Rainy Saturday Wedding

On Saturday I finally got to work another wedding!  This one was... not as fun as the others have been.  Adam had warned me that there would be a lot of drama, and sure enough, when I arrived, he informed me that he had already managed to make the bride cry.  Twice.

Oh, my.

The problem (or at least, the biggest problem!) was the weather.  Even though we've had a lot of really lovely warm days, Saturday was NOT one of them.  It was cold and pouring rain.  And the bride was absolutely adamant that she did not want to get married under a tent.  She had gotten ponchos for all the guests and figured they should be happy with that.  It was left to Adam to try and convince her that, really, she needed the tent and that her guests would HATE her otherwise.  Fun!

But she finally agreed to it all and the tent was lovely and it was still very beautiful, even if it was very cold.  (I suspect the guests were warmed up somewhat by all the booze!)

I got to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the seating chart ready.  It turns out that wax seals/stickers don't stick to fabric when it's so damp outside, so they kept falling off as we were trying to put them up!  It felt very Sisyphean.  After many different attempts, we finally figured out a system that worked, and then I got to watch as the guests (A) couldn't find their names (it's alphabetical by last name, people!) and then (B) couldn't pull them off the fabric.  I guess we were a little too successful!

Okay, so maybe I'm a bad person here, but I was a little surprised by this guy who insisted on wearing a trucker hat with his suit the entire wedding:

But other than sprinting to the bar after the ceremony, he was fine.  It was the groomsman on the left (Ponytail Guy) who ended up really causing problems and cussing out Adam for no good reason.  Having a really expensive wedding does not guarantee that you're classy, I'm afraid.

But really, despite the bride's tears, the tent was quite lovely!

I love how you can see the green hills all misty in the background!

North Fork

This last Friday was one of our less successful hikes, but oh, well!

The plan was just to try out North Fork Moorman River (which sounds a lot like Mormon River, and cracks us all up).  What I didn't know until we were almost there, is that this is the same parking lot as Blue Hole!  But with Blue Hole you hike upstream, for North Fork, you go downstream.  Unfortunately, there are just as many river crossings where you have to get your feet wet, and it was too cold for water-friendly shoes.  I was the first to dunk a foot in the river, and it was definitely cold, but I was surprised how quickly I got used to it and then having one wet shoe didn't particularly bother me.  Everyone else managed to get across that spot without getting wet.

And then we had a pretty nice little hike until we got to the next crossing where EVERYONE got wet and no one was very happy about it.  So I reluctantly agreed to go back.  But once we were back at the first crossing, everyone decided it was fun to just splash in the river, so I guess we could have kept hiking after all!  

Oh, well.  It was still 2 hours spent outside in nature, so that's always a win.  And there was this cool log that would sort of teeter-totter down as you walked across it, and everyone got a kick out of doing that a few times.  So it was a good day!  And, as always, Adam got excellent pictures!

Camille was nervous to start off here...

But she quickly gained her confidence!  (Bentley is helping push down the log, since she didn't weigh enough for it to lower itself...)

Ryder's turn!

And Colton!

And Kendra!

Bentley also ran across the log several times, but all I have of that is video, and I'm too lazy to post it.  (I also crossed the log, but I warned Adam that he was NOT allowed to take pictures of me doing it!)

And this was a NEW log to climb on!

Throwing rocks into the river is ALWAYS good fun!

Here's Sydney happily splashing in the river at the end!

And this is my favorite shot-- I love love love the bright yellow-green of new leaves!  And I love how tiny these kids look compared to these marvelous trees!

SUCCESS

This morning, as I was packing up the kids' snacks, lunches, masks, water bottles, AND making them breakfast, I mentioned that since the weather was supposed to be gorgeous, I'd probably take them to a park right after school.  They loved this idea and were immediately trying to decide which park they wanted to go to (I LOVE how many awesome parks there are around here!).  And pretty quickly, Ryder, Colton and Camille all decided on Riverview Park because-- and they said this without any prompting from me-- "it has a great hike right next to the playground, so we can get in a hike before we play!"

I am turning my kids into hikers!  I am making them into something I have never been!

I can't even explain how amazing I find this and how happy this makes me!!!

Round 1: Done.

I finally got my first Covid vaccine!  I had to drive down to Lynchburg to get it, but Adam came along with me, so that made it way more fun.  He'd gone to the same clinic the week before, so he was able to get me there without my usual I-don't-know-where-I'm-going panic setting in.  And the shot itself was as easy as 1-2-3!  In fact, it hurt WAY less than every flu shot I've ever gotten!  AND, that gave us the perfect excuse to stop by *Mrs. Joy's Bakery again!  And even better-- I'll have to do it again in a month!  Squeeee!!!!

