Overdue Post!

Clara is 10 moths old!

Dear Family and Friends,

I'm sorry that it has been so long since my last post. It seems the time has been flying by, and as a family we have been extra busy the last few months. I have to admit this time of year is my least favorite. These months tend to be very gray, cold and dry, so I always look forward to Easter and the beginning of Spring. Actually, the winter this year has been quite mild, and we have had a few spring-like days, so I shouldn't complain.

Things have been busy in the Ripka household. Clara is growing and changing by leaps and bounds. She has completely mastered crawling and is able to pull up to a standing position and walk while holding on to something. She can also stand for several seconds without holding on. The most exciting development for me is her love of dancing. She dances every time she hears music, and changes her movements based on the style of music she is listening to. As a child, I was very involved in ballet, and friends used to comment that I never walked anywhere, just danced, so I am thinking Clara may have inherited the dance gene from me. She will be 11 months old on March 20th, and we are starting to think about when we might be able to organize her first birthday party. I think it's incredible that our little girl is going to be a year old soon; she's growing up way too quickly!

Clara's first bath in the tub!

Post-bath cuddle time

Joey is doing well and keeping busy. In February he traveled to the U.K. to perform an organ recital in the chapel of King's College in Cambridge. It was a quick trip, but the recital was very successful and he was excited to play in such a famous venue. The only downside was the unusually cold weather in the U.K. The chapel was freezing, as were his living quarters in the college. He managed to play well in spite of his frozen fingers. He has a couple more recital coming up this month. This Wednesday he will perform a noon recital at First Church in Fairfield, CT. It just so happens the church sits directly across from St. Paul's Episcopal church where Joey was Organ Scholar while attending Yale. We hope to see some familiar faces in the audience.

On March 2nd, Joey and I performed a violin and piano recital at Calvary Church. It was the first major recital that I have given since Clara was born, so I felt a sense of pride in being able to play well in spite of my severely reduced amount of sleep and practice time. I also came down with the stomach flu 5 days before the recital, but somehow managed to pull through and perform. The church was completely filled with people from both our church congregation and the community, and we received a very warm and enthusiastic response. It was great to feel so supported and appreciated. Our program consisted of the Mozart Sonata for Violin and Piano K. 301, Brahms Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano Opus 78, Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata Opus 24 and Wieniawski's "Polonaise Brilliante" in A major. We performed Meditation from Thais as an encore. It was a challenging program but also such rewarding repertoire to perform. The recital represented a nice combination of both pieces we had performed together before and some new works. My parents from Minnesota and aunt and uncle from Virginia came to CT for the recital, and it was great having them here. Joey's mom was able to visit us from Minnesota for about 10 days prior to the recital, which was a huge help since she was able to watch Clara while Joey and I rehearsed together. Clara really enjoyed spending time with her grandparents and godparents during the last couple of months.

Post-Recital Photo

Well, that's the news for now. Hopefully Spring will arrive sooner than later, and we can start to enjoy the outdoors a bit more. We have yet to visit the beaches in Rhode Island, so we look forward to that. I will try to post more frequently now. We have some fun events coming up in the next few months, and I will certainly make sure to include a "Clara's First Birthday Party" post!

Best wishes from Joey, Erin and Clara!

"Another year over, a new one just begun" 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful holiday and great start to the new year. This Christmas was really special. Clara seemed to revel in all of the excitement, enjoying the company of her Grandparents and Godparents, visiting and meeting new friends at various Christmas parties, and ripping open and tearing into beautiful colored packages in order to discover fun toys from Santa. She seemed to enjoy it all, and we certainly loved watching her discover the joy of Christmas, even if her understanding of it this year was pretty limited. We hope that Christmas can be a magical time for her in years to come. Spending Christmas in worship at Calvary and helping lead through music was also very special for us.

Clara must have been good the last 8 months of her life, because Santa did not disappoint. Some of her favorite gifts included a pair of bongos, several handmade items from her aunts Christy and Cara, stacking rings, and several beautiful new books. Clara's Godparents, (my aunt and uncle) presented her with a very special ornate box frame which displays the baptismal shell and cloth from her christening, along with her name and the date of the service. We look forward to finding a special place in our home to display it.

We rang in the New Year with my parents and aunt and uncle from Virginia. Joey cooked up an amazing three-course fondue New Year's Eve dinner. Around 11:00pm we walked down to the ocean where a large bonfire was burning and celebrated the arrival of 2012 with the Stonington Borough ball drop and fireworks at midnight. It was an incredibly clear night, and the combination of the beauty of the stars in the sky with the sound of the ocean waves below made for a spectacular transition into the new year.

