dripping with passion

    as opposed to many other times of year, i'm just never sad to see january go...  i'm looking forward to some fun things in february, and then to  spring  (!!). but despite the general dreariness, we've had a good beginning to 2019 in london. here's some tidbits of life lately...   ian is currently on a five day, six city business trip in europe. we miss him like crazy when he is away (and we are so happy that's not very often). moses and i continue to love, love, love joy school. this month's unit for our group has been  the joy of the earth  and that's been good to focus on during a time of year when there's not naturally a lot of joy for the earth in the air ;) moses has developed some great friendships with his joy school classmates and is learning so much. the other day after the joy school kids left our house (it was my turn to be the teacher), moses sat at our front window and hollered, "asher, claire, come back! i want to say ...

  one. i'm taking january off of social media (which, for me, includes mostly instagram and a couple of facebook forums/groups). i've had a few "social media breaks" in the past, but this is the longest i've ever gone without scrolling through online "feeds" since they became a thing (which is kind of crazy, when you think about it!). i'm just trying to take a step back and consider the purpose of social media in my life. it is definitely something that i want to be a part of my life but i want to be thoughtful about what amount and type of space it fills in my every day. it's wild to think about how much this online world has expanded in the past few years. i absolutely love keeping up with friends and family and gaining information and inspiration from different sources through social media. but it feels good to be on a bit of a break. two. last saturday, gabriel had his first haircut! since the moment this little guy was born, we have adore...

we spent the last day of one year and the first day of the next year in a city that has been glorious for many  years. lingering jet lag meant that gabriel and i had been up together many times throughout the nights we spent in rome. to help me get more sleep, ian cuddled up with the baby in the wee hours and then took the boys out on some adventures in the morning hours. i was a little jealous that he got to see roma in the pretty dusk before allllll the other tourists came out. but i was much more glad to get in a bit more zzzzzs!   we spent the later morning of new years eve in the colosseum! ian was pretty pumped about this (he loves  experiencing famous significant landmarks). mo thought it was all pretty cool, too.   here's a view from inside the colosseum to the arch of constantine.   i loved how we could see some of rome's colourful building facades peeking through the colosseum's arches. we spent some time trading off with the boys at the rom...