Photo Fantastique: Part I

In the process of writing the Birthday post, I finally forced myself to figure out how to get pictures from Craig's phone onto my blog.  Like so many things in life, it wasn't even all that hard-- I'd just been too lazy to figure it out for a long time.

But the process of combing through all his pictures to find the birthday ones uncovered oodles of other fun pics dating all the way back to August (!!!) that never made it onto the blog.  So I guess it's time to remedy that, isn't it???  There are too many for one post, so I'll break it down into a few.  You've been warned.

This was how I found Kendra one morning...  I really like her combinations of blue and pink, actually.  It reminds me of the 80's.  But in a good way!

While Bentley and Kendra were at a birthday party, we decided to chill at Lake Monticello!  Gotta love Craig's selfie face!

I bet you thought my kids weren't even enrolled in school since I never posted pics of the first day of school (I should be fired as a blogger) but here they are!  Nine months later!

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! 

I like that they had matching backpacks.

The exciting thing this year was that it was the first year ever when Craig got to be home with the kids to see them off!  Before, he's always been in the middle of second period when their school started.  So this was kind of fun for all of us to have him around.

This is from our (Manassas) ward campout in August.

Bentley makes himself comfortable in someone else's camping chair...

Hot air ballooning seems to be a big thing here.  And that building that you see there below the hot air balloon is Craig's school! Yay, CATEC!!!

Lots of balloons over CATEC!

Everyone loves mommy!

Words cannot even express how much I love the look on Colton's face here.  Like he suspects there's something a bit off about his hat, but he's not sure what exactly...

Me and my baby

Teddy still gets involved in some of Bentley's adventures!  This creek is somewhere behind our house.

One of the really fun things about Craig's job is getting to visit all the classrooms and see what the students are learning.  Here, Craig lets them teach him a thing or two...  And, if this job doesn't work out, we know he's got a lot of fall-back options!

Can't fake that smile.  :)

This *might* be Craig's favorite class...!

One Friday we took the kids to the Charlottesville outdoor mall for ice cream, and ended up running into all our neighbors because there was an huge, awesome "welcome back UVA students" party going on. We felt so cool for being there, even though we didn't have a clue about it.

Notice the UVA flag above us?  And the boys got balloons...  I think Camille even got a bib!  It was a delightful evening.

I think that's enough pictures for one post.  More to come!

New York Weekend

My two best friends decided that we needed a girl's weekend away, and picked New York City as our destination.  This choice was made because Tracy had never been to New York (or any really big city, actually) and Sarah had only been when she was pregnant.  They picked a time when their husbands could stay home and watch the kids and asked if I'd be able to manage it as well.  It just so happened that I was already trying to plan a New York trip so I could meet my newest nephew, Nolan Henry, born March 2 to my baby sister Rachael.  So I was on board just as soon as I could make sure my kids would have adult supervision the entire time I was gone!  (Much thanks go to my mother-in-law for watching everyone Friday afternoon, and for Craig for taking care of everyone the rest of the time and making it look easy while he did it!)

It was hard to figure out a consensus between three (buried-in-children-busy, hard-to-talk-to-on-the-phone) people, but about a week before we were going we got the basics planned: we would stay at my sister Leah's house in the suburbs (this had two huge bonuses for me-- one, it's free; two, I'd get a chance to see Leah and her family!).  We would rent a car and drive it to the city and back-- this might sound silly since all three of us are 2-car families, but we couldn't take the large cars without leaving our husbands stuck with no way to transport all the kids, and all our husbands drive total beater cars that we weren't sure could be trusted for such a long drive.  So the rental car idea won out, and that was definitely a GOOD decision.  (Added bonus, we got upgraded to a Jeep for free, so we had plenty of space!)

We left Friday afternoon.  I met up with Sarah at the Charlottesville airport, where she got our rental car and I left my car in our Stake Center parking lot and hoped it wouldn't get towed.  We drove up to Manassas (making a stop at the Moo-Thru for milkshakes and dropping in on our friend Emma to see her new baby!) and picked up Tracy and we were on our way!

On the road!

