Our Hearts Beat for Brooklyn

Spent a few days visiting my fam in Brooklyn, and also hanging with my childhood bestie Tasha and her kiddos. These pictures don't really tell a cohesive story (because also it was just one of those visits?) but suffice to say we very much enjoyed getting to spend time with besties and fam.

Christmas-akuh

In some ways, the predictable rhythm of the seasons and the year (and the Jewish holidays) is a balm to chaos and uncertainty almost everywhere else. In other ways, maybe you are sick of seeing pictures of the same people, getting slightly older and lighting candles on the same menorah I've had for 74.4% of my life. In either case, the world's need for light during her darkest times is never ending, so we're going to keep bringing the sparks.

Triangle Leaf

After years of half-hearted attempts, we finally made it to the fabled Carbon leaf December RVA show at the National, aka the Christmas show. It was PACKED, good vibes all around, definitey more Christmas than we are used to, but also, some fun antics, including the on stage shaving of Carter's Christmas Beard. Also Jon singing about Carter's Christmas Beard. Before hand most of us climbed at Triangle, and in between we all had sushi, so it was a pretty lovely way to celebrate the solstice.

Solstice Traditions

We've been working on our Solstice game for a few years now. It's slowly evolved and we've got a pretty good ritual going now - the yule log with our wishes for the future and the casting out of the past, a roaring bonfire, smores, an excellently curated playlist, good friends, etc. I think we've hit on a pretty good overall rhythm, but there may still be some fine tuning. We'll let you know next year!

Soccer Showcase

Wes was originally going to be the soccer parent this weekend, but he picked up a bug during our Michigan travels and was coughing a lot. We decided it would be more restful for him to stay home, and for AJ not to sleep in a small hotel room with someone hacking up a lung, so I was next up. This was actually AJ's first showcase - very similar to a tournament but you play one game per day over 3 days, no double headers. As a result, there's more downtime - both for homework (which you need because most teammates missed school for the Friday game - AJ had a teacher work day) and for fun, as represented here by the gingerbread house AJ, Wynter and Annabelle decorated.

Other glimpses into our trip include AJ finding a VERY LARGE jar of pickles at the Wallyworld we stopped to charge at, the insane weather that had the kids playing in 25-50F weather over the course of the weekend, the hotel bathroom I turned into a prep kitchen so AJ could have fresh fruit and veggies for snack, and the international walkout they do before each match, just like the pros do!