January 2014

January....it was cold and snowy, but we still had fun! There's nothing like fun playing in the snow:)

New Year's Day was uneventful....it always seems to be (except for the year we totaled our car...). Then school started again on the 2nd and we were back in the swing of things. Due to sick kids our Joy School Christmas party had been delayed, so it was fun to have some festivities on Jan. 6th to make up for it. Then Sam turned another year older on the 7th, but it was a normal day of the week. But we got a fun date on Friday night that week.

And then we got a super fun visit from Rennie and Scott! It was fun to have them around period! But we also got to take Scott to see some of the Philly sites. And my kids were fun to take pictures of that day:) But somehow I didn't catch Scott and Rennie in any of them....?

And then for Sam's birthday present (a little after the fact) was a surprise date to a Philadelphia Orchestra Concert. I originally thought it would be easy to have Rennie and Scott babysit since they were here....but of course it was more fun to have them come with us! I was able to get 4 free tickets through David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is the nicest guy! I have the randomest connection with him....he came to Rapid City to play with the Black Hills Symphony Orchestra (another random story in and of itself), which Sam and I played in. We chatted with him backstage a bit, since we were getting ready to move to Philly pretty soon. And then I emailed him a bit trying to get help with finding some teachers and student connections and stuff. Anyway, I was getting in contact with him again on behalf of the Greater Philadelphia Suzuki Association here for another purpose, but just though I'd ask him if he knew a good way to get discount tickets to a concert. He volunteered free ones:)

The evening felt way too chaotic b/c of my lack of sufficient planning, but it was still a great night! I bought a groupon for a super cool restaurant on an old ship on the river down in Philly for all of us. But I forgot to make a reservation. So we were rushing down there, calling over and over again to see if they could get us in. We just showed up and they were kind enough to get us a table. It was DELICIOUS food and a really beautiful setting and cool ambience. But it did end up taking too long, and we missed our pre-concert meeting with David Kim, which was part of the surprise for Sam....I ended up having to spill the beans to him about the whole surprise, without actually surprising him (and apparently Samantha had already spoiled the surprise before we even left home!). So anyway, we got to the concert hall (thanks to Scott and Rennie parking the car), and went to will-call to pick up our tickets, only to find that the stupid people behind the counter had given away one of our tickets to someone else! And they were going to try to make us buy 2 new ones together....I was so mad! After a bit of arguing we convinced him to just give us 2 other tickets, but now we weren't all sitting together....and when Sam and I sat down in our original seats there was a woman there....we asked her how she got her ticket (during intermission), and apparently she just told them her last name was Evans and he gave her one of our tickets. She was actually supposed to be at the choir concert that was going on in another, smaller concert hall in the Kimmel Center though! The ticket people hadn't even bothered to ask her what concert/hall she was going to or anything! Super annoying. BUT - we thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to hear the amazing Philadelphia Orchestra! The program was:

Borodin - Polovtsian Dances, from Prince Igor
Tchaikovsky - Rococo Variations, for cello and orchestra
Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings
Balakirev - Islamey

It was a spectacular performance and we loved it. Somehow we failed to get a picture with Scott and Rennie again!!!! aaarrrgh!

And then, Scott and Rennie were supposed to fly home on a Tuesday, but a big snow/ice storm blew in and all flights were canceled for a day.....and they really needed to get back home for work (their next week of work started on Wednesday).  But weather can be annoying like that. I was kind of glad we got more time with them:) They were eventually able to get on a flight Wed. evening and it all worked out semi-ok. And we finally caught a picture with them in the car as we were dropping them off. Thanks for visiting guys!

And here are some the random winter-time shennanigans that go on around our house:)

Don't have a hill in your yard? Just build your own ski hill off the picnic table and over the huge pile of leaves that never got cleaned up before the snow fell, and are now killing your grass....it's the best!

And that pretty much sums up our January fun. No pictures, but Sam also enjoyed;) going on the Klondike campout with the scouts...and I enjoyed our nice warm house:)