In case you missed it, you can you can see all of our NYC recap posts here: part one | part two | part three | part four I promised I would wrap up our New York trip back in January and I almost made it. Ella and I both ended up sick and it's been a rough few weeks. I swear, every time I think I have it all together, I'm reminded that I don't. The Statue of Liberty Lady Liberty was first on our list for the last day of our trip. I had tried and tried to get tickets to the crown, but they sell out months in advance and since our trip was very last minute, I wasn't able to get them. We did get to go inside the statue, which Josh and I had never done, and the girls didn't seem to mind that we weren't able to go all the way up. The girls were so surprised by both how large and how ...
New York City Snapshots | Part Three
In case you missed it, you can you can see all of our NYC recap posts here: part one | part two | part three | part four When last we left off, I was sharing photos from our second day in NYC. This was, by far, my favorite day of the trip and this group of pictures perfectly explains why. After we tackled the Empire State Building and delivered all of our cold weather gear at the hotel, we set out on foot with a very loose agenda. We planned to visit The Vessel, The High Line, and the original Shake Shack location (we had a few other areas of town mapped out in case we had extra time), but we weren't on a schedule and had no times or tickets we had to adhere to. The Vessel is near Hudson Yards and the northern entrance to the High Line. It wasn't there the last time we were ...
December Little Things
I did it! I managed to film and edit video clips from every month of the entire year?! If it sounds like I'm a little overly excited, I am. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with something for an extended period of time, but I'm so glad I did. I know these are nothing more than glorified home videos and you might not even enjoy watching them, but we all love looking back on them and I'm glad to have them all published and organized in one easy place. We do have gobs more video than I actually share here, but it's not all for public consumption and since I edit most of the sound out, I save the ones of the girls talking or sharing more about their lives. December's video is considerably longer than most, but it was really hard to cut it down, even this much. We did so many fun things ...
Christmas Things | 2019
I feel like the holidays were a blur, but in the best possible way. It was so much fun to see Polly experience so many things on her own this year and my big girls were just as excited to see her open gifts as they were to open their own. We stayed close to home and enjoyed having Josh home with us for a few days (he's always home, since he works there, but he rarely gets to take days off at the end of the year). We've celebrated Christmas here for the last three years, but this one felt the most like home. In an effort to use up all of my almost empty rolls of wrapping paper, we had quite the assortment this year. I loved seeing the packages all piled up in different patterns, but I'm glad to have eliminated so much of my stash! We decided this year to start a sister gift ...
Sixteen Months With Polly
I haven't written an update post for Polly since her birthday, and even though I don't intend to write monthly posts about her development, she has changed and grown so much in the last few months that I couldn't not write a bit about her. In the six weeks between our New York trip and the New Year, she grew up so much! She learned so many new words, became so confident and independent, and gained quite the sense of humor. She was at home sick on Friday -- hence the serious face -- and we took an afternoon walk to visit the cat and check on my dad's newfound (second) retirement. It was a good opportunity to snap a few pictures to show just how big she is! Height + Weight: We saw the pediatrician earlier this month and Polly was right under 22 pounds -- bigger than Sophie at this ...
The Best of 2019
I still have so many things from December (and November!) that I want to share here, but I feel like I need to press pause and post a few things that are more thematic for the month of January. I've been trying to look back on 2019, see what worked for us -- and what didn't -- and really think about how I want 2020 to look. I've been sharing an annual recap on the blog since I finished the first calendar year here and it's always one of my favorite things to look back on. For the past two years, I shifted away from the "recap" formula and instead shared some of our favorite moments from the year. I might not have blogged as much in 2019, but that doesn't mean we weren't taking plenty of pictures or spending our days making the very best memories together. The Best of January After ...
November Little Things
I'm only one month behind -- that's not too terrible, right? I edited our November video right before the holidays, but I didn't turn my computer on a single time, except to answer a few emails for work. The break was nice, but I have so many photos and stories to share with you, so I've been uploading and scheduling posts for the next several weeks. Who am I even? I attempted to include videos from our trip to New York, but this would have rivaled a full length feature film! Instead, I'm working on a separate video to share after I finish recapping our trip and while it's much longer than our monthly videos, it's full of so many fun moments. Taking more video was one of my goals for 2019 and even though I struggled to share them in a timely fashion, I have more moving pictures of ...
Currently | January 2020
It's January. I'm sure that everyone is making a big deal about how they can't believe it's a new month, year, decade -- so I'll try not to focus too much on that, but how in the world did that happen so quickly? We have been soaking up every single second of our holiday vacation and it was the first time in months where we were all five at home together with nothing to do. We've worked puzzles, played outside, stuffed our faces, and binge watched all sorts of fun, family television. Maybe we could have been more productive, but it was nice to just be in the room with each other. I haven't settled on a theme for my monthly photos just yet, so the snapshot in this post could very well change before the end of the day. Any brilliant ideas for 2020? Well, I woke up this morning and looked ...