FiA Pics

Sorry, these probably aren't particularly interesting to anyone besides me, but I'm going to post them here anyway. I'm proud of all my hard work getting up early to exercise! Enjoy! Or don't enjoy-- that's okay! 😊

I love the sun hitting the Rotunda!

The pavilion behind us!

There I am planking and my form is terrible.  But in my defense, I'd been doing it for a while by then.  This was a form of duck, duck, goose, except we were planking while everyone else bear-crawled around us...!

Jazz hands!

HUGE group!  Raven and I are in the back bringing the crazy!

This group has been so good for me!  I'm so glad Brandy got me coming!

Since U Been Gone

While I was away, everyone was super busy!  Craig (with a little help from Adam) made sure his last graduation at Albemarle High School went as smoothly and beautifully as Covid rules would allow:

They picked out all this greenery to rent from a local nursery (I had no idea one could "rent" trees!)

No one is better at setting up straight chairs than a Mormon!  This was especially tricky because they'd decided to set the chairs at a 45 degree angle on the field so people wouldn't be staring into the sun too much.  All those perfect football field lines and they couldn't use them at all!

Tom and Donna brought our kids to their primary activity, which was decorating the church parking lot with chalk drawings.  And after that they also took Ryder to his final baseball game for the season!

Ryder was very excited to draw a dragon with supersonic fire!

And then I think Colton was copying Ryder's dragon...

They worked so hard to keep them socially distant!

And on Sunday, while I was driving home, Craig was zooming stake conference and keeping the kids happy (and the house clean) for me!

My goofy kids!  I was sure happy to get home to them!

Foxcroft Girls Gone Wild

So I took off for the weekend!  With a bunch of other women from my neighborhood!  They'd rented a house in Lynchburg and organized everything and I mostly just had to show up!  I did bring killer crunch brownies to share.  That was my big contribution.

And even though I was very nervous about how I'd fit in, especially when I knew the wine (and CBD gummies 😬, it turned out) would be flowing freely, I had a FABULOUS time!  The whole weekend was really great.  Phew!!! 😅

This was the house, and I think it had seven bedrooms, so everyone got their own room!  I don't love sleeping with someone else in the room, so that was lovely.  (There was also an extra house with a couple more beds, so we really had plenty of room.)

We had a white elephant gift exchange!  Everyone wanted the shirt and hat from Nola Builds (Rachel's husband's construction company), but unfortunately it got stolen from me, so I didn't get to keep it.  But Annissa was nice and gave me the sunglasses, which was all I really wanted anyway...!  (That's me on the bottom right, in case you couldn't tell...)

My room!  It was only after I'd gotten settled that I realized that the bed was the same one Craig and I used to have!!!!  No wonder it felt so homey to me!

First night's dessert tray!  I think I gave myself a headache from eating too much sugar...

I guess this is enough snacks for two days...

Back deck

We all spent a lot of time just laying around the pool reading and chatting.  And no one whined at us the entire time.  It. was. aMAZing.

View of the back of the house

They made t-shirts for everyone and I was really pleased with the shirt I got (which reads, "I'll bring the getaway car")-- I really didn't want it to be something lame, but I'm a hard person to pin down for stuff like this.  But I thought this was very funny and apropos!

I loved this trellis and the huge lawn behind it.  Apparently this house is used for weddings sometimes, and I can totally picture that!

Chilling on the front porch!

The whole gang!  l-r (back): me, Rebekah, Ginna, Brandy, Annissa, Laurel, (front) Rachel, Kate.  Some of the other t-shirts said, "I'll bring the chutzpah, unsteady gait, dilated eyes, voice of reason, adult supervision, etc..."  So, yeah, getaway car was not bad!

Am I in pain?  Why am I pulling this face?

All packed up and ready to head home!

I got home feeling so refreshed and happy and excited to see my family again.  And I can't wait to do it again next year!

The Start

***I started writing this two weeks and then things got busy.  And this post is totally unfinished.  But I'm getting further and further behind, so I'm going to publish as is and try to catch up soon.  Sorry?

Friday was a BUSY day for me!  I'd barely gotten any sleep, but had still stumbled out of bed to lead FiA (this time I made them do yoga poses as their "active rest" which was fun)! 

And then we had our hiking club, which was fairly hot and muggy, but fun because my friend Kari came, along with her daughter and dog!  After hiking, Adam was very nice and let the kids climb up into his new iKamper.  I totally want one of these some day!

