Landon

Meet Landon:

Like I said, he'll only be here for two nights.  But he's a sweetheart and we're enjoying having him!  I was warned that he doesn't sleep well at night, so I wasn't surprised when he got up at 11 and 1.  I am totallly exhausted now, but honestly, that could have been a lot worse.

He absolutely adores Ryder, and he's been having a ton of fun playing with all our toys.  AND, he actually cleans up the toys if you ask him to!  Bentley was so shocked he texted me the "mind blown" emoji!

Did I mention that he loves Ryder?

New Job? Maybe?

All of that craziness (hiking, finding we're getting a foster kid, and celebrating Bentley's birthday) was ALL on Friday.  Saturday morning was pretty relaxing as we hung out with Craig's family some more, but then I left at 1pm to go work!

My friend Adam is a wedding planner and had asked if I'd be interested in assisting with some of his larger weddings.  It sounded like fun and, of course, they're almost always held at a time when Craig is home and can take care of the kids, so I was excited to give it a try.  This was my very first event and it WAS so interesting and fun!

I don't know that I was super helpful, but Adam says the first few weddings are mostly about seeing how everything goes, so I followed him or his other assistants around, trying to get my feet under me.  I did tie ribbons on menus, hand out glow sticks and sparklers to guests at the appointed times, and help guests figure out which table they were seated at.  (I had to actually buy professional pants for myself, since I haven't had to look like not a SAHM for so long!  What do you mean, I shouldn't wear yoga pants to a formal wedding???)

The wedding itself was beautiful and the weather cooperated wonderfully, so that was all lovely!

I learned that I am not very good at tying ribbons!  (And each menu was printed with the guest's name at the top!  Holy cow there are so many things you can spend money on at a wedding!!!)

The venue, Clifton Inn, was gorgeous

With a lovely sunset to boot!

So pretty, right???

I had a great time and am excited to keep doing this, if Adam will have me!  (But I'm awfully glad I got married without seeing all this expense!)

Bentley's Birthday (14!)

After that exciting phone call, I rushed around showering and cleaning house.  Craig's parents arrived with presents for Bentley, which he was very excited to open.  My son is a whopping fourteen years old now!!!  Don't you think that feels more solidly teenage-y than thirteen?  Or is that just me?

We'd celebrated a little on his actual birthday (Thursday) by giving him our present (a much bigger hard drive for the computer he shares with us) and letting him choose dinner and dessert:

He wanted ribs

and doughnuts!

And then for the "celebrate with Grandparents" day he got more presents, dinner at Five Guys, and MORE doughnuts:

He's been very excited to get air pods finally!

He also got a new lens and a microphone for his camera

My little technologically-advanced son!

I sent everyone else out to pick up dinner so I could finish cleaning the house (I hadn't managed to get to the toilets or the dishes yet!), and once they were back we enjoyed dinner and then Craig's brother Jason arrived, too!  Jason is working in Virginia for the week, so it was an extra special treat to get to spend time with him!  (Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures, so you'll just have to trust me that he was actually here.  Sorry!!!)  But what a great way to celebrate Bentley's big day!

Happy Birthday, Bentley!!!

😬

After that hike, I was rushing to get us home because we were totally late for piano lessons.  At least with Bentley home, he could get started on his lesson, but we were so late I had his lesson go extra long (which he was THRILLED about, let me tell you!) and then Ryder and Colton just got half-lessons.  Oops!

So I was feeling a bit rushed and frantic.  I also had most of Craig's family coming in the evening and I hadn't cleaned the house yet, and now I needed to shower again, so there was a lot on my plate.

But first, I needed to eat something.  Before I could finish my snack, my phone rang.

I never changed my phone number when we moved to Charlottesville, which turned out to be a great (albeit unintentional) move on my part-- spam callers always use my area code, so if it's a local number calling me, it's usually legit.  So when a C-ville number calls, I actually answer.  And this number was local. 

It turned out to be a woman I've never met before, but she works for our Foster Agency, and was calling to see if we could take a kid for 48 hours for respite care.  (Meaning, he's already been placed with a foster family, but they need a little break from him.)  Having just completed this crazy long hike, I was feeling pretty indomitable, so I rushed to interrupt Craig's meeting and make sure he was on board, and then called the social worker back as fast as I could to accept.

So today we're getting our first foster child, even if it's just for a couple of days!  His name is Landon and he's four years old.  And that's about all I know!

He should be arriving any minute now and we are SO EXCITED!!!

Hiking Club

When I realized that school was going to be virtual this year, I tried really hard to look for silver linings to the whole situation.  And one of the ideas I came up with is to start a hiking club.  This came about largely after climbing Humpback Rock with my friends and realizing that there are TONS of cool hiking places around here that I know NOTHING about!  I'm hoping this will force me out of my comfort zone a bit so I can explore around Charlottesville even more.