And now life comes back to normal. Joey is back at work, and I am back to practicing, teaching violin and taking care of our darling Clara. The Christmas tree and decorations are no more, and the living room is back to being Clara's playground. She is 8 months old now and sits up all by herself. She can crawl backwards but is still trying to coordinate the forward motions. Most importantly though, Clara now says "Da-da", a word that melts the heart of my sweet husband every time he hears it. What an incredible year it has been. May there be many more to come. Happy 2012!

Erin, Joey and Clara

"It's the most stressful...I mean, wonderful time of the year!"

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for Christmas decorating, cookie baking, card writing, gift sending and gig playing (for those of us who work as freelance musicians). We actually really love this time of year. Joey and I both enjoy putting our Christmas decorations out, and this year we decided to invest in a much bigger and higher quality fake tree (is that some kind of oxymoron?). We also decided to use white lights instead of colored lights, and I think they look really beautiful. White lights are a European tradition, and I have always thought they looked very elegant.

We have had fun watching Clara experience her first Christmas season. The town of Stonington puts on an event every year called the "Stonington Stroll". People gather in the green and sing Christmas carols, drink hot cider and celebrate the lighting of the tree. This is followed by a lovely walk down Water Street (the main street with all of the restaurants and shops) where businesses have decorated their windows and give out free goodies and wine. Joey, Clara and I took part in the stroll and had a lot of fun singing and looking at the decorations. Joey and Clara were interviewed and photographed by a reporter from the "Westerly Sun"(a local Rhode Island paper) during the carol sing, and we were shocked to find that a picture of Joey and Clara with carolers in the background made the front cover of the paper the next morning!

We have been doing other fun Christmas activities. We took a trip to a Christmas tree farm where we picked up a wreath and a few other "real" holiday plants. Clara had fun looking at the wreaths and Christmas store. We also took a trip to Providence, RI to check out a mall everyone had been telling us about. It was a very nice mall, and Clara got to meet Santa (well, Santa's helper) and have her picture taken with him. She wasn't too sure that Santa was such a stand-up guy. At one point during the photo shoot she turned to check him out a little closer and promptly burst into tears. Overall though, I think it was an okay first experience with a mall Santa, and the pictures turned out pretty cute. We also visited an old Cider mill in Mystic, CT where we enjoyed fresh apple cider and wine tasting.

December can sometimes be a very busy month, especially when your husband is a church musician. Joey has had some really busy years in the past with multiple Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services to play. This year, however, is really pretty simple. There is only one Christmas Eve service at 11pm and then a Christmas morning service at 10am at Calvary. I am going to be playing violin for the Christmas Eve service. Also, in the past Joey has had to commute quite a distance for church and kill time between services. This year he will actually get to spend a lot of time at home and even enjoy a Christmas Eve dinner with my parents and me. My parents arrive on December 19th and will be here until January 2nd. My aunt and uncle from Virginia (Clara's Godparents) will also be here to celebrate New Years with us. We are really excited about seeing everyone. Unfortunately we can't make it home to MN this year, so we will miss seeing Joey's side of the family. We hope they can come see us sometime this Spring.

Clara is going to be 8 months old on the 20th. She is now sitting up all by herself. She can sit and play for several hours which allows me to get some good practicing done while I watch her. She responds well to my playing. She really likes my bow, and when I play something fast she laughs and claps. It's pretty cute. (Clapping is also a newly learned skill). She sleeps 9-10 hours a night, usually waking up once for a quick bottle and then going back to sleep. She is also starting to develop a better napping routine. Napping has always been difficult for her, but she is starting to have longer naps at more predictable times, which makes my life a lot easier. She is a sweet little girl, and we are excited about her first Christmas. She has a sparkly red dress to wear on Christmas day, and I recently took some photos of her in it in front of the Christmas tree. I used the best pictures for our Christmas card, so I won't post those until later. Here are a few others to enjoy.

It's easy to get caught up in the commercial side of Christmas. Joey and I sometimes have to stop and remind ourselves about the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus. It is also a wonderful time to give thanks to God for the many blessing in our lives. Whatever your beliefs or traditions this time of year, we hope you have a magical holiday season with very little stress and a lot of happiness and love!

Joey, Erin and Clara