The next day was hiking club, of course!  Nice to get back to it after a brief hiatus!  Since I'd done all that driving just the day before, I wanted to keep it close to home.  So we went back to Walnut Creek Park again.  I had a couple extra kids from the neighborhood this time, and somehow I let everyone choose the long trail, so we ended up doing 5.3 miles!  That was fine-- the weather was delightful, so why not?-- except we were supposed to meet someone at the playground in an hour!  😬  And we certainly are not fast hikers! 

Bentley is standing up hill from me!  He is NOT taller than me.  Yet.  And on the front row, l-r: Sydney, Camille, Ryder, Abel, Amos, Colton.  (Kendra had to do homework.  And as always, photo credit to Adam!)

Fortunately, my friend had a series of delays, too.  And the way it all turned out, we ended up arriving at the playground within 5 minutes of each other!  So it was all perfect!  I couldn't have made that work out so well if I'd actually legit tried!

My Mom asked me how I was feeling after the shot, and I told her I'd been weirdly tired that afternoon, but then I thought-- maybe it was the 5 mile hike, not the shot that did that! 😂  So, yeah, I guess I'm good!

*Ironically, I just started a food **re-set on Monday, so we went to the bakery, but I didn't actually eat anything from it.  I did buy myself a whoopie pie which I stuck in the freezer for later.  And because Adam has anaphylactic allergies to dairy, he canNOT eat anything there, although he did buy about five cinnamon rolls to give to other people.  We have CRAZY AWESOME willpower! 

**I like the idea of calling it a "reset" rather than a diet.  I've let myself slip into really unhealthy food habits, so I'm resetting by remembering how great REAL food is.  And cutting out all the stuff that tends to be addictive (ie, goldfish crackers and chocolate chips and the like).  More on this later if I'm bored enough to type it all up...  So I guess you've been warned! 

OBX

I remember years ago watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and noticing a sticker (I think in a phone booth?) with the letters OBX and wondering what that meant?  Before long, I was seeing these stickers EVERYWHERE.  So many cars had them and I had no idea what it was!  Finally I got curious enough to remember to google it (I think this was before we had internet in our apartment and I had to go to the library any time I wanted to check my email) and I learned that it stood for Outer Banks, a string of long skinny barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina.

Before long, I started hearing about Outer Banks from everyone, too.  It's a very popular vacation spot, and it seemed all my friends were going there all the time and telling me about how great it was.  

Well, I wanted to go, too!  I tried to convince my family we should have a family reunion there, but it turns out there are no airports close by, so that made it less than ideal.  I tried to convince Craig's family to go there, but somehow they changed the location to Panama City, instead (still not quite sure how or why that happened, but it was still a lot of fun, even if the drive was 10 hours longer!).  

Craig and I were forced to conclude that if I ever wanted to make it to the elusive OBX, we were going to have to do it ourselves.

So we planned the most amazing vacation ever and invited all our friends from Northern Virginia to come along and share a huge beach house with us and-- yeah, Covid hit.  Foiled again!

But this year.  Finally.  This year we made it!  We got to stay in Outer Banks.  SUCCESS!!!  Four days at the beach was EXACTLY what this family needed!

The house we rented had this fun crow's nest-- it was a great spot for looking at the ocean, and reading in the sun

Camille gets comfy in the sand

Colton shows off his "C-shell"! 😁

The water was SO FREEZING.  I can't believe my kids even went near it!

The house was SUPER cool-- a kitchen, great room, and master bedroom on the top floor, four large bedrooms with three bathrooms on the middle floor, and then a game room and movie room in the basement.  And TONS of decks and swings and various places to hang out and read and enjoy the weather.  I loved it!

And the pool and hot tub were a big hit!

Craig has the WORST luck flying kites-- either the wind dies the minute he pulls one out, or if the wind keeps up, it invariably turns out that we've lost the kite strings.  So this time he was DETERMINED.

And was so happy to have a successful kite flying adventure!

We'd brought along a friend for Bentley, Aaron, hoping to cut back on screen time (and complaints about his siblings), and that worked out GREAT.  Aaron was a lot of fun to have around, and I think his presence might have helped us be on our better behavior, so that was an all-around win!

Ryder also got to fly the kite!

Camille grabbed this boogie board and declared, "This one REALLY suits me!"  What 6-year-old talks like that???

