Taking the Plunge

I finally began listening to the music of Hamilton.  Oh my goodness-- all the hype is spot on!  It's so fabulous!!!


Here are some of my favorites so far (I still don't have the whole thing memorized, so my favorites keep shifting as I discover a new song that had gotten skipped before):

All of the King George III songs.  (Jonathon Groff is perfect here-- a little slimy, a little prissy, a lot funny.)

Dear Theodosia (Sweet song of fathers singing to their babies)

The Room Where It Happened (Just a fun jazzy song)

My Shot (I especially love the "Rise Up" refrain)

What'd I Miss (Thomas Jefferson as an awesome hiphop-py kind of guy returns from Paris)(We especially love Thomas Jefferson, living so close to Monticello!)

I should also warn you, there is some swearing in there.  So be careful listening with your kids around.  If you're listening on Amazon Prime (cuz yeah, it's on Amazon Prime Music!!!), any songs with swearing will say "Explicit" in the song title, but a lot of the swearing goes by so quickly, I don't know that most kids would notice.  (And in the case of Bentley, I figure he's hearing it by now at school.  I just warned him that if I heard him using those words, he'd be in trouble and we'd stop listening to this together.  Since he's about as obsessed as I am, that should be enough.)


And if all that isn't enough for you, here are my current favorite links about Hamilton:

A Footnoted Libretto!!!!!!! (in case you want to know how accurate it is)
Hamilton and the Death of Irony
This beautiful blog post by writer Joe Posnanski

Kendra's Baptism

Back in February, when Kendra turned eight, she also got baptized!  Two of my sisters couldn't make it (one blamed her impending due date???), but the other two did come (as well as a brother-in-law and three cousins!), plus my parents and Craig's, and our friends from Manassas, the Scoresbys, so that was awesome. 

One of the things that delighted me here is that-- unlike our previous ward-- the church leaders here in Charlottesville seem to be pretty lax about made-up rules that aren't actually rules.  So when we asked what day Kendra could be the baptized, the answer was, "Whenever you want!"  (As opposed to the Centreville Stake, where the answer would have been, "The Saturday before the first Sunday of the month, at 9am, whether that's a good day for you and your family or not."  Which is totally stupid and has nothing to do with anything we believe.)

Since our ward is pretty spread out and a lot of the members live an hour away from the church building, we decided to just do it after church on Sunday.  We also provided a light lunch, so people wouldn't be starving.  This had the advantage that a lot of people came, and a lot of people were also really nice about bringing food, too, so it went really well, with only a little bit of stressing on my part.  There seemed to be plenty of food for everyone, but not so much leftover that it was embarrassing, so I guess that's as good as it gets, right?  (Things like this stress me out.  Can you tell?)

The only bad thing was that we were in such a rush to get everything ready-- chairs set up, food laid out, Kendra and Craig in their white clothes-- that we barely had time to snap a picture.  I thought we could take one of the whole family after the baptism, but naturally, the second we walked in the door, everyone changed their clothes and scattered and it never happened.  But at least we got these:

The actual baptism was pretty short and sweet.  My Mom played piano, Tracy spoke about baptism and I spoke on the Holy Ghost (my third time giving this talk, so I'm getting pretty good at it...).  My Mother-in-law held Camille until she finally finally finally fell asleep (Camille, not my Mother-in-law!).  And then everyone got to hang around eating and talking, which is about my favorite thing in the world!

It was such a lovely day!  I'm so proud of my sweet Kendra!!!

RIP Chickens

I jinxed myself in that last post when I said that the chickens were doing great.  Last Monday the fox managed to get into their coop and kill all of them.  I feel partially to blame because I noticed the night before that the coop was getting a bit damaged from being moved, and it was hard to close the door properly.  But I still didn't really think a fox would spot the problem and bust it open.  I underestimated my opponent.

Anyway, the worst part was that I didn't know it had happened, and sent Kendra to feed them, so she came back in tears.  What a way to find out!  The one fortunate thing was that at least there wasn't anything terribly gruesome to see (unlike last year when I was left with two chicken corpses to dispose of)-- just a lot of feathers all over the yard.  Craig used his leaf blower to get rid of the feathers so the kids wouldn't have to see those until the wind took care of them.

So we no longer have chickens.  Since it was against the HOA rules here to own them anyway, I don't think we'll get any more.  And I think I wouldn't want to bother again unless we had a big dog who would guard them.  Clearly our own efforts are not enough to out-smart the fox, and I really preferred it when we could let them roam around the yard, which just isn't an option without some protection.  Maybe some day...

But for now, I'm sad our chickens are gone and that I let them down.  They were good pets and I tried to take good care of them.  Good-bye, little chickens.