Next I had to hurry to get on to a zoom meeting for Ryder (still trying to figure out why in the world he can't spell).  These meetings are difficult, because part of me is really grateful for all the help the school is trying to provide us-- we've had at least three different people trying to work with him throughout the year.  But part of me is also super frustrated that we've had three different people working with him, when I'm pretty sure he'd do a lot better if the SAME PERSON could stick with it the whole time.  So, yeah.  The school doesn't think he has any sort of learning disability (which is what I've always thought, because he's a voracious reader, so a label like dyslexia doesn't make any sense), but no one can understand what else it could be, either.  So that's a big mystery and of course the meeting took quite a while.  The kids' piano lessons started shortly after that, and while they were playing, I was running around frantically packing and doing a couple last loads of laundry, because as soon as piano lessons were over I...  was... leaving!

Over a year ago the women in my neighborhood had been talking about planning a girls' weekend.  Covid, obviously, put a stop to that, but everyone is pretty much vaccinated now, so we decided to go for it!  Three of the women found a house in Lynchburg to rent and organized food and activities for all of us!

I won't lie-- I was actually really nervous about the whole thing.  My neighborhood is such a party place it's been called frat row by outsiders and I often worry that I don't fit in very well.  But I also knew that the best way to guarantee you never fit in is by NOT GOING to the events you're invited to!  So I made up my mind to go, despite my worries.  

Naturally, after I'd committed to this, Craig realized that he had graduation all day on Saturday, so we frantically called in the troops to help with babysitting!  Tom and Donna were just barely home from a couple weeks of traveling and I was so grateful that they were willing to help us out anyway!  To make matters even more complicated, the kids also had a bunch of activities going on, so Grandma and Grandpa had to haul them all over town.  It was a busy day for everyone!

(To be continued!)

Poetry Corner

A different blog I read just shared this poem, and I like it enough to save it here, too!

Who the Meek are Not
Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent

under burlap sacks, not the peasants knee-deep

in the rice-paddy muck,

nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles

make the wheat fall in waves

they don't get to eat.  My friend the Franciscan

nun says we misread

that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.

To understand the meek

(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop 

in a meadow, who--

at his master's voice-- seizes up to a stunned

but instant halt.

So with the strain of holding that great power

in check, the muscles along the arched neck keep eddying,

and only the velvet ears

prick forward, awaiting the next order.

-Mary Karr, The Atlantic, April 30, 2002

End of May Rain

I finally took the kids to Humpback Rock (the hike that started it all!) for our weekly hike!  Unfortunately, it started raining right as we got to the summit!  So that was a bummer, especially since those already slightly scary rocks are much slicker once they're wet.  But the rain didn't last long, so Adam was still able to get lots of pictures for us!

You can see why these might be a little scary wet...

The kids were VERY EXCITED when they discovered this little guy!

This looks terrifying, but I promise, he wasn't as close to a cliff edge as it looks!

This explains the name Humpback Rock!

So this was a delightful hike!  The kids were so tough going uphill the whole way there!  I was so proud of them!

Meanwhile, Craig was having his own encounter with wildlife at work...

Can you see it?

How about now?

Yup, this poor terrified fawn wandered into his school!  So that was a fun job for animal control, who scooped him up like it was the easiest thing in the world and carried him back to the woods near the school (with a very nervous teacher instructing him to put the deer in the woods FURTHER from the road, thankyouverymuch!).

Such a little guy!

In other news, our pool opened!  Happy day!  And they decided we can bring guests again, so if you're in the neighborhood, let's sit by the pool together!!!

We had Kendra pulling along this little train of floaties...

And this just cracked me up...

And on Saturday, we went to Kings Dominion again.  You have to make reservations ahead of time, and so we couldn't plan for the weather and our luck was terrible.  It was about the first rain we've gotten all month, and it was COLD.  So that was not the best visit ever, but we still had fun!  (One of these days we're going to hit that park on a hot day and I'll probably die.  But right now that sounds so nice!!!)

We sat in the car waiting for the rain to let up, and finally Craig drove us all to Wal-Mart and bought ponchos.  That did the trick!  The only time it started raining again after that was when Craig tried to take his poncho off, naturally!

We're so glamourous!

Dinner break!

Camille pulls the best faces.

Seriously.  THE best faces!

They were nervous about this ride, but I knew they'd love it and they DID!  Victory!  So much of parenting is trying to know when to push your kids and when to leave them alone.  This time, I was glad I'd pushed...

I would just like to point out that my hair looks great here.  Pretty rare on a rainy day!

And finally, Craig gave Ryder a haircut!  He went from looking like this:

to this...

(Isn't Craig hilarious?)

And finally, this:

And now his hair is so fuzzy and fun to rub!