More May

We've been keeping busy!  Over the last few weeks, we've ALL been to see the dentist and there have been NO cavities.  Life is good.  (Although the way my schedule works now, I had to take the kids to the dentist still all sweaty from exercising, which is completely gross.  Fortunately, I'm friends with the hygienist and she assured me that she was wearing so much PPE she couldn't smell anything.  Ugh.  My life is weird.)

Camille's teacher texted me asking why she wasn't in school, so we sent her back this selfie explaining where we were (mostly to reassure her that Camille was NOT sick!)

And it finally got hot!  I keep managing to sunburn myself in the weirdest ways.  It's really not pretty.  My most recent kayaking adventure left my legs looking like I was perhaps wearing blotchy, red knee highs.  Charming.  Oh, well...  This time, Adam and I paddled upstream the James River to a big, old rock in the middle of the river where we could sit and rest for a bit and enjoy the peace and beauty before floating back to where we'd put in.  It was delightful!  (A little more of a workout than lake kayaking, but I was pleased that my arms were NOT sore the next day! 💪)

I finally convinced Adam to be in a picture!  (And yes, everywhere below those shorts is now red.  Eek!)

I'm not the only one to get in on the kayaking action!  Last Friday, Craig and Adam went on the Rivanna River, ending at the Snow's farm!  They seemed to also have had a great time:

And there have been lots of date nights happening!  Both for me and Craig:

Why did I aim this so much up my nose???  Oh, well.  Here we were after watching the girls soccer team.  And before that, we got salads at Chopt!  So it was a good evening.

And for this, we were at Craig's school's prom.  This was between shifts, and the jazz band behind us is taking a break.  I like that we wore AHS's colors!  Go, Patriots!

And also Craig and I have been trading off taking kids out on dates, too!

Ryder and me at Five Guys

And Craig and Colton, also at Five Guys!

Bentley and Kendra each got a turn, too, (they both chose Citizen Burger Bar) but we apparently didn't take pictures of that, probably because it was too dark.  But it's all been very fun!  Camille has informed me that next week I'm taking her to Chick-fil-A, so I've also got that to look forward to!

Last week for hiking club, I took the kids to some trails near our house.  The gas shortage was pretty much over, but it still seemed like maybe a good idea to keep things close to home.  So we wandered and tried (successfully!) to not get lost.  We didn't go super far (Ryder slipped and fell just as we were heading back, and he was a total trooper and didn't complain, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel to suggest we try additional forks in the path!) but we had a good time and there was TONS of wonderful-smelling honeysuckle!

We found this run-down shelter that people use for dirt biking.  Since we didn't have bikes, the kids ran around the track instead, all the while shouting, "I'm running on the walls!"  As long as they're having fun, I guess?

I'm also really enjoying not having to be masked in quite so many places. The (vaccinated) employees at Costco no longer have to wear masks and I'm just so happy for them and it's so great seeing people's faces again and being able to understand what they're saying! UVA relaxed their outdoor masking policy, so FiA is back to exercising at the rotunda on Mondays:

I just loved this shot-- the rotunda and the clouds make it look so cool!

Random Pics

Well, they were NOT lying about that second shot!  I spent all day in bed feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.  But now I'm fine!  AND VACCINATED!  So that's pretty exciting, especially as they're lifting the mask mandate all over!  (Although it figures-- I just found THE cutest masks a few weeks ago!  Oh, well.  I'll still need them for doctors offices and such...)  I've been fine with wearing a mask everywhere, so it surprises me how excited I am to be nearly done with that.  I can't wait to see people's faces again!!!

Anyway.  I was going through our google photos and I realized there were a bunch of very random pictures I never posted here, so I'm remedying that now!  Enjoy!

Bentley loves to grab my phone and take a selfie

And my kids still think the purpose of a bag full of scrunchies is to make muscles for themselves

Movie night with Sydney and Beth!

Mrs. Batres sent me another picture of their schoolwork!  How cute is Camille and her fingerprint bugs???

Here we have Kendra attending Young Womens on Zoom, and Camille decided to join her. 😍

Speaking of the youth at church, they ALSO went kayaking at Walnut Creek!  It's the thing to do!

Here's Kendra paddling away!

I think that's Bentley?  Maybe?

It's actually light outside when we're done exercising now!  How exciting!  (Although maybe this means I should start actually looking in a mirror before I go?)

I didn't post this particular picture before, but this face kills me!

Sometimes on a Saturday morning, Ryder will turn his bedroom into a massage parlor (HOW DOES HE EVEN KNOW THAT TERM????) with soft lighting, soothing music, and stuffed animals to lay on.  He charges a $1/minute, so he's not cheap!

Here's a tiny little snake Colton found under a rock a couple weeks ago at hiking club.  Adam was worried it might be poisonous so we stared at it from a few feet away.

Bentley went fishing for Young Mens a few weeks ago...

When they aren't running massage parlors, my kids get their stuffed animals involved in their reading action!

Pretty little flowers that Camille spotted when we were hiking!

Ryder lifting ALL my weights!