Can I just say how relaxing and easy a road trip is with your best friends?  No whining, no big deal if we needed to stop for a bathroom or food.  And we always have SO MUCH to talk about!  And we had awesome luck and didn't hit much traffic.  Before we knew it, we were an hour away from Leah's house and-- oops!-- almost out of gas!  We hurriedly pulled over in what turned out to be Hackensack, New Jersey, filled up, and then finished the trip to Leah's.  The drive included going over the George Washington Bridge, which usually involves lots of yelling at each other while Craig and I try to figure out where we're going.  This time was slightly less stressful, with Tracy in the back seat ooh-ing over the Manhattan skyline as we went.  Not bad at all!

We got to Leah's and she showed us where we'd be staying.  I was a little obnoxious and claimed the bedroom-- I really can only handle Craig sleeping in the same room as me.  But Sarah and Tracy were excited to stay up chatting, so I think they were okay with that.  We figured out our plan for the next morning with Leah's help.  We'd been thinking we would take the train in, but Leah pointed out that parking in the city would probably be easier and cheaper, so we went with that plan, and she was totally right!

Saturday morning I got up early and showered and then hung out with Leah and Brian (and their adorable boys, Eliot and Theo) while Sarah and Tracy got ready.  I hadn't seen Leah in a year, so it was really great to hang out again!  Then we piled into our Jeep and headed into the city!  Parking was easy, although by the time we handed the keys over to the valet parker, there was a line behind us.  We headed to our first stop: the Manhattan temple

and were able to spend an hour doing some work there and seeing how beautiful (and quiet!) that building is, then we began working on Tracy's bucket list.  Her first request was just to walk through Central Park.  It was a perfect spring day, and we weren't tired yet, so the walk was lovely.  We stopped to get a crepe and, same as the parking, by the time we were done there was a long line before us!  We were so lucky!

Then we headed to our next stop, Serendipity where you can get frozen hot chocolate.  I wasn't as excited for this, and I was getting anxious to get over to see Rachael, so when the wait was going to be at least 45 minutes, I headed uptown to Harlem and let Tracy and Sarah enjoy hot chocolate without me.  (They assured me it was fabulous; Rachael assured me I wasn't missing out on much.  I guess I'll never know!)

I was kind of nervous to find Rachael's apartment on my own.  I've spent a lot of time in New York City, but I'm usually there with other people who lead the way and I just have to follow the entire time.  I wasn't too sure of navigating the city on my own.  Fortunately, Ian gave me excellent directions, and once I was above ground, Rachael talked me into heading the right direction and then once I was close by, popped out of her apartment to get me.  Phew!  I made it.  And then I got to sit and hold little Nolan and talk with Rachael for the next few hours, so what could be better than that???

Tiny babies are so precious!

Ian came home and we all walked around the park some more-- I may have gotten a touch sunburned.  And before I knew it, it was time to meet back up with Sarah and Tracy!  We had tickets to see Something Rotten on Broadway, and had decided to meet up at the Times Square Shake Shack ahead of time.

Now, I'm going to be a touch snobby here and just say: the Times Square Shake Shack is not nearly as good as the one I usually go to over on the west side (I think?  Remember how I don't navigate NY?).  But, it was still really good.  So, no complaints.

Sarah was thrilled to have left all her children's various nut allergies behind, and we spent the entire weekend enjoying everything with peanuts we could find.  Like this concrete:

(That's Sarah laughing at the nut warning!)

And, I blinked, of course.  Oh, well.  That's how you know it's actually me.

We still had some time, so we wandered around Times Square and let Tracy enjoy how busy and crazy it is there.  It's funny, because my sister Tracy (who lived in NY for about 15 years or something) always avoided Times Square like the plague because she hates crowds, so I really haven't spent much time there.  It was fun to show it off to my friend, but I can't say that it's my favorite thing about the city!

Something Rotten was absolutely fabulous.  My only complaint was just that it was so loud (and people were laughing so loud) that I missed a lot of the jokes.  But I still loved it, and have spent the last three weeks singing along with all my favorite songs.  My kids all know "Will Power" and "Hard to be the Bard" now!

We got outside and wandered Times Square a bit more, since it's even more impressive when it's dark outside.  Sarah was pretty wired, but eventually we made it back to our car and back to Leah's house.  I went right to bed (I missed my nap!) but Sarah and Tracy stayed up obsessing over Christian Borle and wondering where we could try to hang out to "bump into" him.  I love these friends of mine!

