First Day of School!

School began last Wednesday, and even though part of me was very excited to get back to my routines (and maybe just a few less cups scattered all over my kitchen?), I'm also always kind of sad to get back to the grind.  All these mixed emotions!

The first morning was so hectic that we forgot to get a picture of everyone!  D'oh!  In my defense, it's really tricky when everyone has different departure times!  And for reasons that I can't remember now, I'd decided to go to work that day, too, so I was also trying to get myself out the door.  Seriously, why didn't I just stay home and enjoy the peace and quiet???

Anyway, this is what we DID get:

Camille, Colton, and Scarlett (who moved back from Florida!) at the bus stop

Ryder is in middle school now!  And Kendra is in high school!

And Bentley is an upper classman! 😱

Goodness, these kids are growing up fast!

DC Temple Dedication

When it came time for the DC Temple dedication, the stake made things inCREDibly complicated by telling the bishops to recommend ten people who should receive tickets.  This was a major stressor for Craig.  He agonized over who to give those tickets to: should they go to people who haven't been coming to church in the hopes that this will inspire them to come and re-ignite their testimonies?  But he ultimately decided that the odds were much higher that the tickets would just be wasted if he did that, so he opted to give tickets to people on the ward council.

So our family got three tickets (one for Kendra, since she's been on the missionary committee)!

The day was really incredible, but it was also a logistical nightmare (totally of our own doing).  We started out the day easily enough by having all of us go to the dedication broadcast at our stake center.  It started at 10:00am, but you were supposed to be in your seats at 9:30.  So we left crazy early as I always do at 8:30 (it's only thirty minutes away.  This was total overkill on my part).  Also, Camille couldn't participate because she isn't baptized yet.  I would have just tried to sneak her in, but they actually issued temple recommends for kids ages 8-12 and checked them at the door!  So Colton got to have one.  And there was no way I was getting Camille in.  So we left her with a neighborhood girl babysitting her, which she was thrilled about.

The first dedication was great, and it was fun to see Pres. Nelson conducting the meeting.  We all really enjoyed it. 

Then we drove back home to collect Camille and eat the fastest lunch ever, we let the kids change into play clothes, and we drove to Culpeper and dropped them off with Grandma and Grandpa for the rest of the day.  We kept Kendra and drove on to Manassas.  We arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, so we drove past our first apartment at Orchard Glen and showed Kendra where she was born, so that was fun!  That place looks much smaller than I remembered it...  Then we picked up Betsy Hayward and Melyssa Webb, and continued on to the DC temple!  We don't usually go to the temple on Sunday, so it was awesome enjoying not much traffic in DC (although it was still very slow getting into the parking lot because so many people were coming)!

Our tickets were general assembly, so we could be seated anywhere inside the temple, other than the big room on the top floor, which had special tickets.  I would have been jealous about not getting to be in the big room, but we've gotten to attend meetings there other times, so I was fine with letting other people get a turn.  We ended up in the marriage waiting room on the 6th floor, which I'd never seen before, so that was cool.  Sarah and her family got to be in the endowment rooms on the 4th floor, which I realized later was WAY BETTER because they had more comfortable chairs AND bigger screens.  Darn it!  Should have tried to join them there!

Oh, well.  It was interesting, because the two dedications were very similar, and yet I got a lot more out of the second one, probably because I wasn't as distracted with all my kids and stressing about the journey ahead of me.  I really got to enjoy feeling the spirit and being glad to sit in the temple and it was wonderful.  Also, Pres. Eyring was conducting this meeting, and I've gotten to shake his hand twice, so I just love him.

As we were leaving, I stopped to use the bathroom, and left Kendra sitting in a hallway.  Once I'd returned to her, she pointed out that she got to sit and look in the Celestial Room of a dedicated temple, and very much enjoyed that, so that was really cool.  Also, the new chandelier they have there is GORGEOUS.  

Then we had to take pictures, of course!

I said that I loved how the spires looked lit up even on a gray, gloomy day.  Craig said, "That might be the gold plating doing its job..."  He's so smart!

With Betsy and Melyssa

And the Cramers, too!

I'd agonized over what to do for dinner, but finally decided that avocado chicken salad would travel well and not be too messy in the car, so Craig got to work spreading it on croissants for everyone and we ate as we drove home.  Betsy had made cookies, so we also ate LOTS of those!

