YMs Camp Out

The young men decided they should do some winter camping.  (Young men have very little common sense, apparently.)  And Craig never met a camp out he wasn't excited to embark upon, so even snow in the forecast didn't deter them.

As Craig was getting ready to leave, I asked him if we should be worrying about Bentley's BYU admission.  He wasn't supposed to find out until the following Monday, but according to friends of ours with college-aged kids, it's not unusual to find out a few days ahead of time.  So I was getting antsy.  But we have a weird history of getting bad news right before we go camping (seriously, it's happened at least twice!), so Craig said he didn't want to risk ruining the weekend on the off-chance that it was bad news.  So far, Bentley had gotten in to George Mason University, James Madison University, and been waitlisted by University of Virginia, so we figured his odds of being accepted were pretty good.  But those other times we got bad news we'd been assured that good news was a sure thing, so why risk it now?  As they say-- Good news will keep!

So we made sure everyone was very bundled up and off they went to the Snow's farm for a night of camping!

Craig is in the bottom left corner holding the camera.  Ryder is in the center in royal blue, Bentley is wearing maroon in the bottom right corner.  I could probably guess who everyone else is here, but I doubt you care, so I won't bother...

Anyway, as they were all standing around enjoying the fire, Jesse (one of three seniors in our congregation) pulls out his phone and says, "Huh, I got an email from BYU.  Oh-- I got in!"  So then Aaron (the other senior) pulls out his phone and says, "Oh, I did, too!"  And then Bentley pulls out his phone and he has... nothing.  No email.  No word at all.

He stands there frantically reloading his inbox and waiting, trying to not freak out.  Seriously, could there be a worse way to be rejected from your top-choice college than to be surrounded by the other people who all got in???  Aaron could see that this was getting scary for Bentley so finally he forwarded his email to him so he could use the link to log in to his own account where he learned...  he'd also gotten in!!!

I don't know what happened to the email he should have gotten.  It never did arrive.  But he's in.  And in spite of (or maybe because of?) those seven minutes of sheer terror, he's really excited.  He already told them he was for sure coming in the fall and we're trying to figure out which dorms he should live in and all that great stuff.

And I am just so relieved.  I feel like we've been working towards this goal for so long and it's finally coming to fruition.  

Bentley is going to BYU in the fall!

As far as I can tell, the rest of the campout was fairly uneventful.  It didn't actually snow, although it did rain a bit.  They all stayed warm enough. 

In the morning, Bentley hurried home so he could shower and get to work, but I made him take a few minutes to tell me the whole story.  (Craig had been texting me in real time as it unfolded and I'd been as stressed out as Craig was, but I still needed the full version!)  Craig and Ryder were a little slower getting home, and then I got to do about ten loads of laundry.  And then that night was the stake dance that you already read about!  Between all of that AND Kendra's birthday, it was a really wild weekend for us!

I just have to say it one more time-- MY SON IS GOING TO BYU!!!!

Stake Dance (and Also, Ryder & Nora)

Speaking of stake dances...  it was also Ryder's first dance!!!  This sort of blows my mind, since he just turned 13 back in November, but the new church policy is that you get to do stuff the year you turn the correct age, so since he turns 14 this year (albeit not until Thanksgiving), he's eligible to go to the dances now.  So crazy!!!

Anyway, to go along with the Hollywood theme, he wore his suit and tie, which I love.  (There was talk of him wearing his top hat, but he didn't.  It would have been cool, but I don't really blame him for not bothering.)  He was so brave and asked several girls to dance!  I was totally impressed.

Here he is dancing with Marianne from our ward and wearing Wylan's cowboy hat...?

And dancing with Nora Cramer, which makes me happy

I should explain a bit: Ryder and Nora have literally known each other since they were babies:

Here they are holding hands

At a ward Halloween party

This is my favorite picture-- they look like they're having the best time at this birthday party

At a splash pad in Charlottesville

So, yeah.  They're so cute together.  Once Ryder gets taller than her again, they could totally be a thing!  😆

Back to the dance.  Originally, of my three oldest kids, only Ryder was going to be going.  A few people asked if their kids could ride with us, but we were kind of hoping someone else could drive!  Our neighbors, the Blacks*, offered to take everyone and I thought we were off the hook until Kendra's drumline competition got canceled and I realized they didn't have room in their minivan for her.  So now I was back to driving!  

More and more kids kept needing rides, and suddenly even our van was filled!  Which is actually pretty great.  But I was worried that Bentley would decide to go, too (he was working an 8-hour shift beforehand and figured he'd be too tired to bother), and then I'd have to tell him I didn't have room in the car for my own son!  So we asked the Blacks to be on standby in case we needed another driver.

