Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Bea's 2nd Birthday Bash



To celebrate Bea's 2nd birthday, we invited some some feathered and furry friends to join the normal cast of our amazing friends and family.  We were really excited to host her party at our new house that, having recently hit the 6 months mark, is definitely feeling perfectly like "home" now.

Even with the drama of an impending snow storm (that never materialized) and the chaos of a calendar-hopping party date, the afternoon turned out perfectly!!

Birthdays have a way of bringing an appreciation of life to the surface, and to celebrate another year with Beatrice is an enormous blessing. I suppose it's good that we've distanced ourselves from the pain of our journey to Four Schneiders. What we went through definitely gave us a perspective that we'll never lose.

Birthdays are a super special time to celebrate, reflect, and be grateful!

They're also a time to surround yourself with family, old and new friends, and people you don't see nearly enough. In the case of Bea's 2nd birthday, it was also time to stand in awe of an amazing cake, eat our weight in hummus, let the kids "drink of out cans" (sparkling juice that had Josie feeling like royalty), and get up close and personal with some barnyard buddies.

Here's as much of the action as I could capture whilst trying to celebrate:


























ANIMAL TIME!!!



















Sidenote: If anyone has other pics that include Bea, I'd love if you'd email them to me. Looking back, there are lots of things I missed on film because I was holding her and enjoying all the barnyard birthday action. 

Sidenote #2: I promise thank you notes are coming. I'm a little mortified that we've been so bad about that in the past. In the feverish pitch of Bea & Josie ripping through all the birthday goodies, quite a few cards got separated from gifts. I may be shooting you some "help a sister out" notes to match gifts to generous donors! Sorry about that. 

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Bea's Birthday by Video

Here are some videos that capture the awesomeness of Bea's 2nd birthday.

The big song:




The best response to the question of "How Old Are You?":



The barnyard birthday highlight:



The ICYMI from a previous post:



Stay tuned for more birthday awesomeness coming soon!

Keeping it weird, with my work peeps

One of the highlights of March was my trip to Austin, Texas - the nation's capital of "keeping it weird." The occasion was the SxSWedu conference - a really cool coming together of loads of innovators & educators! It was fun and exhausting and confirming that I made the right choice all those years ago to leave the classroom and enter the world of education policy and research.

Here are the iPhone highlights - ranging from my first breakfast taco, photo bombing an NBA icon being interviewed, the coolest chairs we've ever blogged from, insanely warm weather, some funny moments, live music, sight-seeing, and the reason we were there in the first place (sessions, book signing, a Bill Gates keynote & a highlight for me which was interviewing an amazing kid inventor and his mom.)

























Gates Keynote: My coverage of that HERE



After it was all said and done, I was ready to go home. And home started to feel really far!

But, alas, I was home before I knew it!


Nothing beats coming home from a trip and finding my favorite three people at the top of the CVG escalator!


The girls were thrilled with their souvenirs. I found Josie the armadillo she wanted and Bea's Texas pony hasn't left her crib since the night I returned from Sx. That's actually a SXSW shirt she's rocking there, too. She was so excited at the airport that she peeled off the shift she was wearing to put it on. 

The next work trip will be to ASU in Arizona in a couple of weeks. Better bust out my summer clothes!