Doing everything in reverse took a lot longer than I ever think it will-- but eventually we had Betsy and Melyssa returned to Manassas and got all our kids back from the Smiths (they'd had a great time, of course!).  We got home around 10:15pm and were all very tired.  What a day!

But I'm so excited to have a temple so close again.  I never imagined when they closed it in 2018 that we'd end up waiting so long to get it back again!  And that same day, we got an email from the stake informing us that the Richmond temple will be dedicated in May, so pretty soon I'll have a temple even closer than that!  Happy day!

Other Summer Stuff

It's been a strange summer for me.  I really like routines and having things planned out (Craig and I often joke that I am Gerald in Mo Willem's Let's Go for a Drive, wanting to make a plan and STICK TO IT and he is Piggy, because he makes everything fun no matter how wrong the plan goes).  With various children disappearing to camps for a week here or there, I felt like everything was in a state of constant flux, which I don't especially love (even though I tried very hard to be fun and go with the flow).  The strangest was when Craig, Bentley, Kendra, and Ryder all left for YM and YWs camp.  It was just me, Colton and Camille back at home!  I don't even know how to handle such a small group any more, it seemed so... boring.  There's no laundry to speak of, hardly any dishes, not much to talk about...  They were still in summer school, so I did get a few hours of work in, but that week was really surreal.  I was quite relieved when everyone came home to me, even if I had to do about eight loads of laundry to get all caught up again!

So, yes, we have had NO routine at all this summer.  But that doesn't mean we haven't had fun!

Colton and Camille had lots of movie nights with Sydney and Beth!

Craig tore apart this mess on our lower deck and rebuilt what was rotten (and got rid of what wasn't necessary)

We got a little hiking in-- here we did a part of Ragged Mountain (it was too hot to do the full 5 or 7 miles)

Kendra became an Official Teenager by finally getting braces

Colton discovered that if he slicked his hair back, he looks like (a very smiley) Draco Malfoy...

Got to do a wedding at Farmington Country Club!  I loved the blue porcelain details of this one!

Bentley and Aaron got their certificates for completing another year of seminary!

And Colton and Camille are still enjoying our train tracks!  This seemed like a particularly good track that they set up...

We finally got back to Blue Hole on a legit hot day and enjoyed the swimming hole!  Craig was able to leave work early and join us, so that made it super awesome.

It's deeper than it looks!

The water was nice and cold and it felt SO GREAT.  This hike made me really happy.

Camille is still loving her gymnastics class and seeing her enthusiasm for it just makes me happy:

(Mostly I just love how she leaps off the balance beam at the end-- what a goofball!)

Kendra stuck to her decision to do color guard this year, and spent two weeks busy sweating it out at band camp from 1-10pm (and having to stay up this late to pick her up just about killed me).

Colton and his friend Gideon realized they both have the same stuffed animal monkeys, and later held a monkey wedding for them (notice the top hat that Colton made for his monkey! 😂) complete with rings and everything:

And I've been continuing to do FiA (even when I had to stay up late collecting my daughter from band camp):

I'm looking forward to when the weather cools down and I won't a) be dripping sweat and b) have to put on bug spray the minute I step outside...

I also went inner tubing on the James River last Saturday to celebrate my friend Josephine's 40th birthday!  The first two hours were SUPER FUN, but by the time we got to hour 5, I admit that I was terribly sunburned, headachy, and ready to go home!  But I was so happy to see Josephine again-- she's about an hour away in Powhattan now, so it's much harder to get together!

(I'm so glad I wore my sun hat or else the sunburns would have killed me!)

While I was gone all day floating, Craig was hard at work getting the deck finished and painted.  Fortunately he had some very enthusiastic helpers!

We had a couple rounds of back-to-school shopping, where my kids discovered they love hats (and look pretty cute in them, too, if I may say so myself)!

Now we'll have to start her playing tennis, I suppose...

We've had a lot of fun, but I am worn out from this summer!  Maybe now that school has started I can finally get some rest! 😆

Kendra Posts About YWs Camp!

Another guest post, this time by Kendra:

    Girls camp is always an interesting experience. I mean what do you think will happen if you throw a bunch of emotionally unstable teenagers in the woods and take away their phones, there is bound to be some drama... less than last year but still some. Before I go on a whole rant about how awful teenage girls can be to each other let me talk about some of the better parts... 