There's no school on Fridays  Fridays are "asynchronous learning days," so we don't have much of a schedule to worry about, so it's perfect for going hiking, and we usually have lovely fall weather.  What could go wrong?

So last Tuesday while the kids were all zooming, I sat down in the basement with them and worked on my laptop and invited everyone I could think of to come hiking with us.  I posted it on the stake RS facebook page.  I texted neighbors and church members and friends.  I emailed the women in the Charlottesville 1st ward.  I even texted people I've never met, just in case they were interested!

And then when Friday rolled around, the weather was abysmal.  Rain all day.

But I really didn't want to fail on my first attempt because I was afraid that then I'd NEVER get up the courage to try again.  So I decided I would at least drive out, in the rain, to Ragged Mountain and see what it looked like.  Just going new places is sometimes hard for me to do, so this was better than nothing, right?  And then I'd have a better idea of what to expect next week and we could try again then!

I'd brought along four of my kids (Bentley had homework to do) and my neighborhood kids Sydney and Beth.  Everyone who'd been interested backed out once they saw the forecast (I didn't blame them-- if anything, I encouraged them to try again next week), but my friend Adam was still game.  We managed to meet up at the upper parking lot (much thanks to Brittney for that tip!) and...  the weather was fine!  A bit cloudy, but not raining, and the temperature was perfect.

So we figured we may as well start walking!  And then we just kept walking and walking until we were about halfway around the lake... and it started raining!  But at that point there wasn't much we could do except just keep walking!

Long story short we ended up hiking nearly 8 miles that day!  Without any snacks or preparation or anything!  And we had a really good time, too.  The kids were SUCH troopers, I was really very impressed with them.  Ryder and Kendra were mostly ahead with Adam telling him riddles, and I was mostly behind with Colton, Camille, Sydney, and Beth, who were all a bit slow, but gamely kept plodding on!  Adam and I did take turns giving Camille and Beth piggyback rides for the last mile or so.

But it was really fun and even with the rain, we didn't get that wet (yay for tons of trees to shelter us!).  The entire thing actually left me even more excited to make this club happen.  But next week I think I'll pick a shorter hike!

This tree was basically floating!  How cool is that???

Turtle bench

Throwing rocks into the lake

So pretty!

Why are bridges always so exciting?

I love this picture of Ryder jumping SO. MUCH.

Beth wanted to hold someone's hand at all times, which got a little tiring for me.  So here's Colton giving me a break!

This deer wandered by us a bunch of times-- we were all very excited!

Camille looks terrified here, but what was actually going on is that the deer had wandered past us again and she desperately wanted to hop out of the tree to see the deer better and was worried the deer was lost.  

Same bridge, slightly different angle (thanks, Adam!)

Right near the end, and I blinked.  Colton was trailing behind a bit, but we did NOT lose him!

What's sort of awful is that we had gone from the parking lot to the Eagle and Bridge (heading counter clockwise) when it began raining and I decided that we needed to push ahead.  Looking more closely at the map, I realize (NOW) that we were only about a third of the way in at that point and it would have been much shorter to just turn around and go back.  But then we would have missed the floating bridge (not pictured because it wasn't very pretty, even though everyone thought it looked cool and enjoyed walking on it!).  So, yeah, I kind of did this all wrong.  But who cares?  We had a great time!

Special thanks go to Adam for taking so many great pictures!  I did offer to take one that he was in, but he'd had a bit of a fiasco trying to cut his hair that morning (his clippers died halfway through) and absolutely refused to be in any pictures.  Maybe I'll get him next time!

I'm really proud, though, because it looks like Hiking Club is a GO.  Huzzah!

Kona Ice

Our orthodontist rented out the Kona Ice truck for a couple hours, so we got to get free Shaved Ice!  (I know, I know, really there's nothing "free" about it-- I'm paying for it with all my kids' braces!  But still, there was no sense letting a thing like this go to waste!  Also, in Hawaii it would just be called Shave Ice, but we're not in Hawaii, so I'm sticking with the grammatically correct version...!)

I love how Kendra let Bentley stand on the curb so he could be taller!

Bentley tries so hard to resist being full-body-hugged by Colton...

It was a fun break in the middle of a school day!

Daddy-Daughter Camp Out

Craig had to scramble to take the girls on their daddy-daughter campout before school started!  So the Friday before school began, he quickly called up Br. Snow again and asked if he could use his farm once more.  The girls were THRILLED.

Camille was so excited to go out in the paddle boat, but then I think the boat was kind of dirty and she ended up hating it.  Or rather, it was her least favorite part of the weekend.  Such is life! 

Pretty tree reflected in the water!

Making shadow puppets with their paper plates!

And Craig is good at taking artsy pictures of the moon:

The next morning Craig made chocolate chip pancakes and Camille thought she had died and gone to heaven!