Photo Time!

Back in March I was in Seattle for a week. My dad was having surgery, so I was doing lots of chauffeuring and meal cooking, and my little sister was up looking at various wedding venues for next year (I still can't believe she's engaged!), but in the midst of the crazy week of busy family love, I got to spend a small bit of time with my dear friends Patye & Minh, and my favorite little "niece", Amelie.

Originally, Patye and I had talked about maybe doing a "maternity" shoot... but in the end, it ended up being a bit of an impromptu, laid-back family shoot (down to Minh in his outdoor-work sweat pants). I hadn't spent much time "preparing" for the shoot given the circumstances around my visit (i.e. my dad being in the hospital)... but it was pretty exciting to get out there for what was my first (unofficial) "official" shoot in a long time (about 4 years).

In some ways it ended up being really different than I'd envisioned, but it was still so much fun! I had such a great time (it's hard not to hanging out with their family), and I learned a lot. While I may not have gotten all the shots I'd hoped for, I think there are a bunch that truly portray their family and what they're all about: fun laughter, deep caring, intense respect, and unending love.

If you have Facebook, you can view the full album of their photos online: facebook.com/HannahSnyderChen

If not, I've posted a few of them below. You can also find some on my 365 Project blog (Photos 45-55 and Photo 102). I'd love to know what you think!

Even though you may not believe it, Patye was only 29 weeks along when these photos were taken. Today, May 21, is Lucy's due date, but she's been quite content to just delay her entrance into the world. I guess it's cozy in there. Maybe posting this will encourage her that it's pretty exciting out here, too. =)  Congratulations, you guys!

Zoo Adventures

Fact: I love visiting the zoo.

For quite a while, I wanted to be a zoologist when I grew up, and many of my daydreams revolved around befriending animals and living in the wild with them. Granted, they often possessed magical abilities (which is one more reason I should live in Harry Potter's world and go to Hogwarts), but it still counts as that whole loving animals thing.

When we were in Seattle last month, Josh and I went on a zoo adventure to the Woodland Park Zoo, along with my little brother Jacob, my dear friend Patye, her precious daughter Amelie, and my friend Wes from Wheaton who now lives in Seattle. It was pretty fantastic.

Some things to note:

• Josh had his first burger from Dick's - a MUST for Seattle visitors.
• Amelie is an absolutely beautiful child and I adore her.
• Jacob is a good child-holder and stroller-pusher.
• My hand is indeed smaller than a hippopotamus's.

Summer Happenings

Once again, I've been MIA for a few weeks... but with good reasons! Here's a quick run-down of the weeks I've been gone, with more details to come soon:

July 4: Big 4th of July celebration in Philly. And trust me, I mean BIG. This is Philly, after all... America's birth place! Fireworks were definitely included, as well as an all-you-can-eat ice cream festival... oh yes.

July 7-10: Our trip to Maine! (And NY, but mostly Maine.) Definitely lots of lobster and goodness, and two more states added to my count! Just 3 more states to visit before I've hit all 50...

July 13-17: I attended the Street School Network conference in Denver. It was the longest Josh and I had been apart since getting married... and we were both sort of pathetic about it. Good thing neither of us is in the military! Also got to see a few friends from Wheaton, which was fabulous. Also, HARRY POTTER CAME OUT. Yeah, it was a big week.

July 18: My dear friend, Lauren, got hitched out at the Jersey shore. And yes, hitched is the correct term for this one. It was a great reunion with a bunch of friends from Wheaton, and literally an all-day celebration. Check out some pictures here.

July 22-29: My little brother came out to Philly for a visit! We did all the traditional Philly things... and all the traditional "Chen" things (which means lots of board games).

July 25: Now, even though I couldn't be there, this was an important day. Another dear, dear friend, Lydia, got married in California! Due to some extreme circumstances, I couldn't attend (the date was moved from Sept to July, and my little brother already had his ticket to come to Philly, and I couldn't take any more vacation days from work -- BOO). HOWEVER, my sister and brother-in-law photographed the wedding! And I think that's about the best thing I could ask for besides attending! I'm in love with this preview image -- what a fairytale wedding, right?

July 30-August 15: Josh and I took our summer vacation trip to Seattle! It was great to see my family, and celebrate some pretty important things, such as my birthday and our first wedding anniversary! Plus, we went on a 5-day mini-vacation with my family up to Mt. Baker. It was pretty fantastic.

August 16: Our church picnic! It was my first one as an official member of our church (it only took me 3 years), and it was lots of fun, even though it was super hot and humid, and we're still on Pacific time.


And that brings us up to speed! Josh and I are still adjusting to the time difference (which means trying to drag myself out of bed in the morning is even harder, since it feels like it's about 4am), and also to the heat and humidity. It was so nice being in Seattle where the temperatures were in the 80s the first week, then cooled down a bit up in the mountains (but still pleasant temperatures), and had a couple days of rain right before we came back. There was no humidity, and it's been a bit of a nasty shock readjusting to being sticky and hot from sun-up to sun-down (even with the AC running). But we'll adjust, I suppose.

The summer is, in some ways, starting to come to a close. I only have one more week of work before all the teachers come back. We'll have our school retreat in Maryland next week, then the following weekend our small group from church is going on a weekend retreat up to the Poconos, then it'll be September, Labor Day weekend, and school will start! Crazy how summers fly by...