    1.  My YCA (youth camp advisor) was amazing! She was super kind and funny and the whole group loved her. 

    2.  This year camp was a lot more focused on the spirit. One experience that was amazing was called the faith walk.  Essentially they partnered up the girls then gave them a sack. Then we would walk around to all of these adults who would share a burden that they or their family or anyone else had gone through.  Then they would hand us a rock that we would put in our sack. By the end we all had about 20-30 rocks all of which weighed about a pound.  Then we had to walk up a hill.  It was not a steep hill but walking up it was the hardest thing we had to do at camp. Then, when we got to the top of the hill there was a picture of Jesus and we were told that we got set down our sacks at his feet. I believe all of us felt such relief that we could set down these burdens.  Finally, we were given a bit of time to think over the experience and reflect on what it meant to us.  One thing that was evident to me was that we are the most tempted when we are about to have a spiritual experience.  Me and my partner had just come over the hill and seen the photo when our bag fell and the rocks went everywhere.  It was such a crushing moment, but it is also a good metaphor when it comes to life: when we are on a spiritual high the adversary will do his very best to knock us down.

    3.  The girls' camp was a lot better than the boys'. We had flushable toilets, showers close by, and a mess hall with some amazing chefs.  The boys had none of this. 

    4.  I am president of our Young Women's class, and this year we had three 11-year-olds going to camp for the first time.  One of them was reluctant to go, but it was so amazing to watch all three of them come out of their shells and make great friends.  I am so proud of them and I hope they all had a good camp experience. 

    5.  Part of the day was called solo time, we were given half an hour to study the scriptures.  It is crazy to me what half an hour can do.  One memorable solo time was when I felt like I was not going to get anything out of it.  Immediately after having thought this I could her my mom saying in the back of my head "Not with that attitude you won't." This is not something I have ever heard my mom say but it felt like something she would say so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I rejected my "this won't happen" attitude and found something in the next verse.  Something my mom has taught me is that attitude matters.  This was a good demonstration of such. 

    6.  I love camp activities!!! Shooting rifles and canoeing is all super fun to me and I love doing it with my friends.

    7.  Not having my phone. While I hate to admit it, I spend a lot of time on that thing.  Taking a week-long break from it felt refreshing and is something I should remember to do in the coming up school year when I feel stressed.  

    Now on to the less positive stuff... 

    1.  I got a really bad blister on the bottom of my foot.  It hurt to walk and the nurse did not have any blister bandaids so it just kept on getting bigger.  By the fourth day of camp it was HUGE and looked like it was about to burst.  Then completely out of the blue some girl came up to the nurse and said "I have blister bandaids, do you want some?"  That girl saved me from a lot of potential pain and what felt like a curse turned into a blessing, as I was able to see God's hand in my life. (Also imagine doing the faith walk with a huge blister on your foot, yep that happened.)  

    2.  As hinted at in the beginning, teenage girls are mean. For reasons unknown to me one girl in my group did not like me and would not hang out with me. Normally I wouldn't care but all the other girls wanted to hang out with her...   At first it was fine because I had my two friends with me but one had to leave early and the other decided that she needed to be friends with the girl who did not like me. This left me alone. Then she (the girl who is my friend) would come to me and complain about how hard it was to be friends with the girl that dislikes me and how I was her only real friend.  That sucked.  I was so tempted to say many things, none of which were spoken out loud.  I greatly look forward to the day when we can all get along.  Hopefully it comes around soon. 

        I fell like this has been a pretty short post but it is all I have to say about girls camp. I believe that the positives of it far outweigh the negatives. While it was not perfect I had a good time, and it could have been a lot worse. Unfortunately I did not get a lot of photos (no phone) but here is one my dad took when he came to visit.  Said photo features me and the most of the girls in my ward!  

L - R we have me, McKinley (11), Violet (11), Marianne (11), Ella (15), Madeline (17), and Dad (*47)  

        Fin             

*Note from Alanna-- Craig is actually 41.  But we like to tease him by making him older, so Kendra got in on the game!

FSY: GUEST STAR; BENTLEY (woooo) *clapping and cheering

And now, a special guest post by Bentley!

    I've been asked to speak on FSY. So now I will do that. 