She insisted on faking this action shot for me.  (Notice Kendra standing knee-deep in the water in the background.  How did that not kill her???)

We spent quite a while playing in the sand dunes.  I love how Bentley is shirtless and Camille is wearing her winter coat.  What WAS the weather doing here???

I really can't explain why this is so fun, I only know that it IS.  Sand dunes are the best!

I was sort of proud of this time lapse that I got of everyone running away!

And the sunset was pretty, too!

And no day at the beach is complete without ice cream!

We started out the next morning by getting Duck Donuts and eating them in our crow's nest! 

And then we went to visit the Wright Brothers Memorial, where I realized I need to learn WAY MORE about these guys!  I just put in a request for the David McCullough biography from the library...

Camille and I missed the memo that today was grey t-shirt day!

These two!  💖

Ryder was DONE by this point, so he and I sat on some benches outside until he was finally ready to move again.  That little break did a LOT to revive him, but I guess we missed this photo op...

Then it was back to the house for some tree climbing and pool time

I am the worst at pool!  It's kind of amazing.  Craig and I once lost to a couple where the husband was BLIND.  True story.  We're not proud.  (But we're not too ashamed to laugh about it, either!)

Next up: mini golf!

And we ended the night by eating out and getting ice cream (again).  A very full day!

I was sad to leave the next morning, but happy to get back to my nice bed and a dryer that works (my only complaint about the house!).  Craig and I spent a few minutes in the crow's nest admiring the view and trying to take a decent selfie before we headed out...

I loved how parts of the water faded from blue into white from the sunlight!

We really aren't very good at selfies.  My hair kept blowing into Craig's face.  And I was wearing his sunglasses...!

Before we began the drive, though, we stopped at a store and let all the kids pick out t-shirts.

I got myself an OBX bumper sticker.

Easter Weekend

Things have been so busy around here!  And every week everything seems to change-- I have not once felt like I had a good routine and it's exhausting.  Every night when Craig and I go to bed, we have to figure out who's getting up when and what needs to be done for the next morning because it's never the same.  Ugh.

A couple weeks ago, they were doing construction on our street, installing new high speed internet fiber-optics.  So that was awful.  I've been trying to get myself to go running on the days the kids all go to school, but nothing is less motivational than having to jog past construction workers at the beginning and end of your run.  (Especially if you're a TERRIBLE runner!)

A couple guys digging a hole, and the ditch witch!

And in the most ironic move ever, Camille's class celebrated their 100th day of school.  That must have been some interesting math to come to that number...  But Camille had fun!

One of the good things to have come from Covid is that the teachers all text us now.  It's very fun to get pictures of my kids in the classroom!

This post is turning into something of a downer, but I'll fix that now: Craig and I actually got to go to the temple, so that was very exciting!  All temples are closed right now except for live ordinances, so the only reason we were allowed in was because a girl in our ward is going on a mission soon and invited us to be at the temple with her.  We were so happy to make the drive down to North Carolina for such a wonderful occasion!

This was such a lovely day, and I'm so grateful to Rachel Morgan for including us in her special day, and to my in-laws for watching the kids ALL DAY so we could do this!

We rolled right into the weekend with General Conference and Easter!  Quite the spiritual feast!  

We did our usual snack game for General Conference to try to encourage the kids to pay attention

I love Ryder's sleepy thumbs up in this picture!

Even big 10-year-olds need snuggles sometimes...

And we dyed eggs!

A rare occasion where Camille's hair isn't insane!

This was kind of our worst year for egg dying, though.  I forgot to buy a kit until just a few days before Easter, and it was super lame-- only six colors, and the pink and purple were worthless.  And Colton managed to dump the orange dye all over the floor (and himself).  Next year we'll do better!

Craig and Bentley accidentally matched, so that was horrific and embarrassing! 

On Sunday we headed over to Culpeper and had Easter dinner with Tom and Donna, so that was lovely.  Unfortunately, all our plans for Monday had shifted and I was sort of stressing about how to make it all work.  We'd rented a house in Outer Banks and planned on leaving Monday around noon for the 5pm check in time, but on Sunday morning, the owners informed us that we could check in any time we wanted.  This was GREAT news, except I'd been thinking I would have plenty of time to go to the store and pack Monday morning.  Now I was wishing I'd already done all of that!

But we muddled through as best we could, and managed to be on the road at 9am, so that was pretty good.  (In a stroke of luck, it turns out that they DO have grocery stores in Outer Banks, so we just didn't bother with Costco.)

So, yes, we drove to North Carolina on Friday and then again on Monday!  Good times!!  But totally worth it!