Pictures of My Girls

And speaking of things I meant to blog about-- Kendra got her braces off!!!

Here she's seeing her teeth for the first time in the mirror at the orthodontist.  How cute is she???

She's also had a band concert or two.  Who can keep track?  And here she is with Evan.

And, on a totally unrelated note, the other day Camille was waiting for friends to come and pick her up, and she was just laying in the grass of the front yard and it made me smile.

My angle is weird here-- I promise, our yard is not a vertical slope!  But you get the idea...

And speaking of Camille, I learned recently that I hadn't been on some app her teachers expect me to use, and it turns out I was missing out on all these pictures they'd been sending!  So here are a bunch of pictures of Camille at school (and especially on a field trip):

Third from the left

Camille is off to the right in her red and white sweatshirt

With Olive and Mara

And again with Olive and Mara!

Of Note

Craig and I sat down Sunday for our weekly planning session.  This is something we've been doing for years now, but once we both had callings working with the youth it became necessary.  We got through the coming week, and then did what Craig calls the lightning round, where we make sure we know what's going on for the entire month.  

And we have something pretty much every night up through Christmas.  The few nights that weren't booked were quickly filled in with shopping trips.  There were even a few things that we hadn't scheduled yet, so we squeezed them in between other things so that we would remember to do them if we felt like it when the time came.  (But told ourselves that if we didn't feel like doing them, we could just not go and no one would care!)

And the weirdest thing about this isn't that we're so busy.  The weirdest thing is that this is only marginally busier than we are all the rest of the time.  It didn't even bother me or stress me out like it used to!  This time I was like, Well, at least it's mostly really fun Christmas stuff!  Bring it on!

Who have I become?  And will it ever calm down?  And if it does-- will I even enjoy not being busy, or will I have become so used to it that not being busy will just feel boring?

Who knows!

Who can be mad if they're busy with stuff like this?

Devil's Marbleyard

I forgot to ever blog about this, but-- as mentioned-- while I was camping at Holliday Lake with the Young Women, Craig and the Young Men were hiking at a National Park called Devil's Marbleyard!  Similar to us, they had one leader get there early to make the fire and everyone else arrived once it was dark out and had to look for the campfire, which was over a bridge and in the woods!  But they all figured it out eventually, and I know from previous experience that Scott makes excellent hamburgers over a campfire, so they had a good time of it!

Once it was light in the morning, they could actually see the lovely river that they'd been crossing:

And then it was hiking!  See if you can guess where the name for this place comes from:

That, frankly, looks exhausting to hike over, but the boys seemed to really love it!

That's just crazy!

Oh, Ryder

There was a different, slightly less stony path to take back to the campsite, but I'm pretty sure even then going downhill was much more challenging than going up.  They felt very justified stopping for pizza on the way home!

The camera angle is making this slice of pizza look humongous, but Craig says it was only a slight exaggeration-- this place is known for their ginormous pizzas!

Happy boys (and men)!

Anyway, Craig could tell you a lot more about it, but I'm just glad they had a fun time and were safe!  The only casualty was Craig's water bottle, which fell down between rocks and Craig (very wisely) decided it wasn't worth trying to squeeze through them to retrieve it.  

Hooray for hiking and camping!

YWs Campout

Several years ago the church changed the youth program by declaring that activities were to be "youth led."  Anyone who has ever tried to have a child clean their own room (or do any chore themselves) knows that this is a thousand times more work than just doing it yourself.  And having a youth led program is exactly the same.  But for the same reason that it's a good idea to make your kid actually do chores, I'm seeing that it's also a good idea for the kids to take charge of their activities.  Even if it's WAY harder for me.

So.  Literally the day after I got home from YWs Camp, I got an email from McKinley, one of my class presidents, suggesting that we plan a campout at First Landing State Park on the beach.  I can't say no to someone being enthusiastic and taking initiative like that, so I agreed to look into it.  But before I could, marching band season started for both Kendra and McKinley, which kept them busy every weekend until halfway through November.  And there was no point in going camping without the girl who most wanted to go!  So now we were planning a campout for the middle of November, which is not usually the ideal time for such things.

Meanwhile, the YM were talking about going camping, too, so I figured we could go the same weekend, and be near each other, but not actually together.  Or in other words-- I could rely on Craig for some help, but keep the boys and girls separate.  But apparently I never properly explained this plan, because Craig's counselor decided the young men would go camping at a place called the Devil's Marble Yard.  And I decided we needed a bunkhouse if we weren't going to freeze and the best one I could find that was still open that late in the season was at Holliday Lake State Park.  So we were going to completely different locations on the same night, which meant I was planning a campout all on my own without Craig's help.  And the advisor I'd had who was super good at all this stuff moved to Alabama, so I couldn't get her help, either!

