On April 1 we celebrated Benson’s 14th birthday!
The girls made him some homemade treats, which he gobbled up. He’s slow these days, but still likes to go out for a walk most days, even if he can only make it a few houses before we need to turn back. He had his annual check up recently and the vet said that his heart still sounds good. His front legs give him some trouble, and lately he’s been losing his balance a bit, but overall, he’s a happy old man who has lived a good, long life 🙂
The weekend after Sophie’s birthday I headed to Clearwater, FL for my annual girls weekend with Sallie and Aleen. We went to the same resort in Florida we did last year because it was spectacular. We went earlier in the year so that we were there for both Aleen and Sallie’s birthday month. Turns out Florida is actually a little chilly in March. But, it was still fabulous.
On March 2nd Sophie turned a decade old! She decided to celebrate with a sleepover. She was limited to just two friends, for all of our sanity, and she picked Dior and Ella. My parents, Becky, and Ari also came up for the weekend. It was nice to have Ari there to play with Lauren.
The girls started the night with a favorite activity, making slime! After that I made cupcakes and they decorated them. We were going to make it a decorating contest, but decided to just let the girls do whatever they wanted – which was mostly adding as many toppings as possible.
Later in the evening the girls watched a movie in the basement, played with the Ouija board, and did Lord knows what else. I tried to get them to sleep around midnight, and at 2am had one of the friends come in and want to go home, but fortunately I was able to get her settled enough to go to sleep. I can confirm it was a night of little sleep for all.
The next day we had a family party with Dave’s parents too. She opened presents and we did cake.
Overall it was a pretty good birthday weekend! Sunday night everyone slept very well 😉
So far 2020 has been treating us well!
We began the year with a New Year’s Eve sleepover with the Devine’s at our house. We had a “game night” theme, where we played board games and Dave prepared four courses of game meat. It was delicious and fun.
On New Year’s Day we all went for a hike in Wissahickon.
It’s been an unseasonably warm January – in 40s, 50s, and a few days of 60s! One of the warmest days was also a day off from school, so I took the girls to the zoo, which was not expecting the crowds that it had. Note Lauren wearing shorts in the pics!
Dave and I went to the annual Union League Commodore’s Ball again. He’s not in yacht club leadership any more, but we went to support some friends who are. It’s always a fun, somewhat ridiculous evening.
Sophie is in her school’s choir, called Levering Mill, which is just for 4th and 5th graders. She’s also in the 3rd-5th grade all student choir, which held a combined concert in January. There were so many kids that they had to do it at Bala Cynwyd middle school, which has a large auditorium.
And then a few days later Lauren had her 1st grade musical, which was called Pirates, The Musical. It was very cute. All the kids do the singing and the teachers do the dialogue.
And we had a weekend visit from Shannon Boyle and her boyfriend Joey. They stayed over and we took them to the Flyers game, where they finally won one! The girls were very happy to be reunited with Shannon 🙂
Since Lauren’s birthday falls during the holiday break, her first grade class had a celebration for her the last day of school for the year, which also happened to be pajama day – bonus!
Dave and I came in and read a story to the class and she gave out pencils to everyone.
Her actual birthday was the Saturday after Christmas and this year we did an American Ninja Warrior party at a gym in West Chester that has trained actual competitors who have been on the show. Obviously they adjusted the course for 7 year olds. She invited her entire class, of which about half came, and everyone had a great time!
That night we had a second family party at the house. The cake was huge so we threw another candle on it and sang happy birthday again. It was actually the same cake that Sophie had on her 7th birthday. Lauren saw a picture of it recently and insisted she get one too. Good choice, it’s delicious!
At 7, Lauren is always the first to offer help if someone needs it, whether it’s carrying something from the car or cleaning up a mess, even if it’s not hers. She loves her Mr. Benson and always has snuggles for him, even though he’s the smelliest dog in the world. She love to tell jokes and make others laugh. She’s also such a monkey, running and climbing on everything. Which is why the trampoline you see in the background was the perfect birthday present 😉 Happy Birthday to this amazing, kind, funny kid!