    This will be long because, when given the time to think about what I want to say, I can talk for a long time. Apologies. But not really, because who do you think you are being upset by reading when you voluntarily opened this blog. What did you expect to do when you look at someone's blog? NAP?! I don't think so.

    FSY was really fun. I got to meet new people and had lots of spiritual experiences. I went to two dances and danced with multiple people at each of them (!). I had cheeseburgers at least twice a day and for the first time in my life felt a little tired of them. Mostly because they weren't exactly Five Guys quality, if they were then I wouldn't get sick of them. Five Guys is the best. 

    Anyway, I'm just gonna start from the beginning. So usually when I'm about to go off on something like this or a camping trip I try to have low expectations so if it's not horrible then by comparison, it's great. I will admit though, I was pretty excited. I was imagining mostly hanging out with friends, eating food, going to dances, staying in dorms and maybe having the occasional fireside or morning devotional. A few days before we left, I discovered that in the packing list it specifically said for boys to bring fans for the dorms. It looked like there wasn't going to be air conditioning. 

    So finally it's time to go. We ended up driving all the boys in our ward in the van all the way to W&M. We got out of the car and stood in a line for maybe an hour. We didn't move except when the whole line kinda got closer. No actual process. At one point a worker ran by and said something about not having the keys for the dorms. That seems like something they should've thought of before we all arrived. We arrived at around 11:30, I got my key at 12:30, and after eating lunch and driving around William and Mary campus and dropping all the other young men off we got to my dorm. Also, me and the person I wanted to dorm with ended up not being in the same dorm which was disappointing. 

Waiting in line. If we look slightly unhappy, its cause we were

    At around 2 in the afternoon I had finally gotten to my dorm building and gotten into the correct room (there were two staircases that went to different parts of the building with no connection between them so I had to drag my suitcase down and back up a different staircase).

Here's me and my roommate Ivan

    For the rest of the day we did get to know each other games and went over the rules of FSY. Then we had a welcome assembly and a devotional. Before the devotional, we had dinner at the cafeteria, which was pretty nice but had the same three, mediocre, options for every meal. At dinner I spoke to two of my friends that went to a different dorm and found out they didn't even have dorms yet. So that made me feel better about not being with them. 

This is Andon, who we hung out with a lot

Also! Our dorm had AC! It was very loud and felt like the AC units you see in hotels but smaller. Still, better than using a small box fan in the middle of July.

    Before I go on, I would like to explain how FSY works for anyone that didn't go to the FSY at W&M this year. I don't know if it has changed at all but basically, you would be in a group that would usually be one floor of a dorm building and we would have a counselor in charge (around 12-15 boys in a group). My groups counselor was Jared. Jared would be paired with a girl counselor who would have her own group of girls. Those two groups together would be called a 'company.' Our company was called 'go and do.' 

    We went to bed at around 11:30 and woke up at 5:30 to shower and get ready. We had a morning lesson with our company and then went to the main area, where we had meals, devotionals, and classes. We had our morning classes which were really good. I like the speakers, I think they do this as a job, I heard most of them had been flown out from Utah. Very cool. After morning classes we had lunch and two more afternoon classes. Then we had free time and dinner. Dinner was a little stressful and reminded me of school lunch which is one of the more stressful moments of the first few days of school. 

    Then we had a dance. This dance was pretty fun but I was still getting situated and got in my head so I only asked a few people to dance. I danced for maybe half the (slow) songs (I danced for all the not slow ones).  Also, the building we were in was incredibly loud and echoey. If people even whispered it would build up until it sounded like we were screaming. Because of this, the music was kinda drowned out and I could only tell what song was playing if everyone started singing it.

    The next day was about the same with a morning and evening devotional and morning and afternoon classes. That night we had a game night where about half the kids in FSY went to where we had devotionals and the other half went to where we have dances. To put into perspective, there was a total of around 500 kids and since we were spilt that meant 250 in each place. So, imagine 250 kids running around playing 'dragon tag' (you form a line and the person in the front tries to tag the back of other lines to grow, like conga line but tag). After the games we had a 'pizza night'. Then it was bed time.