I meant to sleep in a bit the next morning, but then my eyes popped open and I thought, "I can hang out with Leah!" and then I was wide awake.  Leah had a big event that evening, so she was able to show me the video and slide show she'd helped prepare for it, so that was cool to see.  (Leah does medical fundraising, so the video was very emotional, but lovely!)  And eventually it was time to head back into the city again!

This time, we parked a car on the street near Rachael and Ian's apartment (Ian then helped us re-park it, since we were totally up on the curb) and I went to church with Ian and Rachael and Nolan!  This was Rachael's first time back at church since having the baby, and she was a bit nervous about it, but Nolan slept the entire time, so it was easy-peasy!  Ian had him in the Baby Bjorn, so Rachael didn't have to do anything!

Then I was dashing back across town so we could see She Loves Me.  This is the play which the movie The Shop Around the Corner, and then You've Got Mail, was based on, and it starred Zachary Levi (the voice of Flynn Rider from Tangled!) and also had Jane Krakowski (From 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) in it, so I was kind of excited to see them and they were GREAT.  It was a really fun show and the sets were amazing.  Sarah and Tracy had also managed to get tickets to Finding Neverland, but weren't able to get me a ticket.  They were very concerned that my feelings would be hurt by this, but I was actually just as excited to go spend a little more time with Rachael and Ian Nolan, so I skipped right back up to Harlem after our show and spent the evening once again holding a sweet baby!  By now I was getting much better at riding the subways by myself and finding my way around, so that was great.  What a relief!

We'd also wanted to go to the Stardust Diner-- one of those places where the servers are all hoping to make it on Broadway, so they sing and dance while you eat.  After their show, I met up with Sarah and Tracy and ate a super late dinner there.  (I think at some point during the afternoon I managed to get another concrete from the Shake Shack, too.)  It was fun-- a tiny bit depressing if I thought too much about how many of these actors were really going to "make it" but hopefully their lives will turn out the way they're hoping they will...?  Right...?

Singing waitress!

By the time we got out of there and made our way back to our car in Harlem, it was late and we discovered that Tracy is incapable of not speaking to people who talk to her!  This posed a problem with the random homeless guy on the subway and with the guy who asked what a bunch of white girls were doing in Harlem at one in the morning, but eventually we managed to drag Tracy away and no harm came to us.  It did make Sarah and I very nervous, and we spent a little time lecturing Tracy on proper New York behavior after that.

Home and to bed, and once again I woke up early excited to see Leah before she headed off to work!  Sarah and Tracy had a bit more sightseeing they wanted to do-- I think they saw the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.  Rachael and I picked up Levain Bakery cookies for everyone and their husbands and I got to see a little more of this cute guy:

Then we met up in Chinatown to buy knock-off purses together.  I really liked the one I got, even though I don't think it looks like any kind of expensive brand (although I wouldn't know, even if it did):

Most of my purses (that aren't a diaper bag) are very small, and I wanted a messenger-style purse that I could fit a book into.  This fit the bill perfectly!

And then it was time to head home!  I was missing Craig and the kids and my shins were killing me.  We found our car (which had been MUCH harder to park on a Monday!) and were on our way.  We thought about finding another Shake Shack for one last concrete, but I was getting pretty anxious to be on our way by then.

The drive home was smooth sailing.  I think the fact that Sarah had an EZ-Pass sped things up considerably.  And even on the beltway, the traffic wasn't bad!

Love seeing the DC temple, and if you can catch it at sunset...!

We stopped and got dinner at Cafe Rio in Manassas before depositing Tracy back in her home.  Then it was back to the airport to find my car, still parked at the Stake Center (which was a relief-- it was in a very dark corner of the parking lot and for a moment I was afraid it had been towed!), return the rental, and take Sarah to Costco where her husband was meeting us, and then home all by myself, arriving around midnight.

It was good to be home again.  Craig had been a super-star and organized the bookshelves in our room and put up my shelf while I was gone so that was awesome.  But mostly it was really good to know that I could still go and do fun things-- not everyone has such great friends and family!

Seriously-- how lucky am I?

