September 2017 Randomness

Italy!! (And Paul Turns 40)

We've been talking about it for years, and finally we use the excuse of Paul turning 40 to book the trip to Italy. 

We flew from Raleigh to Paris, rushed to get through the EU border and onto an Air France flight to Naples. 

From Naples we took a van around the steep, mountainous coast line until we reached Positano.

We stayed right on the beach for three nights, with this view from our hotel room.

And this view from the pool...

 We did some touring of the quaint village of Positano, climbing many, many stairs to weave our way through the apartments, shops and restaurants.

Dodging traffic as we went.

The hotel found out about Paul's birthday and left this nice note with a birthday cake...

Then we headed out to Capri for the rest of our visit....

Then an "interesting" night in Naples (two hotel switches before we found one where we didn't fear for our safety) before catching our early flight back to Raleigh...

Kate's 40th birthday trip is next!

Clara's Field Trip to Arboretum

Ms. Voorhee's Email

We were thrilled to get this email from Clara's teacher, Ms. Voorhees. Clara had such a good experience with Ms. Lynn in second grade, we were a bit nervous about the transition. Would she get a teacher that understood her as well? Would the classroom suit Clara as well as it did last year? Could she keep up that confidence growth we saw last year?

Somehow it has even been better!

Hi Kate and Paul,
I wanted to let you know that Clara is off to a great start in third grade.  I very much appreciate her enthusiasm for learning and her great attitude.  She participates frequently and her insight and ideas add so much to our class discussions.  She is quite the reader, writer, and mathematician!  I'm looking forward to watching her soar this year!
Hope you all enjoyed the weekend,
Charlene

Blue Ridge Relay 2017

Paul teamed up with some Bandwidth colleagues on the Blue Ridge Relay, a 208 mile race with 12 runners getting about 17 miles each. We started in Grayson Highlands state park in Virginia, and wound our way down (though it felt mostly up) for more than 24 hours of running.

Labor Day in Wild Dunes