For the third year in a row we hosted Christmas at our house with a combined Sharp/Rainer clan. This year’s total was 27 people! The new kitchen vastly improved the experience for everyone – especially Dave and his mom, who did all of the cooking! Overall I feel like we’ve gotten the hang of things and it was less stressful to pull together. We had a quiet, low key Christmas eve at the house and a nice relaxing Christmas morning.
Everyone arrived around 1 and dinner was served around 4. We do it buffet style in the kitchen with everyone sitting in the dining room and living room. We brought out a folding table right before it was time to eat for the overflow.
After dinner there was a lot of dessert, drinking, and opening presents.
December kept us busy this year, including three performances. The first was different for us this year. Sophie got asked to as part of a small group from the Philadelphia Girls Choir to sing with a Canadian group called the Tenors who were touring the US with a Christmas show. The performance was at the Keswick theater in Glenside, PA and it was really great. The girls sang four songs with the Tenors, and they were amazing. It was a sold out show, which was also pretty neat.
The weekend after this concert Sophie had her regular Philadelphia Girls Choir holiday concert at the Temple Performing Arts Center.
And the final performance of the holiday season was Lauren’s ballet show, which was Hansel and Gretel this year. The performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theater on Broad Street. There were two performances in one day – one at 2pm and one at 7pm. I watched the 2pm show and then was a backstage parent for the 7pm show, which was a little insane. It was a long day for the little kids, and by the second show exhaustion was definitely setting in.
The day after the anniversary party we got our tree. That’s a week later than usual, but we didn’t want to have it up during the party to save a little space. The last few years we’ve gone out to a Christmas tree farm called Yaeger’s Farm in Phoenixville. They have tractor rides out to the trees and then give you a saw and you cut it down yourselves.
In this area there is apparently a shortage of tall Christmas trees, so we found the tallest one we could, which was only about 6 feet. But it ended up being perfect – and we didn’t have to smoosh the star on top.
Later in the month we enjoyed two other Christmas traditions – visiting Santa, this year in the Macy’s Santaland, and going to the Nutcracker, performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. The girls got haircuts between the two below pictures. Sophie wanted the minimum amount cut and Lauren went for more of a bob, which she likes wearing with one side behind her ear. So stylish.
On December 7th we celebrated Dave and Kathy’s 50th wedding anniversary!! Talk about an amazing milestone! We had a little get together at our house with friends (old and new) and family. It was also a great opportunity to use the new kitchen!
We headed down to Charlottesville Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. It was the usual crowd this year – Doug, Vicki, Quinn, Carley, Nana, and our family.
Since we were last down in Va. Becky has adopted a new pet – Penny, who is a purebred Great Dane. She’s only 6 months old and already over 100 lbs! We were a little worried bringing Benson down because he’s such an old man now and pretty frail. In their first meeting Penny knocked him down, but after that he held his own, even playing a bit.
Thanksgiving morning we had the now annual Glenaire Turkey Trot starting at the top of mom and dad’s driveway and looping around the neighborhood. This year Lauren ran it with Dave and me! We had to do a little run/walk action, but she made the whole thing!
After the trot we headed back to the house and Dave started cooking. He’s been cooking for so many years now that he’s got the schedule down to a science and the whole day is pretty low stress – totally acknowledging that the person writing this is also the person sitting in the living room, reading a book and sipping wine 😉
Doug deep fried the turkey again, which has been our tradition for maybe the last 6 years. It great – frees up the oven, takes about 45 minutes, and tastes delicious!
The day after Thanksgiving we enjoyed another tradition – hiking and then wine tasting. It was a beautiful day and we hiked Sugar Hollow and then headed to King’s Family Vineyard in Crozet.
The long weekend wouldn’t be complete without some good family pictures