My Grandma Hansen

Every other summer, my Mom would pack us all up and take her five daughters south to visit her parents in California.  Grandma and Grandpa lived in La Mirada, a suburb of LA, and seeing them was always a delight.  We would go to Disneyland and the beach.  We would swim in the Evans's pool.  Sometimes we would take side trips to Las Vegas, San Diego, or Bakersfield to reconnect with cousins and second cousins (and sometimes they would come to us for our beach and Disney trips).  It was kid heaven.

Apart from those "big" things, just being at Grandma and Grandpa's house was fun.  Coming from Seattle, the warm nights felt exotic and magical.  We would paw through my grandfather's various stamp and coin collections while admiring his various bells and cactus plants.  We would go through photo albums (Grandpa was a photographer, so they had a LOT) and read their Herman comic books.  We watched movies like Hello, Dolly! and West Side Story that Grandma had taped off TV, as well as the most recent news stories by my Uncle Bob.  We would sit on large pieces of cardboard to slide down the hill in their front yard (every time I go back to that house, I'm shocked by how small that hill is.  I swear it was a real HILL when I was a kid but really it's barely more than a bump)!  Some lucky souls would get to sleep on the hide-a-bed, which seemed full of wonder to me at the time, since it was the only home I knew of that had one. 

Visits to California epitomized everything a magic summer vacation should be.

I know Grandma and Grandpa came to see us on the years we didn't visit them, but those memories aren't as clear in my mind.  We have pictures of us getting ice cream and visiting the fish ladders, so I know we had fun together.  But California burns brighter in my mind, probably because it was such a completely different place from home.

My Grandfather died when I was a freshman in high school, and I don't remember our trips as well after then, although of course we still went.  I do vividly remember that when my junior year turned sour, my Mom sent me to LA and San Diego during spring break.  I had tons of fun with my cousins in San Diego, but my best memory from that trip was laying in a hammock on a gorgeous summery day, smelling orange blossoms and appreciating to myself that right at that moment, I was experiencing perfection.  My Mom was wise to send me there-- it didn't fix my problems back at home, but it gave me exactly the respite I needed to get through one final year of torture high school.  (And, actually, my senior year was much happier, so that was nice.)

But I'm getting way off track here.  This is starting to sound like a love letter to California, when really it's a tribute to my grandmother, who passed away on Wednesday.  In my mind, Grandma and California are inseparably linked: I so rarely had one without the other, and the two have such similarities for me.  They were both places of comfort and delight, where California always had perfect weather and my Grandmother was always sunny and happy to be with.  In the same way that I can't remember it ever raining in LA, I can't remember my grandmother ever being anything other than sweet, charming, and gracious.  I'm sure she had her bad moments just like the rest of us (and I know she was more trying as she got very elderly and helpless).  But not when I was with her.


The morning that she died, I happened to read a line written to Galileo by Cardinal Barberini which summed up exactly how I felt about my Grandmother.  He wrote, "I pray the Lord God to preserve you, because men of great value like you deserve to live a long time to benefit the public."*  Grandma didn't make any great scientific contributions, but she spread kindness and joy everywhere she went.

At her death, she was 93 (a month shy of 94, actually), and had been a widow for twenty years.  She had been cared for by my Las Vegas family for eight years, and bedridden for the last several.  She was the last of her ten siblings to still be alive, which feels like the loneliest thing in the world to me.  And for the last couple days of her life, she had been unable to eat.  So in many ways, her death is not tragic at all-- it was time for her to move on.  Which is why I'm not exactly sad for her death, but I am sad to have her gone.  Because the world needs more kind people like her, and I feel like we are all missing her wonderful influence now.  My Grandfather once told us that she was the sweetest person he ever knew, and I agree whole-heartedly with him.  It has been wonderful to read the notes and memories that people who knew her have been sending in to my family.  Her sweet influence truly spread through generations of people.



The only pictures I have on my computer of Grandma are from my wedding...  But isn't she lovely in every single one of them?  That's what happens when you're married to a photographer for long enough-- it was almost impossible to capture a picture of my Grandma where she isn't smiling perfectly!