Trying to get a bunch of teenagers to commit to going to a stake dance is ridiculous.  The number of times my head count changed for this was insane.  But finally we had everyone rounded up and about to climb in the van.  Will Black was idling his minivan waiting for us.  I hadn't noticed that Wylan was missing (apparently he'd gotten a ride with another family) so I had one extra seat.  And then Aaron asked if he could step inside our house for a minute.  I figured he just wanted to use the bathroom before we drove to Waynesboro, but he'd actually gone in to find Bentley and beg him to come.  Aaron accomplished what I could not, and with Wylan not there, we had one seat left for my kid.  And now I had a van full of teens in high spirits and all my oldest kids.  What could be more fun?

I met up with Sarah at the dance, we looked around and decided they had plenty of adults there to chaperone, so we headed out to Five Guys for milkshakes and fries.  (I guess that's more fun than my van full of teens!)  

It was a really great night.  I know my life is kind of nuts, but I wouldn't trade it for anything!

*I feel the need to clarify here that their last name is Black.  I am NOT describing their skin tone!!!  But every time we talk about them it sounds like we're totally racist.  It's really bad.  Like, they-should-probably-just-change-their-name bad...!!!

February Birthdays!

Before we knew it, Camille was turning 9 and Kendra was turning 16!  My little girls are both getting so big!

Camille had a party with 9 friends (we didn't actually plan it that way, but that was how it worked out).  

Camille's party

Clockwise starting from the top: Beth, Sydney, Quinn, Zethia, Camille, Gracie, Ember, and Noelle (Peter and Gideon were also there, but somehow are not in this picture)

Like her brothers before her, she requested red velvet s'more brownies rather than a cake

Opening her family gifts before going to school-- I love that excited face she pulls

Our grandparent celebration got a little complicated.  The girls decided they would do a combined dinner and go somewhere more expensive: the Melting Pot.  I was thrilled with this decision, until we realized that for the month of February, Melting Pot offers a set "Valentine's Day menu" which includes a lot of seafood that I have no desire to eat.  Gross.  So we put off dinner until March (this coming Saturday, to be precise!).  But we had grandparents over to bring them presents and just had Camille's choice for dinner that night-- meatball subs!  So that worked out well.  And I'm excited for fondue on Saturday!!!

Spoiler: it's a new bike!

Kendra was just getting money for her Disney World band trip, but at least Tom and Donna made it fun for her!

Kendra had kind of a lame weekend around her birthday where she had too many plans to bother with a party, but then they all ended up getting canceled and if we would have known that was going to happen, we would have planned a party instead!  Grrr...  (She did get to do other fun stuff instead, but it wasn't really birthday stuff, if you know what I mean?)  Seriously-- she was supposed to go to a play with a friend, but then the friend got sick.  She was supposed to have her first drumline competition all day Saturday, but then there was a chance of snow so the school district canceled all activities (and it did not snow.  At all.  And the competition still happened, just Kendra's school didn't get to participate.  So dumb!).  She did get to stay home and watch Mulan with me and Colton and Camille.  We're pretty fun!  And I took her shopping and she bought herself a leather jacket and looks very cool now.  And she got to go to the stake dance.  So those were not terrible ways to spend some time.  But, yeah, not very birthday-y...  

The dance was themed "Hollywood" so Kendra looks like she's straight out of Top Gun...

We had church on her birthday, which is always a little lame, but I made it better (*cough cough*) by letting her Sunday School teacher know so they could all sing to her!  And after my Sunday nap, Kendra opened her family presents:

Her friend crocheted this adorable jellyfish

Kendra's dinner request was beef stroganoff, and then her special dessert was cookie dough brownies, which were delicious.  Of course!

Next year we'll have to throw her a real party.  But we still had a lot of fun!

Happy birthday to my two beautiful daughters!!!

Starting the New Year Off Busy!

Oh my goodness, where has the time gone?  It's almost as though going back to work means that I have less time to blog!  But how can that be?  (I'm pretty sure if I gave up reading any of my stupid advice columns I could find the time...  Hmmm...  New goal, perhaps...)

Anyway, we've been puttering along as usual, keeping busy, just like you, I'm sure!  

At the beginning of January we had a big planning breakfast for the YM and YW where we hashed out the bulk of our activities for the year.  Stuff like that always feels so daunting, but once it's done, it's so nice to feel like you have a plan in place (even if we change it about as often as we follow it!):

Older YWs class

Younger class (I'm so glad they got rid of all the weird names-- no more Beehives and Mia Maids!)

Teacher's quorum (yup, Ryder is a teacher now!)