Colton contemplating Marshmallow

P.S. Not to look on the bright side too quickly or anything, but Craig admitted that this does help my chances of getting a pet bunny some day...  Is it too soon to start researching rabbit breeds?

Photo Fantastique: Part II

So... many... pictures... to share...

This post will only bring us up to (but not including) Christmas.  How did I ever let myself get so far behind???


Anyway.  This is at Bentley or Kendra's soccer game, on the day we took the kids to a UVA football game.  We didn't have any UVA gear, but we at least wore orange shirts!  AND ate some very orange Cheez-its.  We try hard.

Drawstring bag as hat?

Camille likes snuggling with Daddy!

And being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket!

Ryder at Carter Mountain

Camouflage baby!

This was our yard sale last fall!  It was SO much work!

Colton all dressed up for church

Craig in front of a Wall O Swords at the Governor's mansion in Williamsburg

Of COURSE you have to take a picture of yourself in the stocks!

I got to be in the mock trial!  See me up there on the left?

I just like this picture

Older girls hanging out with Ryder during Kendra's soccer practice...?!?!

The chickens are still alive and well!

Camille is thrilled any time she can hold a ball

They have a day where kids are invited to trick or treat on UVA campus (called "The Grounds" by locals, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's insistence, way back in the day!) so we just took Bentley and Kendra, rather than have to deal with dragging everyone all over the place.  It turned out to be a very popular event!

Bentley and Kendra had fun!

Except for Camille falling through Bentley's arms, this is a really cute picture...

There's Camille's face!

Our neighborhood was AWESOME for trick-or-treating!  Don't worry-- the firemen were just there for fun!

Craig took Bentley along to a recruiting event and had him show off the CATEC fireman's program!

Pure joy: he takes after his Daddy...

Colton and Ryder act as lifeguards during Camille's bath

And so I guess it's only fair to post pics of them during their bath time, too!

Watching the Thanksgiving Day parade in pajamas

First he said he was Blocky Man.  Then he shortened it to just Man.

Bentley LOVES eating the drumstick

Thanksgiving with Craig's parents and Aunt Lynda and Uncle Greg

Making spritz cookies-- Craig's favorite Thanksgiving tradition!

Amongst the white pumpkins at Carter Mountain

Photo Fantastique: Part I

In the process of writing the Birthday post, I finally forced myself to figure out how to get pictures from Craig's phone onto my blog.  Like so many things in life, it wasn't even all that hard-- I'd just been too lazy to figure it out for a long time.

But the process of combing through all his pictures to find the birthday ones uncovered oodles of other fun pics dating all the way back to August (!!!) that never made it onto the blog.  So I guess it's time to remedy that, isn't it???  There are too many for one post, so I'll break it down into a few.  You've been warned.

This was how I found Kendra one morning...  I really like her combinations of blue and pink, actually.  It reminds me of the 80's.  But in a good way!

While Bentley and Kendra were at a birthday party, we decided to chill at Lake Monticello!  Gotta love Craig's selfie face!

I bet you thought my kids weren't even enrolled in school since I never posted pics of the first day of school (I should be fired as a blogger) but here they are!  Nine months later!

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! 

I like that they had matching backpacks.

The exciting thing this year was that it was the first year ever when Craig got to be home with the kids to see them off!  Before, he's always been in the middle of second period when their school started.  So this was kind of fun for all of us to have him around.

This is from our (Manassas) ward campout in August.

Bentley makes himself comfortable in someone else's camping chair...

Hot air ballooning seems to be a big thing here.  And that building that you see there below the hot air balloon is Craig's school! Yay, CATEC!!!

Lots of balloons over CATEC!

Everyone loves mommy!

Words cannot even express how much I love the look on Colton's face here.  Like he suspects there's something a bit off about his hat, but he's not sure what exactly...

Me and my baby

Teddy still gets involved in some of Bentley's adventures!  This creek is somewhere behind our house.

One of the really fun things about Craig's job is getting to visit all the classrooms and see what the students are learning.  Here, Craig lets them teach him a thing or two...  And, if this job doesn't work out, we know he's got a lot of fall-back options!

Can't fake that smile.  :)

This *might* be Craig's favorite class...!

One Friday we took the kids to the Charlottesville outdoor mall for ice cream, and ended up running into all our neighbors because there was an huge, awesome "welcome back UVA students" party going on. We felt so cool for being there, even though we didn't have a clue about it.

Notice the UVA flag above us?  And the boys got balloons...  I think Camille even got a bib!  It was a delightful evening.

I think that's enough pictures for one post.  More to come!