Outside the temple (also pictured are Leah, Jeni, Lindsy and Kamryn)

With Tracy and my Mom

Chatting with Carla and Kerry Curtis (my other Grandma's best friend)-- I love how Grandma looks so interested in what Carla is saying here.

With both my Grandmas!

Holding my bouquet for me

Thank you for always being such a kind and wonderful person, Grandma.  I will miss you.  And the world may not know it, but it already misses your sparkling influence.

I love you, Grandma.




*Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel, pg. 44.

Birthday Season: CLOSED.

All five of my kiddos are born within six months of a calendar year.  Bentley begins it at the end of September and then we have Ryder in November, Camille and Kendra in February (nine days apart) and we wrap things up with Colton in March.  Then we get a bit of a breather for the next six months!  (Craig and I are both July birthdays, but I don't find our special days nearly as stressful, probably because we don't require parties...)

I don't feel like I'm very good at birthdays.  I want them to be wonderful and special days, but buying gifts gets complicated, trying to coordinate between two sets of grandparents and myself, and trying to figure out when to celebrate as a family and when (and if) to have a party all sort of overwhelms me.  And even when I do manage to have parties, I don't do any of the awesome theme ideas that some people do.  I pretty much invite people over (which is super complicated now that my kids have school friends who I don't know how to contact) and make a cake for the occasion.  We try to have some games planned, too, but in this Age of Pinterest, my parties are laughable at best.  I tell myself that I'm just setting the bar low so everyone else can feel awesome in comparison.  Such a service I'm rendering!

Anyway, I don't think I ever managed to blog about ANY of my kids' birthdays, so I'm doing that now, in one long photo-riddled post.  Enjoy!


For Bentley's birthday, we let him invite a couple of kids from our neighborhood to a trampoline park!  This turned out to be very complicated, because the park was super close to Craig's work, but about 20 minutes from our house.  So I drove everyone to Craig's school with the idea that then Craig would take the boys jumping.  But I forgot to grab a change of clothes for Craig (in hindsight, that should have been HIS job), so then I got to drive home, get the clothes, and drive back to the trampoline park, before returning home.  So that made for over an hour of driving for me and the other kids.  Fun!  (Craig took lots of videos at the trampoline park, but no still photos, so you don't get to see that.  Blame Craig.  And his love of taking slow-motion video!)

Craig grabbed some pizzas for everyone after that and we all met back up at Carter Mountain, where it was their last Thursday sunset with Live Music for the season.  This meant that all of Charlottesville was trying to get there, and we spent at least 20 minutes just getting into the parking lot and nearly missed the sunset!  But we made it and even found a spot on the grass to sit and enjoy our pizza and the music.  We got peach doughnuts and peach ice cream, too, while we were there, and it turned out to be a lovely (if exhausting) evening!

Sunset on Carter Mountain

Charlottesville at night

Presents from Grandma and Grandpa!

Ryder's birthday was a little more low-key, since it was just a couple days after Thanksgiving.  It is nearly impossible to get up the energy to make a birthday cake right after Thanksgiving.  But we had a friend come over to play and I dutifully made him a cake, even though we were still working our way through all our pies.  We did get him an enormous teddy bear from Costco which he'd been begging for every time he laid eyes on them, so he was pretty excited about that.  Following in my family's tradition of coming up with the lamest names ever for things, he has named it Big Bear.  He insists to me that Big Bear is his brother.

Big Bear was too big to wrap, so we just stuck a bow on him and propped him up in our room.  Ryder likes to wake up incredibly early and then come wake us up and demand that we get him breakfast.  So we knew this way Big Bear would be the first thing he saw and we wouldn't miss it!  And that plan worked perfectly!

All ready the night before

Look at that sleepy smile!

And celebrating with grandparents

For Camille, we enjoyed getting to give her her first cupcake.  She wasn't too sure about the whole thing.  Then a week later we did it again with grandparents and she was much more enthused the second time around!  I was totally lame and bought her new sheets for her crib.  But I figured we were due some after eight years!  I really should have bought her some new sleep sacks, instead, since she still loves those so much...  Maybe when the weather gets hot she'll finally stop needing those to sleep...

Round 1

And Round 2!