So this was all very scary and stressful for me.

But-- working with my people (who helped SO MUCH) we managed to pull it off and it went GREAT.  I'm so happy that it went well and so relieved to have it done with!  

When we arrived, around 6:30pm on Friday night, it was pitch black and we couldn't find the bunkhouse!  Not the best start.  But eventually I was pointed in the right direction, and when I got there Anita had a lovely fire going!  Once we'd unloaded our stuff, I sent Kendra and McKinley to watch for the rest of our party so not everyone would be lost, at least.  Then the girls put together brownies and apple cobbler in Dutch ovens, nestled them into the coals, and ran off to the playground to play in the dark.  They made a whole slide show telling some story about a girl being murdered and it was HILARIOUS.  And they just got to run around being goofs together, which makes me so happy!

Kendra and Ember in front of a giant frog slide

Lydia, Ember, McKinley

Lydia, McKinley, Ember, Marianne, Julia, Kendra

We had the stuff that makes your fire glow different colors!

The apple cobbler turned out PERFECT.  The brownies were a bit burned on top, but that part was easy to scrape off and they were good underneath it!  We had a couple of the girls' dads staying in a tent nearby, so we invited them over for dessert, which they seemed to appreciate.  Then the girls headed for "bed" (in reality, staying up late giggling and talking about their crushes and braiding each other's hair) while the grown ups stood around the fire talking until way too late.  There was a full moon.  We were pretty sure we could see glimpses of the lake through the trees.  It was chilly, but not freezing.  It was really great, to be honest.

I slept terribly.  Sleeping bags make me claustrophobic, the bed was terribly hard, and I was slightly afraid of falling off that top bunk and really hurting myself.  But it wasn't cold and I usually don't sleep much when I'm camping, so all in all it wasn't bad.  And I managed to not have to get up in the night to use the bathroom (which would have been a big pain between the bunk beds and the bathrooms being a bit down the road!), so that was as much success as I needed.

I got up around 6 or 7 (I think?) and Anita was already getting a fire going.  We thought someone was bringing a cook stove and griddle, but we somehow ended up with no griddle, so we decided to cook breakfast in the Dutch ovens over the fire: sausage, hashbrowns, and eggs, and they turned out beautifully.  That was all Anita and Johanna-- I could have made a mess of those in the best of circumstances!  So breakfast was great and as soon as that was done the girls decided to make s'mores, since they hadn't the night before.  I love it.  That's what camping is all about!  S'mores for second breakfast!!!

Me, Anita, Missy, Johanna

Marianne trying to make the best of the hole in her water bottle

S'more time!  (Behind them is a screened in picnic area and a shower house!  But why would you have showers and no toilets???)

There's our bunk house behind them!  Hard to believe that could sleep up to 14 people!

And you can see the lake back there!  What a lovely location!

Once everyone had had their fill of s'mores, we decided we ought to do a little hiking.  There were trails along the lake, so off we went!  By now it had warmed up to the 60s and it was just a lovely day.  We saw a few large turtles in the lake, and right as we got back to camp, a bald eagle was circling over our campsite.  

We probably hiked around three miles?  Not very far, but at least enough to feel like you'd moved!  Once we got back to our campsite, I taught the girls how to make amazing foil dinners (I'm not being funny-- I actually make really good foil dinners!  And this time, I got even smarter and just used hashbrowns rather than chopping up and peeling a billion potatoes for it-- we ate so many hashbrowns this weekend!!), and then Nat Sellers, one of the dads, watched over all the foil packets and kept them turning in the fire so they all got cooked evenly.  They were delicious, even if they did make for a very heavy late lunch.  

Once everyone had had their fill (and a few more s'mores) we packed up and headed home!  We got back to our house right around 5pm, so it was just about 24 hours of the great outdoors.

How cute are these girls?

So I did it!  I made a campout happen.  I never could have done it without my peeps.

Craig's campout also went well-- that can probably be my next post.

Sunsets and Escape Rooms

The day after Halloween, a Friday, was pajama day, which seemed like an excellent idea for a bunch of tired kids with sugar hangovers.  The bus was super late picking up Camille, but there was such a gorgeous sunrise I really couldn't complain!

Craig took this one from his truck as he was driving to work.  It might be the only time my photography skills have beat his, but I had the advantage of standing still in a spot with a very clear view of the sky!

