - so nice to get to do this together with Carrie!

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.

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!

September Concert #1: Jethro Tull

The second weekend in September was a big one, even though the two events weren't actually on the weekend. I started off with a concert on Friday night at Wolf Trap: Ian Anderson presents 50 Years of Jethro Tull. I had seen the tickets for sale, and asked my parents if they wanted to go as my dad has always been a huge Jethro Tull fan. I've been a fan since I was younger - who doesn't love a good rock flute? This former floutist certainly does!

There was a big storm called for that evening; that's why I always spring for seats! Plus, I'm too dang old to sit on the lawn. As we walked around some before the show, we saw the clouds amassing...

and during the show they broke open and it POURED. Luckily we stayed dry under the ceiling!

Going into the show, we weren't totally sure what to expect. Would it be just Ian Anderson? Would it be Jethro Tull songs? A mix? Turns out that it was a Jethro Tull retrospective, as advertised. The first 6-7 songs or so were ones that I had not heard (but again, I'm not a super fan!), but my parents knew them.

The set was really cool; excellent integration of old video footage from their previous concerts and performances while playing live on stage.

And damn, at over 70, the man can still dance around a stage and play the flute. For two hours!

Harmonica too.

Thick as a brick - a definite audience favorite!

As was this one...

And of course you cannot have a 50 years of Jethro Tull concert without Aqualung!

I give Ian Anderson a ton of credit - he was aware of what he could/couldn't do in terms of singing, and used the audio in the pre-recorded video sections judiciously, not trying to hit notes that he can't any more.

There have been 38 different members of Jethro Tull over the years...they showed interview clips with previous members, and other bands/artists who were inspired by them. It was a really fantastic couple of hours - very glad we got to go!

Carrie's bridal shower

After our evening out, I got up Saturday morning to start decorating Carrie's house for her bridal shower! We found some great decorations, and I proceeded to get everything set up.

In addition to decorations, we had games (what's a bridal shower without fun games?).

These advice cards were a lot of fun - not only did I ask everyone to fill one out, but then we read them to Carrie and she had to guess who wrote each one. Natalie's made me smile!

 

Oh, and you have to have food! I ordered sandwich and fruit platters from Wegmans, then we added hummus, mini crab cakes, and a few other things.

And as favors and party game prizes, I had picked out and packaged up candles for everyone. Who doesn't love new candles?!

Carrie looked lovely, and it was so nice outside that I made everyone come out to take some photos before the party started.

 

Carrie's friends and family were all so generous with gifts for her. I have to highlight the gift from my mom - not only did she get her these great "Mrs. Butterworth" gifts (that's Carrie's new last name!), but Carrie finally received the other half of a ring that was my great grandmother's - I received my half at my bridal shower, and now Carrie has hers. Carrie's new step-daughter took this photo of our hands and rings...so beautiful, and I love that we share this. 

Congratulations to the bride-to-be!