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“the making of” the beyrer family christmas card 2013
Since I’m blogging from vacation, I realized I don’t have the actual card or file with me but I do have all the pictures we used on the card plus a few more.
Last year we were supposed to do our christmas card shoot at Ducks Stadium, but Sandy hit and that was cancelled (along with everything else in life)so this year I “upgraded” to Citifield. You all know how much my family (other than me, of course) loves baseball, so I figured a baseball themed shoot & card was the way to go.
Booking a shoot at Citifield was quite expensive (but I figured I wasn’t paying for the photographer so it kinda evened out) and there was a completely RIDICULOUS number of rules as to where you could and couldn’t go. Mostly where you couldn’t go. We had what was basically a babysitter with us the whole time, to make sure we didn’t walk on a single blade of grass. Cmon. The season was so over by the time we did the shoot and its not like we were wearing cleats or like I was using a tripod. Couldn’t even go out to the pitchers mound. Seemed kinda like a ripoff to me.
Grandpa Jack’s brick. 
We were allowed in the dugout. Both home and visitors. But you couldn’t sit or stand on top of the dugout because it might ruin the sticker on the top. Really? This is an outdoor stadium with rain and snow that falls on the dugout, right? 
You could get close to the grass but not ON the grass. Silly. 
I know the boys are a little orange in this picture but the sun was reflecting off the warning track dirt and I couldn’t get rid of the whole color cast. 
We were hoping for a David Wright or Matt Harvey sighting but no such luck. 
We did meet Alex the announcer though. He does all the inside the park announcements. He was very nice.
The press room was pretty cool.
And the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Thats pretty much it. 
So all in all, while cool it was definitely a little disappointing especially considering the price tag to shoot there. I would be much more understanding of the rules if it was during the season, but they would have had 6 months to remove our footprints from the grass. -
sailing into fall (more like hurdling thru space out of control into fall)
So far everyone who has seen me in person this morning has asked if I’m okay. The only thing I can say about that is “it’s busy season!”. So yes, I’m fine but completely in over my head and so beyond tired. If you do see me in person over the next 3 months, just expect that I’m going to look exhausted, disheveled (more than normal), and like that proverbial deer in the headlights. Glad our December Florida vacation is booked and I can just keep my eye on that, but just have to make it thru busy season first.
Editing like a psycho, doing a million shoots, processing client orders, packing orders, blogging, getting out the last of the welcome packets, bookkeeping, and working on some projects for later this year all at once. Plus, dealing with all the things that having two boys as freshmen in high school in NYC brings (in a brand new school that is extremely challenging) and a 3rd grader with an occasionally busy modeling career and my head is about to pop right the eff off. So, just be kind and lie and say I don’t look like death warmed over even when I do.
Tomorrow a real blog post is coming your way but today Timmy and I are off to Brooklyn for him to film a commercial. Ya know, in my free time.
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two weeks in
and all is well. Two weeks into the school year so far and I’ve had a ton of people asking how the boys are doing so I figured it was time to blog. (Got the boys permission first).
Jack & Patrick are loving Regis! Even though we are only two weeks into the year, I feel pretty confident saying that this was definitely the right choice for them. They are making some great new friends from all over- Long Island, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Westchester, Connecticut and Jersey. The kids come from really vast backgrounds and even from different countries which is so nice for them to see and experience since our town is pretty “typical”. They’re getting a much broader world view already. They’ve been hanging out after school somedays when there are no extra curriculars and hitting up ShakeShack with friends.
The commute into NYC is going really well. They have a great group of kids they usually go in and out with (the out is a little trickier since everyone is getting involved in lots of different after school activities so they’re all leaving school at different times) and are already really comfortable with the commute. They usually take either the 6:33 (yes, that’s AM) or the 6:44 train in, then a subway up to 86th, and then a bus across town. They’ve even been switching subway lines when there’s a delay or an issue with the train. Their commute is about an hour and 10 minutes or so door to door, depending on when they catch the train/subway/bus. They’ve already restocked their metro cards a few times on their own (how’s that for a quick acquisition of new life skills!?) and are doing some homework on the train every day. They say goodbye to me every morning in the 6 o’clock hour and I barely wake up enough to mumble something unintelligible that hopefully sounds like ‘have a great day’. John’s been driving them to the station every morning cause you know I do not “do” 6am. I mean, I just went to bed 4 hours earlier!
They’ve been trying out for the Hearn (the speech and debate team which is the biggest extra curricular at Regis), Jack is joining the Christian service club, Patrick has his eye on a few clubs too- maybe even something with track. (Wait, what??? Who are these kids?) Baseball is still a possibility for the spring but all the kids say its really difficult to do both the Hearn and baseball. So we’ll see what happens in the next month or so.