And then the next day, Saturday, I was able to babysit for my friend Kristen the other day while she and her husband went to the temple!  They lost Akston a year ago this month, and shortly after that learned that their next son, Benson, had a lesion in his brain and would immediately need the treatment that Akston wasn't able to get.  Miraculously enough, they'd banked cord blood from his baby sister, Esther, who was born (along with her twin Wesley) during the whole ordeal, and Esther was an exact match for Benson.  So he spent months in Boston with his Dad while he underwent treatment and is now healing beautifully.  But it has been A YEAR for this poor family, and when she asked if I could babysit, I was THRILLED to actually be able to do anything to help out.

Their oldest, Ember, is the most helpful girl ever, and Camille also pitched in.  I brought a bunch of Ryder's really cool Imaginext toys and threw them in the back of Craig's truck, which basically functioned like a play pen and they played happily there almost the entire time.  And Esther slept in her stroller and then allowed me to carry her around as long as I was wearing my reflective sunglasses and she could pretend she was basically being carried around by herself.  Whatever, that works!  So we had a great time and Kristen and Nat were able to enjoy the temple for a bit.  Yay for beautiful Saturday afternoons at the temple!

Ember, Wesley, Benson, Cole peaking out behind Benson, and Camille

After I voted Tuesday morning (I get SO EXCITED to vote!), I went walking in the woods and caught this lovely bit of sun poking through the autumny trees

Remember how in the previous post I mentioned my friend Kim and her awesome trunk-or-treat trunk?  Not only did she make all those cool potions bottles, she also set up an escape room in her basement!!!!  Who does cool stuff like that???  We (Craig and I) got to do it on a Friday evening with a bunch of other grown ups, and it took us a little over an hour to complete and it was just as awesome as the professional ones I've done!  She had ciphers, a safe, candles, scales that had to be balanced just so, a cauldron where the fire would change color...  So many cool puzzles!  So then they invited the YW to come do it, and we figured out they could do it on Election Day, since there was no school (because the schools are used for voting).  

Marianne, Lilyann, Ember, Jadyn, Violet, Kendra, McKinley.  These girls were so smart, they finished way faster than the grown ups!

So I enjoyed watching as the young women struggled to figure out all the clues, then Kim also fed them dinner (how nice is she???).  I loaded everyone into the van and took them to Get Air, a trampoline park, where they joined the young men for their actual Tuesday night activity-- two hours of jumping and dodgeball.  Talk about the most fun afternoon ever!

Group jump into the foam pit

So that was a super fun day, followed by me staying up half the night watching the election results.  I was SO RELIEVED when it was all declared and done in the morning, none of this dragging it out for weeks like in 2020 (and 2000!  I still remember that!).  

The following Thursday evening was all-county band, and we got to watch Ryder perform!  I really enjoy these concerts-- the music is usually quite fun, but they only do about three songs, so the concert isn't too long.  A win all around!  (I was a little surprised when it turned out the all-county orchestra was also performing, but they were pretty quick, too, so I'm not complaining!)

And then on Saturday, Ryder got contact lenses and a haircut!  You can barely recognize him any more, he looks so grown up!

I also enjoyed another quick walk in the woods, this time venturing closer to the stream here

On Friday (sorry, this isn't quite chronological-- it's hard to get the photos in the right order!), Craig and I sat with Megan at the Fluvanna v. Monticello football game.  We were mostly there because Kendra's marching band was playing stand tunes and we wanted to hear them one last time for the season.

Kendra and Evan

And then Saturday afternoon I had choir stuff and Craig put the kids to work raking leaves.  They had so much fun-- they actually managed to build a leaf fort with a tunnel and everything!

They made Olivia work her way through the tunnel

Can you tell they're related?

All the leaves in her hair! 😂

My choir, meanwhile, was rehearsing with Charlottesville Ballet, we were doing a few songs with them for their Veteran's Day Concert.  Unfortunately I didn't really understand what the deal was with the concert so I told Craig to come and bring the kids, thinking it would just be a nice, short, free concert.  I didn't know that, after our three songs, the ballerinas would keep performing for another hour!  I LOVE ballet so I was thrilled to get to sit and enjoy that, but Craig and the kids...  well, let's just say that they were very gracious about me filling their afternoon with ballet!

The original plan had been for Craig to make quesadillas, but we felt everyone deserved a night off after that, so we went to Cook-Out instead-- and ran into Chris and Julie Shaw with their kids!  So that ended up being a fun, spontaneous double date!