Modeling her new dress from Aunt Leah

Scoping out the bathtub (one of her favorite things to do)

Kendra got a full on party this year: six extra little girls running around the house giggling plus a piñata.  I was terrified of how it would all go down, but fortunately Craig managed to come home early and help out.  (This was especially fortunate since Ryder spent a good chunk of the party in his room sobbing and Camille insisted that I carry her everywhere I went.)  Kendra wanted her theme to be "nature" and wanted to go on a nature walk, so I had to explain that the middle of February was not an ideal time for nature walks.  Instead we gathered all the stuffed animals in the house and hid them for the girls to find-- sort of like an Easter egg hunt-- and called it a "safari."  It turns out stuffed animals are a LOT harder to hide than Easter eggs, but everyone had fun anyway!

That's a LOT of little girls in our house!

Pulling strings on the piñata (I didn't want to try for the baseball bat kind...)

Also, Kendra got a desk and chair from Grandma and Grandpa, which she was hoping for.  They were a huge hit, and I love how they look in her room:

Why yes, IKEA does rock my world!

And then Colton's birthday was pretty low key, again.  We'd ordered a spaceship toy by Imaginext and he opened that on the actual day and enjoyed everyone calling and singing to him.  (If they didn't sing right away, he'd say, "You going sing me?") and since his birthday was on a Sunday this year, his nursery leader had brought cupcakes for his class, which I thought was very sweet of her!  At church, Craig wished someone a good week and when the man responded with, "You, too!" Colton immediately corrected him with, "No, I three!!!"

The next week, we celebrated again with Grandma and Grandpa and more presents.  We tried to eat out, but apparently the Red Robin in Charlottesville is terrible, because we were there for over two hours before we finally got any food.  (And, my guacamole burger didn't have any guacamole on it, but by then I was too hungry to complain.  I didn't even noticed until I was nearly finished...)  Next time we'll just order pizza.

So those were the birthdays around here!  Nothing super amazing, but they were happy and we're glad our kids are growing and thriving like they ought to!

Now I can relax until September!

Poetry Corner

A Haiku (based on personal experience)

The futility
of vacuuming while baby
munches Ritz crackers

Getting My Snob On

For Christmas this year, my in-laws gave me tickets to a couple of the Metropolitan Opera's live broadcasts!  In case you're not familiar with this (and in case the name didn't explain it enough), you go to a regular movie theater and get to watch a live opera being performed at the Met!  I was pretty excited-- I used to go to operas with my Mom in Seattle and always enjoyed it.  But I was also a little bit nervous.  I hadn't seen an opera in ten years (and the last one I saw was atonal and I think Craig and I were so bored we left after the intermission).  What if I'd lost my love for opera?  What if I didn't like it any more???

I shouldn't have worried.  The first one I saw was The Pearl Fishers by Bizet (of Carmen fame) and I LOVED it.  There are several big choral numbers in it, and also a very famous lovely duet sung by two best friends, and especially during those parts, I sat mesmerized by the beauty of it all (and, truth be told, enjoyed not having to worrying about keeping little children quiet and/or happy!).  It was all so very lovely.  I left energized and refreshed, and excited to see the next one!

I convinced Craig to go with me to see Turandot.  This was perfect because it was a huge elaborate production, and during the intermissions, the broadcast featured Renée Flemming interviewing various stage hands and props people.  (We saw her perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for their Christmas Concert back in 2005 when we were first married, so we're basically old friends.)  All the backstage stuff is Craig's favorite part-- he was originally signed up as a theater major, in fact-- so we had a great time with that.

Next I saw Manon Lescaut, which was great, although probably not my favorite, mostly because I wasn't as familiar with it.  And finally, I knew I had to see today's production of Madama Butterfly, since it's so well known, but I'd never seen before, which sort of embarrassed me.  Like any respectable humanities major, I know "Un Bel Di" and couldn't wait to hear it performed in the context of the whole opera.

There are several more productions in the season still to go, but this is all I'm going to see this year.  I'm starting to feel guilty for ditching Craig and the kids for five hours on a Saturday.  But I feel very renewed by the whole thing; it's nice to get back to my humanities roots and the snobbery my Mom (and sister Leah) instilled in me growing up!  I'm already looking forward to next season!


Thanks, Tom and Donna, for such a wonderful, thoughtful gift!