That said, I'm hoping to make some resolutions for this year. It's not the "New Year", but with the start of the school year, it feels like as good of a time as any to try and get some new habits put into practice, one of which is being more intentional about updating this. Plus, I have a new friend who's going to be helping me quite a bit with the content posted here.... more to come later :)

April, Come and Gone

I can't believe this is the last day of April. This month has really flown by. Lots has happened. Let's do a quick recap:

April 1-3: Finished up the last work week before spring break.

April 4: Spring Break begins! Woohoo!

April 5-11: Josh and I flew to Chicago for our SB trip. We spent a day in Chicago, went to Wheaton for a few days, came back to Chicago for a few days. A truly fantastic trip. It was so good to see so many friends, and we had a LOT of really challenging, stretching, and even guiding conversations.

April 12: Easter! We hosted a brunch at our house... a brunch that was really a lunch... that turned into a board game afternoon... needless to say, we had people at our house from about 10:30am-5:30pm. Definitely a good day.

April 13: One last day off before returning to work. Lots of housework. And hanging out. Happy "We're newlyweds!" day.

April 14-15: Return to work. Life as normal.

April 16-20: We took an emergency trip out to Seattle. My gramma's health suddenly plunged, and they weren't sure she'd make it... but after a few days in the hospital and lots of visits from family members for "Gramma's Birthday!" she came home and we got to have a fun last couple days. We even had two birthday parties -- one for Gramma, and one for my little brother, Jacob, who's now 15!

April 21: Recovering from our red-eye flight back from Seattle (we left my parents' house in Seattle at 10pm... and got back to our house in Philly at 1pm the next day). It was miserable and we were tired. Enough said.

April 22-30: Real real life resumes. Back to the normal hub-bub of life in Philly. Work. Growth cell. Alpha. Learning Teams. Youth group. Worship team. School concerts. Sunday lunches. Frisbee. Obama's 100th Day. And so on and so forth. My school's big annual fund-raiser is coming up, so there's a lot of planning to do at work. Josh and our pastor also started planning out what his internship looks like for next year... and we realized we'll probably be in Philly for more than just the next year or two. Life, huh?


And that's April for you! I can't believe tomorrow will really be the first day of May. The spring I have so longed for has finally come (though we got a glimpse of summer this past weekend when we had 4 days in the low 90s!). And even though it was REALLY cold this winter, the past month has been a real season of joy in regards to our friendships. Not only did we get to see friends in Chicago and Seattle, we got to spend time with my family in Seattle (I really needed that), we had some good hangout time with friends in Philly (mostly over fabulous food), we got to see Robin and Jason briefly when they were here in Philly leading a Spring Break missions trip for Jason's youth group, this weekend some of my Wheaton friends are going to be here staying with us (one of them is running away for a wedding, but we get to kidnap the other three and take them on a tour of Philly), and next weekend (after the big benefit dinner and learning teams) we're heading up to Syracuse for Connie's college graduation (Josh's sister). It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but it's been good, and really helping me get through some tough stuff in the rest of life. What a reminder that I can't go it alone, huh? Just when I want to start freaking out I get a big slap in the face that I have amazing communities of friends literally across the nation.

Alrighty. That's all for now. Look for a post on RAINBOW CAKE soon. You won't want to miss it - I PROMISE.

MIA... Again

Remember that time, way back when (or at least about 2 weeks ago), when I posted a short post, explaining part of the reason there had been no posts, and promised to post more regularly starting the next week?

Um, yeeaaah..... about that.....

We got back from a truly wonderful trip to Chicago, went right into a great Easter (complete with Easter brunch/game time/all day hang out at our house), and enjoyed our last day of Spring Break (my school had "Easter Monday" off, too - sweet!). I then went back to work... for 2 days. However, things in Seattle weren't going so well with my family, with my gramma being admitted to the hospital because of very low platelet count (normal is 150, she was at 6). Things were looking pretty bad, so Josh and I actually bought a couple tickets from Philly to Seattle Wednesday night... and flew out at 5:30am Thursday morning.

[Side Note: if you have the option (we didn't), don't ever fly from Seattle to Houston, then from Houston to Seattle. It just makes for an unnecessarily long and uncomfortable flight. Especially if you sit in the middle seat next to a person who keeps taking over your space, but pretends to be asleep and had to get up at 3:30am to catch a 5:30am flight. Also, don't take the return route when going home.... and do it as a red-eye. It's worse. Much worse.]

As an update, my gramma is doing much better and is out of the hospital! There are still some questions about what the long-term of things looks like, but for now everyone's just happy to have her home. For those of you who knew (a limited number due to the impromptu nature of it all), thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Please continue to pray for her and our family.

Aside from some long days, it was actually such a blessing to be able to go home for a few days. We hadn't been back since Christmas and weren't planning on being back until July or August. I really, really, really miss my family, so it was truly wonderful to see them. Plus, we got to have a little birthday celebration for my brother, Jacob, who turns 15 next week (eek!), and Airika and I totally made a rainbow cake (her first, my second). It was awesome, trust me.

This is now the point where I once again promise to start posting again soon. So, if I don't, you have every right to leave me a mean comment telling me to get my butt in action. (But, if it's a nice one I might do something nice for you in return. Like post pretty pictures of rainbows and butterflies.)