6 Month Vortex

Yowsers! Where have the last 6 months gone?

Have the day off of work and am getting back on the blog-wagon :)

Pix soon to be posted below of the past half year. Time flies!

First Annual Fall Fest

A November tradition has been born :)

Happy Hall-oween!

  

Welcome to the world, baby Cole!

Congratulations, Kendra & SJ for making yet another beautiful baby :)

Welcome to the world, Cole Joseph Hall

Born October 28th, 2015

8 lbs 4 oz of awesome

Boy oh boy are you loved! 

Aunt Stace 2.0

   

Congratulations, Bari & Jeff!

It feels like yesterday that Bari and I were roommates at a wedding together in South Carolina and she had just said yes to go out with this guy named Jeff :) Fast forward 500 days to the wedding of the year and my heart absolutely exploding to see you two as husband and wife. Throw in a speech from the former President of the United States and potentially the future POTUS... well, I would say that is in fact the recipe for one unforgettable evening!

To the new Mr. & Mrs. Westerberg, 

Thank you for sharing your love and including me in your absolutely epic wedding celebration. You have truly raised the bar. May we all be so lucky!

I adore you and cannot wait to get back to NYC to spend more time together sans the secret service men that wouldn't dance with me ;)

Your tamest wedding guest,

Stace

SO MUCH LOVE!

Stella at LEAP

Getting to be one of Stella's teachers every Thursday morning at our Learn, Explore and Play class at the zoo is the highlight of my work week. She literally melts my heart.

34

Not gonna lie, 33 will be tough to beat but I have all the faith in the world that 34 will somehow manage to be even better. 

Wrapping up the year in NYC visiting besties and getting to spend my birthday visiting Cody & Matt in Bermuda? Ok! Yes, please, thank you :) 

 

    

Summer Lovin...

Had me a blast!

Loved celebrating the weddings of these two extraordinary couples this summer.  Apparently I was having a little too much fun in that I only managed to snap two pictures. Bust.

Regardless of the lack of digital evidence, CONGRATULATIONS to the new Mr. Mike Shipham & Katie Harry 

and Mr. & Mrs. Kara Feemster & Ryan Smith! 

Love you guys so very much. 

Cheers to a lifetime of happiness ahead :)

Your weddings were hands down the highlight of my summer!

Wizard of Oz in Oz Park

This summer has been complete!

  

Poop Tree

While eating dinner in my mom's backyard tonight, Stella looked up at the pine-cones hanging above our heads and said, "Look! Der is poop in da tree."

If only to see the world from a 2 year old's lens :)

Reality Check

On average, I spend roughly three hours a day talking to camper parents. Extrapolate that over the course of three months and I've calculated that, this summer alone, I spent nearly 165 hours (or ~10,000 minutes) listening to an incredibly wide range of complaints. And as my skin has grown much thicker and I've learned not to take it all too personally, I have come to find the following to be entirely true:

You cannot make everyone happy. 

So many days I came home from camp feeling like every single one of my helium balloons had been popped. Feeling like nothing we could ever do would be good enough. But mostly, what I learned from this summer is that, at the end of the day, parents love their children and they just want the absolute best for them. And I cannot argue with that. 

So I tried to focus on the positive and cherished the handful of times that parents actually called to say something kind or wonderful. The times when they wrote in to say that their child came home so happy and that they cried on the last day of camp because they were so sad it was over! 

It's easy to let the bad outweigh the good. But it's important to realize that, in the big picture, there is more good than bad. And we're all doing the best we can. 

  

Found My Happy Place

Magical

Reason #1,734,986 that I love my job.

Building forts for children to play.

Being paid to do what I love to do.

Becoming the person that I've wanted to be. 

As my Grandma Stella used to say, "Little by little."

And little by little, life seems to be unfolding great things :)

    

Camp Headquarters

My desk at the zoo. In a cube underneath a carousel. 

Dreams really do come true :)