Deacon's quorum

Priest's quorum

And we were missing a few kids, too-- I can't believe how many youth our ward has now!  It's so awesome!!!

Back when we had our snow storm, I made soup and Craig mad these beautiful bread bowls!  I don't love winter, but I DO love winter time foods!

Colton ended up exchanging the cruise ship lego set he'd gotten for Christmas for this awesome vespa!  (It turned out the cruise ship was an off-brand and the pieces just didn't fit together well.  Lame.)

One evening, I convinced Bentley to play Go Fish with Camille for old time's sake.  He used to play this with her in the mornings before he left for school!

Temple date night!

Ryder played with the all-district jazz band!  And-- bonus-- we figured out how to sit in the balcony!

The YM managed to create their own gaga ball pit

Camille's hair has gotten very long and it is much thicker than Kendra or my hair, so it also gets knotted up like crazy.  We've started trying to keep it braided at all times to save on tears.  This led to her hair looking very pretty for church one day:

What I wouldn't do for hair like this!

We had one very warm day in January where the temperature shot up to 75 F!  It was awesome, but a little weird.  We celebrated by making the kids go hiking on the Monticello Trails!  And right as we were just starting out, Adam noticed that Bentley and I were reverse-matching!  So, naturally, I had to take the most awkward photo ever of the occasion:

At least Bentley managed to look normal for this picture!

I swear we don't just bring Adam along for the great pictures he takes of us, but that is a pretty fun perk!

We had an amazing ward temple trip back in January-- the youth did baptisms, the adults did sessions, and the primary had really great activities for the kids at the stake center so everyone got to be involved.  I was so impressed with how it all came together!  Part of the primary stuff was they took pictures of all the kids and made little temple books for each child.  How cool is that?

I was supposed to take Kendra shopping after the temple, but I began getting migraine symptoms, so I took my meds and went to bed (and woke up feeling great!).  So Craig got to take the girls to buy pants!  Apparently Kendra felt the need to text pictures of herself trying on pants to her friend, but then she got bored taking mirror selfies and began trying to strike weird poses whilst showing off her pants.  Which is how this happened:

😂😂😂

My daughter is silly!  (And she ended up buying that pair of pants, too!)

The day after a big storm, I noticed this umbrella just outside our garage

I kept asking Colton and Camille to figure out which of their friends had left it there, but they kept forgetting and then when we finally did remember, no one would claim it.  It was so weird (especially for such a cute umbrella!).  After about a month, I finally texted this picture to the neighborhood text chain, asking if it belonged to anyone.  Turned out it was our diagonally-across-the-street neighbor's, and had blown off her porch in the storm and she figured it was just gone!  We were very glad to return it to its rightful owner!

The older YWs class did yoga for their Tuesday night activity and asked the Gaskins to lead it (apparently they do yoga every morning)-- I was bummed that I was stuck with the younger class trying to learn to crochet (I did not learn how to crochet).  I definitely would have preferred a little yoga...  Anyway, it looks like they had fun:

Speaking of yoga!  I'm slowly getting into a pretty solid exercise routine that makes me very happy!  I decided to quit FiA a few months back (long story which isn't interesting enough to put on the blog, I'm afraid), and my sister Natalie gave me a membership to her friend's "home gym," which I've been loving.  (Ritual 365 if you want to try it out-- you can do a free two week trial and I think they're really great!) (If you are seriously interested in trying that, let me know and I'll walk you through how it works!)  And since I don't have any travel time, I usually can squeeze in a 20-minute Yoga with Adriene video, also, before it's time to get the kids up for school, so that's pretty awesome.  I'm also trying to run more and make myself actually like running.  So far I'm learning that listening to podcasts is better than music for distracting me from how much I hate running.  I'll run Craig and my usual route, and then walk for a bit, and then sprint (well, "sprinting" for me is probably what an average runner's normal pace is) down any hills from there, walk on the flat or uphill parts.  Something about trying to run fast for a just a little bit feels a lot happier than my usual plodding jog, so I'm liking that a lot, too.

Fitness is such a process.  

Anyway, back to the happenings in our lives...

Colton and Camille had a "dress as your favorite" day for school, so here they are:

Camille is in her pajamas, because she loves sleeping.  And Colton is Calvin (complete with Hobbes)!  I love how Craig got his hair to stick up all crazy for this!

One more so you can really admire that hairdo...

Walking along the trails behind our house I find this: totally not sketchy at all...

I actually heard a crash in the night about a week before I discovered this-- I assumed something in the house had fallen off a shelf, but I never did find anything broken, so maybe I heard this poor tree go down...?

That was most of our January stuff!  I've got a LOT more to tell you about, so hopefully I'll get that all written down sooner rather than later!