The homework is a whole ‘nother story. At least 3-4hrs a night every night. A total shock to their systems after coming from the middle school where they barely cracked a book in 3 years and “a lot of homework” was 25minutes on a bad night. The work itself is really, really challenging and they go thru all the material really fast. They’ve gone thru the entire 8th grade year worth of work in Math in the first week. They said that the classes are really interesting and they’re really liking it, but could do without the tons of homework. There are quizzes almost every day in a lot of classes so there is studying to be done every night too. Patrick is really enjoying Chinese and is doing great so far, Jack is enjoying German- its fun listening to them both speak their new languages! The dining room table has become the desk where they do their homework every night and by 9:30pm you usually can’t find a single inch of table space because of all the text books, notebooks, papers, computers, and folders covering the whole thing.
Last night we went to the Regis information night where it was so strange (but so nice) to be on the “other side” of things; answering parents and kids questions about admissions and about the school in general. We’ve only been in for two weeks but I answered what I could and the boys did great walking around the room and standing in front of everyone with all the other Regis students (had to be about 100 people there) and speaking to the parents and kids that they didn’t even know. They were “that kid” that I was so impressed with last year when we went as prospective families. I was super proud!
And not to leave Timmy out, he is enjoying 3rd grade so far. He got a great teacher and has a few of his good friends in his class. Timmy’s been loving reading all the Magic Treehouse books and is destroying about 1 book in a day or two days tops. Homework is still sometimes a fight with him (he just doesn’t want to do it! He’s going to be in big trouble if he decides to go to Regis!) but he’s getting better with it. Now he just dawdles.
I’m enjoying seeing all my boys flourish and be smart!
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back to school- timmy’s first day of 3rd grade
And so it begins. I was less than happy when the alarm clock rang at 8am today (although I was sleeping that fitful sleep when you know you have to wake up and keep waking up to make sure you don’t oversleep). And if I thought 8am was a problem, wait until tomorrow when Jack & Patrick have to be up at 6am.
Timmy was not thrilled to be done with summer and starting a new school year, but I think within the first week he’ll come around.
Since the big boys don’t start until tomorrow, they decided to come along this morning to drop off Timmy. So sweet- they are such good big brothers. When they’re not all fighting.
Timmy and Olivia in class together. So glad to see them together again (they’ve known each other since they were a few months old- Olivia is Timmy’s gymboree friend!)
Timmy and one of his besties James in the same class, too. So happy!!
Only 180 more wake ups to go. -
playgroup (the crew) now & then
When Jack & Patrick were 3 months old we started going to Gymboree in Oceanside where we met the most amazing group of people, both babies and adults. We started a weekly playgroup hardly knowing each other and we would go to each of our houses once a week on Fridays to hang out with the babies and each other. We always had so much fun, had each other to lean on, to ask questions, to cry on, and mostly to laugh.
The best part? We’re still all friends! Thats 14 years worth of friendship, even through the birth of a zillion more babies (ok, so 12 additional babies between us after the original group of 7), a few moves- two of which were far out of state, the death of a spouse (and we still love our David stories!) and years apart because we were all so busy with our 900 children, jobs, schools, volunteering, laundry and just life. Thankfully, Jennifer put together a bbq at her house a few weeks ago and most of us (all of us who still live in NY) were able to make it. Which was like a miracle in itself. We had a great night, laughing as usual, and just being in disbelief of how the kids are all still the same as they were when they were babies. We promised that we would get together more often as our oldest- the original crew- start high school this year. A far cry from classes with the Gymboree teacher (who reminded us all of Salma Hayak in the movie 54)!
This was how it all started. They were all around 5-8 months here. Jack, Connor, Beau, Ryan, Kerrin, Molly, Patrick.
Then at around 3 years old. Back row: Connor, Jack, Patrick, Beau. Front row: Molly, Kerrin, Ryan. Omg, the cutest!!!
And two weeks ago! Kerrin, Beau, Patrick, Jack & Molly. And really, none of them look very different than they did at 3. 
Celeste and her girls Ryan and Peyton now live in Georgia, but this was a picture of them from summer of 2012 down in Atlanta. 
The boys and Connor right before they moved to Michigan. 
Beau, Jack, Patrick and Connor around a year old.
Connor, Patrick and Jack (iphone pic) from their visit to NY in early August. 
Spencer (often known as Finster around here cause my boys couldn’t pronounce Spencer when they were little, and that’s what it sounded like), Patrick, Connor, Jack, Katie (my one and only goddaughter) and Timmy.
Katie, Spencer, Connor, Patrick, Jack and Timmy. Katie has the right idea standing far away from the lunatics. 
There was always tuna at playgroup. 
And the whole NY crew now. Back row: Ali, Bridget, Kerrin, Beau, Patrick, Jack, Molly. Middle row: Mac, Joey. Front row: Eli, Teddy, Timmy, Luke & Johnny. 
We’re hoping to get everyone together at some point before they graduate high school. We’ve got 4 years. Make it happen!