Here's my company, 'Go and Do' (I'm in the top right area)

PIZZA

    Thursday was church dress day, which was a little rough in the middle of July, It wasn't awful and since everyone was wearing the same stuff, it wasn't awkward or anything. Then after lunch, we had a talent show. Some notable ones:

This kid that carried a giant spoon with him everywhere (and from what I hear, didn't shower or change his pants at all the whole time) got up and just listed every African country.

   A kid from our ward beatboxed but because of the mic whenever he tried to do low bass sounds it just sounded like he was breathing heavily, he complained about this on the way back home.

Some kids sang 'I want it that way' and, if you know my mom, then you know the only thing I was thinking of was this. 

One guy played a game of clash royale (multiplayer mobile game) in front of everyone and WON. It would've been very awkward if he lost.

    Those are all the talents I can think of off the top of my head. Then we had a devotional and testimony meeting in groups of 3 or so companies. I'll be honest, one of the less great testimony meetings I've been to. Some kids only got up to be stand up comedians, other kids testimonies went like "I don't really believe in this church and I don't like it, but I felt a little happy at some points this week and that might've been the spirit idk." I just think some of the kids weren't told what a testimony is supposed to be. 

    Finally, it was Friday, the last day. We did some fun family history stuff and I found out there was a girl at FSY who I was third cousins with. Quite random. We had a final dance, which was fun, but pretty short. I danced for what I thought was every slow song, but Kendra said there was more than that. She's definitely wrong though. Then we had devotional and final testimony meeting. 

You can't really see it because of the low quality, but there's the hoard of kids coming to the dance

Me and my friend, Aaron at the dance

    The next morning, I woke up at 6:00 and began packing. Me and my friend were out of the building by 7:30 and we got home at around 11 because the whole ward stopped for Chick-Fil-A, and since we had just come from an LDS event with 500 kids, the line was very long.

    I got home, and the next day, dad made me bear my testimony during sacrament meeting.

    My biggest take away form this was that at church activities, people that would be considered 'cool' in normal life, aren't. There were some kids who I know and I also know that they are popular in school. At FSY they sat in the corner of the room and stared at their phones. They thought FSY was below them, and didn't have fun. 

    I sat with them once during lunch, and didn't sit with them again because they just looked at their phones the whole time. 

    If you don't try to have fun, you won't. So try to have fun.

July 23rd

Right after my birthday comes Craig's birthday!  And his birthday was BUSY this year!  It was our ward Pioneer Day celebration AND at the last minute our friends the Nowaks came from DC to visit!  So it was all very fun, but there was a lot going on.

We celebrated Craig's birthday first thing in the morning... as soon as he woke up!  Because, of course, the best part of your birthday is getting to sleep as late as you want!  He opened his presents and cards and enjoyed Camille being his birthday unicorn!

She also made him a birthday crown

Colton and Camille, who call themselves the CCs, had decorated Craig's box so it was from CC Prime.  They crack me up!

Then the Nowaks and Patchetts arrived!  We hung out for a bit, ate lunch, and then went to the pool for a couple hours.  It was perfect pool weather.

We had to wrap it up before too long, though, because we needed to help set up for Pioneer Day.  This was held at the Snow's farm, just like usual, and despite the heat, everyone had a great time.  There were lots of people I didn't know, but I was so sweaty, I will admit that I was not as friendly as I usually would try to be...

The shade and the fans may have saved a few lives...

Bishop Smith was manning the grill.  He insisted that I was NOT ALLOWED to tell people it was his birthday.  And I complied only because I understand that what makes Craig happy is not the same thing as what would make me happy.

Here's everyone lining up for the slip-n-slide, which was a huge success (as always):

Camille had already gone without Craig, so she was just humoring him here

They also had a zipline, which everyone enjoyed.  I was wearing a dress, so I didn't bother with it, but next year I need to remember to wear shorts so I can do it, too.  (I avoid the slip-n-slide because everyone's legs get chewed up in the grass at the end.  I don't need that kind of pain in my life.)

And then we had the best luck: right as everything was supposed to end, it clouded up and got super windy so everyone hurriedly packed and left.  And it somehow didn't rain even though I would have bet money it was going to!  So we ended right on time and left at a reasonable hour AND didn't get rained on!  But we got to enjoy a gorgeous sunset as we drove home!

Craig had requested these cookies rather than cake (and I'd made them the night before), so we ate those once we were home.  It was a good day!  Happy Crazy Birthday, Craig!