A walk in the rain

I'm stuck working in a hotel room today, and feeling a little lonely, so I'm going to post this super fun thing that I did with Natalie earlier this month. On a Sunday afternoon, a light rain started. I still needed to get some steps in for the day, so I asked the kids to join me on a walk in the rain. I grabbed my waterproof camera, and out we went!

After the initial picture, Henry didn't want any part of being out in the rain, so he headed back inside while Natalie and I continued around the pond.

Look how tall the cattails are! Natalie liked how fuzzy they are.

And here we are at the end of our walk. My shirt is a whole shade darker due to the rain, but man we had a nice time!

Natalie's 1st Slumber Party

Ok, last post from August...I actually ended up posting most things for September as they happened, so with this post I only have some random ones left that aren't really date-specific, so I think I can say that I'm just about caught up! Oh, until this weekend when more events happen...but even so, after being behind on these posts for the better part of a year, it's nice to just about be back on track!

So anyway, in August we held an event that was a first for us: Natalie's first slumber party! We invited 5 of her friends from dance class over for the night; I wanted there to be an even number of girls, and I felt that a total of 6 was all that I could handle. The girls did really great - we had a couple that stayed up late, and one who was a little scared being away from home, but really, it went so well!

We started the evening with pizza - in jammies, of course!

The girls were then getting a little antsy, so we decided to take Calla for a walk around the pond - still in our jammies! The girls took off ahead of me, which prompted the couple that we walked past to say to me: "you look like you have your hands full!". I did, but not in a bad way!

I did get them to stop long enough for a photo. Too cute!

On the other side of the pond is a very large hill; it was apparently quite fun to run up the hill and walk along the top. They did take a brief break to watch the sunset.

And to play under a tree.

When we got back to the house, it was time to decorate cupcakes! Since it was summer, Natalie was at Essie's every day with Henry; Essie was awesome and offered to make the cupcakes for the girls - she also made them each a plate with different icing options and decorations. The girls loved it!

Afterwards, they all set up their sleeping bags in the living for our "main event" - watching So You Think You Can Dance. None of the other girls had seen it before, and they found the dancing style a little strange - they're not used to the stylized  dances with crazy costumes, makeup, hair, and I think some of the dance styles were not quite for them.

On the whole they enjoyed it, although it did lead to an impromptu dance party!

Although they are reaching the age where the dancing is less frantic and more real dancing, as they learn more skills. Love this final pose they gave me!

Fun times with Henry

Because Natalie has 2.5 hours of dance now every Saturday afternoon, Henry and I have gotten to spend a lot of time together over the past month, which has been really fun! We've run errands, grabbed food together, played at the house...lots of fun stuff! Here's a highlight of some of our fun.

First, while running errands we tried on some Halloween items at Michael's:

 

We've gone for nice walks around the pond:

I took him to a birthday party at Pump It Up one Friday night. Sorry that it's so dark - it was a Glow in the Dark party. But you can see him by the glowing yellow necklace around his neck! First here he is on the slide:

And here he is making a 5' jump that I'm not even sure I would want to make!

He's also been doing great at school - I love seeing everything he brings home! And piano class is going really well; currently we are working on Fur Elise, and it's so great to hear him play, and work on left and right hands playing together.

He's also been reading up a ton - he got this one from the school library two weeks ago, and read the whole thing through the first night home. He got a second one by the same author earlier this week, and has already blown through it. He's definitely our little reader!

And I know I posted this on FB, but how cute was he yesterday as we sat outside and watched the Leesburg Air Show? Love that smile.

Natalie the Photographer: March 2015

Ugh, such a backlog to get through! I have 14 blog posts drafted, which doesn't even quite catch me up to now (I think that will take a 15th post). I had anticipated getting a ton posted up while I was traveling last week - I even took my portable hard drives with me on which I have all of my photos saved - but between running a workshop all day and working in the evening I just didn't have the energy for it. Hence, a week in between posts! Bad Abbe.

There has been so much going on: events with friends, our trip to Boston (I have two more posts from that!), work travel (I think 3 of those to write about), a wrap up from March (where I took a lot of miscellaneous photos and I'm going to throw them all in together), our Easter weekend, Henry's birthday weekend...whew! I'm exhausted just thinking about it. My hope for today is to pre-write at least half of those so that I can just post them up this week. Cross fingers! Part of my delay on blogging was also that I was trying to finish two books, and in the last two days I finished both of them. So maybe I can make myself be on my computer more now!

Anyway, into the post. This one should be an easy one to start with before I have to pour through the many other photos I have! In March, about 6 weeks ago, Natalie joined me on a photo excursion behind our house. We had just gotten snow, and the sun was out, making for some of my favorite weather/environment for taking outdoor photos (in the winter). I was focusing on macro photography, due to the photo challenge of that week. I let Natalie bring out my Canon point and shoot and take photos that struck her interest. I set the settings for her, and off we went! Because I was focusing on the plants, she wanted to do the same. Here are her photos, as always unedited!

 I think this one is her best - excellent focus on the cattail!

 Well, ok - really, I think THIS one is her best. I love us shooting each other at the same time! Unfortunately I was in manual mode and didn't focus on her correctly, so my photo came out terribly. Well done, young photographer!