Since We Got Home...

We arrived home late Friday, which meant I had Saturday to get Bentley and Kendra all ready for FSY on Monday (and do a bunch of laundry, of course)!  This shouldn't have been a big deal, but Bentley had outgrown all his church clothes (and shoes!) and Kendra needed dressy shoes that she could wear all day (ie, NOT her heels).  So we needed to go shopping.  This was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, but sometimes we just don't have time for Amazon deliveries, so off to Target and Kohl's we went!  And it was in the Target parking lot that we realized...  we were all wearing yellow!  How cute are we?

I love that Bentley and Kendra went along with this dumb photo.  My kids are nice to me!

We were also looking for new water bottles at Costco.  We found these monsters:

 Seriously, who's lugging that thing around???  It's like a joke from Parks and Rec...

Monday the three of us headed out early because I was driving the youth the two hours to FSY in Williamsburg at William and Mary!!!

I had 9 teenage boys and all their stuff packed into my van.  Woohooo!!!  (The girls plus one little brother all opted to ride together in the minivan.)

When we got there everything was a mess!  They'd had to change up everyone's rooms AND there were no keys for any of those rooms.  So we stood around for a couple hours and I spent another hour driving people to various dorms and ultimately dropped a bunch of the kids off at the student center and hoped they'd get everything sorted out before bedtime (which they did).  I was gone all day and so grateful to my in-laws who'd come and stayed with Ryder, Colton, and Camille for me.  Dragging them along for that right after our road trip would have been cruel.  And they had SO much fun with Grandma and Grandpa!

And Bentley and Kendra had so much fun at FSY!  I might see if I can get them to type up a post about their experiences there.  We'll see if they'll cooperate...

With them gone at FSY, I couldn't really go to work and leave Ryder in charge.  So I had another week off!  And Colton and Camille got to go to summer school part time, so that was fun for them.

Colton's teacher was nice and sent me pictures of him during the day!

Who doesn't love making volcanoes?

And we celebrated my birthday.  43 isn't a particularly exciting number, but I'll accept any excuse to eat caramel brownies!  Ryder had gone to spend the night with his grandparents, so I actually had a few hours that morning all to myself-- happy birthday to me!

And Craig got me a new piano bench, since ours was falling apart.  Everyone is enjoying finally having a padded bench!

And that weekend I decided it was time to earn a few bucks, so I helped out at a wedding, this time at Veritas Winery.  I was only there during set up, and everything seemed to be going wrong: the stage was too small so the band was unhappy; the lead singer got Covid; the cake table collapsed and Adam had to put it back together as well as he could (I think a tier was lost in the process, but really, that's a pretty impressive save!); and worst of all, when the bride and groom arrived at a lovely scenic area for pictures, they were told they had to wait a bit because someone had just committed suicide there.  I think I would cancel my wedding at that point.  I was quite relieved to leave and join Craig and Tom & Donna for dinner at Mission BBQ for a very belated Father's Day celebration!

That is a mighty tall ladder there!

The venue was lovely!

And the bride and groom looked gorgeous and happy, so I guess that's all that really matters!

The other thing of note is that, after weeks of begging, I finally managed to get Camille into a gymnastics class!  She is in heaven.  Gymnastics seems to fit perfectly with her brand of crazy:

And we're still enjoying the pool.  Craig and I figured out the ideal way to hang out on the floaty mat together (while Colton pushes us around).  It's heaven.

I love summer.