This is a terrible picture, but I was thrilled with these cute summery church shoes I found!  It's always a challenge to find shoes that will fit my crazy-wide feet, but my black clunky boots just weren't going to cut it with the warmer weather!  I love these!  (And I was excited to find a store where I could actually try them on!)

Cold (but Beautiful!) May

The weather here has continued to be schizophrenic.  We had several days in April that were quite hot, but then it would dip back down to being cold again.  So far in May, we've had warm days and cool days, but no hot days.  It's weird, honestly.  It was 43℉ when I woke up this morning!  43℉!!!  But I probably shouldn't complain, because I'm sure it will be plenty hot soon.  But it is strange.

Life continues barreling onward.  Last week for FiA they had us doing this:

That's me in the middle!

I didn't actually know I could do this until I was doing it.  Go me!  

I spent a few hours at another wedding on Saturday.  This time the seating chart looked like this:

I didn't have to put this together (thank goodness!) although I did hot-glue the "thankful for you" lettering at the top!  Once it was done, Adam and I set it up outside and he fixed all the leftover flowers to the top and bottom and it looked so lovely!

I was properly spoiled on Mother's Day!  Craig brought me breakfast in bed the second I was out of the shower: 

And then at church, Craig had put Adam in charge of getting chocolates for the women, and Br. Steed had asked Adam to get flowers, so we were shown a lot of love!  Adam pulled it all off beautifully by getting us gorgeous roses and Gearhart's chocolates  which were amazing.  (It may have helped that I'd chosen which chocolates we got-- malted milk hazelnut and brown butter caramel, both of which were my absolute favorites!)  And then Adam gave me the leftovers.  YES.  (The best of all this was when we were pulling into the parking lot and Craig immediately spotted Adam getting all the roses out of the back of his car and exclaimed, "I LOVE having a wedding planner in the ward!"  So true, but I've known that ever since he did all the Christmas decorations like it was the easiest thing in the world for the ward party three years ago!  The men are just now catching on to how useful a wedding planner can be to have around!)

My other favorite part of the day may have been when Camille put on her unicorn robe and declared, "I'll be your Mother's Day Unicorn!" as though that's a thing?  She's so funny!

We had a hard time getting her to smile for this.  In the other shots, she has cRaZy EyEs!!!

😂😂😂

Also, that super cute dress was a lovely and unexpected gift from my mother-in-law!  You have such excellent taste, Donna!

I also napped all afternoon (which was a HUGE mistake, because then I couldn't sleep AT ALL that night) and let Craig make dinner-- cornbread salad, which I love!-- so it was just an overall great day.  Yay for being spoiled!

And then this week on Tuesday, Adam and I went kayaking again!  This time we went to Ragged Mountain (where I first tried out my little Hiking Club and we accidentally hiked nearly 8 miles!) and enjoyed perfect weather with lots of turtles and even one bald eagle!

This little rocky nook was so shady and peaceful!

And today I got my second vaccine!  I was very fortunate, because I managed to find (after MUCH searching) a pharmacy in town where I could get it, rather than having to drive down to Lynchburg again.  I didn't particularly mind the drive at the time, but now with the gas shortage happening (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?), I'm really relieved not to drive an extra 2.5 hours!  My arm is already quite sore, but I'm hoping that will be the worst of it.  Maybe?  But I also canceled all my normal Friday morning activities just in case.  I figured, at 5am, I wouldn't be able to tell if I was actually sick, or just dizzy and tired like normal, so why risk it?

Instead, the plan for tomorrow is to stay in bed all day no matter how I'm feeling!  Take that, Covid!

April Happenings

Camille hopped off the bus this week wearing this hat:

I can't really adequately explain just how much I LOVE kindergarteners wearing homemade goofy hats without a thought for what anyone else might think of them.  It's so fun and carefree and it is SO short-lived.  Long live the wacky hats!  (In case you can't see the black and white pictures clearly, they were studying the lifecycle of the frog.  Yay for actual learning happening in school these days!)

Ryder has been playing baseball this spring! Unfortunately, they're holding practice on Sundays, which means he only shows up for the games on Wednesday and his coach (understandably) doesn't give him a ton of play time.  So that's a shame.  I specifically picked this league last year because they DIDN'T have practice on Sundays, so I was really disappointed when that changed.  But Ryder's having fun, so that's the important thing.

Craig got this awesome picture during the game-- love it!

And last Thursday, when all the kids were in school, Adam let me tag along when he went kayaking!  It was great-- this beautiful peaceful lake, where we could chat nonstop without my kids interrupting!  A very nice break for me!

I'm SO HAPPY that everything is green again!

For hiking club, we just walked (and scooted and/or biked) on the Rivanna Trails that follow Meadow Creek, so that was easy and pleasant:

Adam's cousin Bekah is here interning for him for the summer and she very graciously stepped into the role of photographer in his absence!

This was on the way back, after Sydney took a spill and needed a bit of recovery time, poor thing!

And that was it for April! We're already on to MAY!!! Full speed ahead, spring!