Senior Pictures

Bless Adam for making sure we actually got around to doing these!  And then triple-bless him for taking such fantastic pictures.  I was originally planning on going with them, but then I was too busy.  After I realized I couldn't go, it hit me that that would be for the best anyway-- for something like this, I'd just end up annoying Bentley and then it would be hard to get him smiling.  And, as you'll see, they did great without me!

I'd insisted he bring a change of clothes.  I think he thought I was being ridiculous, so I would like to say, for the record, that I WAS RIGHT.

One of my favorites, and this was what we used for his graduation announcements

I really loved the black and white version, too, but it was too hard to see the writing without the colors contrasting, so we went with the color version

Bentley's a cool guy

These were all taken at Keswick Hall-- sometimes it pays to be friends with a wedding planner!

I really should have told him to pack some dark socks...  Oh, well...

And I kind of love that he looks about twelve years old here

And, actually, I like how he looks when he's not smiling, and the colors in the background of this one are muted and gorgeous

Another serious shot that I really love

And I like that the artwork behind him here gives this a completely different look

I looked at this one and gasped.  This shot looks like it could be in a magazine, right?

This is another of my favorites.  He looks like the CEO who just took over your company and feels absolutely no remorse.

So, yes, these are wonderful.  I cannot thank Adam enough!  (And I'll do a post one of these days where I sniffle about Bentley growing up. But not this time.)

Maycember is Already Hitting Hard

For the last few years, Bentley has been doing a dual-enrollment program where he takes a mix of classes from the local community college, PVCC, at the same time as his regular classes.  In theory he should be graduating from college with his associates degree now, although I think he may be missing one class (art history or something totally awesome like that).  His cohort is the first time the school has tried this, so it's been a little touch and go at times.  In any case, they had a luncheon for all the students who participated, but I thought since Bentley was missing a class maybe we shouldn't go?  I wasn't too clear on it, and any time I tried to bring it up, the conversation went elsewhere and we never really talked about it.  But then Bentley ended up just going and sitting with our friends the Yowells, and lucky for me, Brandy shared pictures with me.

I'm really glad that Bentley thought to run home and put on a nice shirt, especially since he had been wearing his Costco hotdog shirt!  

Ironically, the shirt Bentley is wearing is a hand-me-down from Andrew here!  I wonder if Andrew noticed...?

It looks like it was a lovely lunch, and I'm sad that I missed it, but glad that Bentley got to go at least!

And May has just been chugging along!  We've had a TON of rain, so on the nice days, we try really hard to get outside and make sure the chickens get some fresh grass to peck around in.  Sitting outside with a book and an apple while they wander around my yard is one of my favorite ways to waste an hour!

Ryder loves his pet Billie so much

I've also been trying to take advantage of good weather by getting out and hiking!  A few weeks ago I did Ragged Mountain.  It's nearly seven miles, so I was tired and sweaty by the end, but I also really enjoyed a chance to be quiet while I walked in the woods, and after about a mile of that, to listen to some good podcasts!

A couple weeks later I did Humpback Rock on my own.  The view was... not spectacular!  (It had been a gorgeous morning when I decided to do this, but the sunshine didn't last that day...)

Oh, well!

The hike itself was fine, if a bit muddy.  I didn't mind the mud going up, you just had to step carefully, but going down it felt a lot more treacherous.  Even that wouldn't have mattered too much, except when I was picking my way down the mountain at the muddiest spot with the least amount of rocks to anchor yourself, I happened to be going past a bunch of sorority sisters sitting and taking a break.  I'm not someone who gets embarrassed very easily, but the idea of slipping in the mud in front of them was so horrifying.  I did NOT actually slip, but those five minutes were not fun.  (This all reminds me of this amazing stand up bit by Ryan Hamilton!)

But other than that, yay for hiking!  Also, I spotted this cute little guy on the way down:

Also in May, we finally threw a birthday party for Colton!  (Yes, his birthday was in March.  Don't judge me.)  He just had a couple school friends and a couple church friends over.  They played, ate pizza and watched the original Jurassic Park, which holds up so well!  I'm glad that finally worked out, I'd been feeling really bad for not getting around to that!

I hadn't really thought about making a cake until that morning, so it was a good thing he just wanted doughnuts!

While I was manning the party, Craig took Ryder and Camille with him to watch Kendra play lacrosse-- most of their games were on Tuesdays and we were tied up with YMs and YWs so it was nice he could make it to a game!  

This was her first year ever playing lacrosse, and she mostly played defense.  I know at one of the games the varsity coach noticed her and said she'd done a great job, and at her last game they kept her in the whole time, so I think she's a pretty decent player?

The next day they had a stake primary activity in Waynesboro, and our friends the Huffs were very nice about taking Colton and Camille to it.  Then Kendra and I picked up Megan at the end of the activity and we met up with a bunch of other mothers and daughters from our ward to see Pride & Prejudice at Blackfriars Theater.  It was the same cast that Craig and I had seen perform Julius Caesar, and it was so cool to see them all in wildly different roles!  It really helped me appreciate just how talented they were.  And then it was just a great show all around-- so funny and happy (kind of the complete opposite of Julius Caesar, actually).  I could not have had a more enjoyable afternoon.  

That's Kim holding the camera, and then her daughter Jadyn, Megan, me, Kendra, Kari, and Lydia.  And behind us, Angela with Sabrina and Luci, and Amy with Olivia!

After the show we all got gelato at The Split Banana in Staunton's adorable downtown mall.  It reminds of Charlottesville's downtown mall before they let it get taken over by homeless people and pot dispensaries...  

We had a game night for our combined activity and it went pretty well-- Craig got a few fun pictures from the evening:

This cracks me up

And then I had my final TOSVA concerts of the season!  This concert we were singing Beethoven's 9th and I was SO EXCITED to finally get to really learn this music!  I used to teach it to my humanities 101 class so I already loved it, but there's nothing like having to memorize a lot of German and force yourself to sing all those notes above the staff to really dig in and appreciate music!  So it has been a LOVELY semester.  

For concert week, we had long rehearsals Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then our concert was Friday at the St. Anne's-Belfield auditorium (referred to by locals as STAB, which never ceases to make me laugh) and then Saturday was a rest day before our Sunday afternoon concert at UVA's Old Cabell Hall.  So it was a LOT, but every night I'd come home just smiling because how can you NOT be happy singing such music all night long?  The minute the Friday concert ended, all I could think to myself was, "I'm so glad we get to do this again!"

That evening was especially fun, because right as I got home, Colton and Camille were being dropped off from a birthday party, so I stood outside chatting with the dad who had brought them home.  As we were talking, C&C began hopping around the yard yelling about aliens.  I was just ignoring them at first, but then I looked up and realized we could see Elon Musk's Starlink moving across the sky!  Craig and I saw it once before when we were in Outer Banks, and we totally thought we were seeing aliens (and we're not exactly people who believe in UFOs!) until we got back to the house and looked it up, so I understood the kids' reaction!  Anyway, that was cool to see.

I put C&C to bed and was just dishing up a big bowl of ice cream (gotta take care of that throat after such a night!) when Bentley's friends started texting him that we needed to check out the sky, so I abandoned my ice cream and ended up seeing aurora borealis for the first time in the my life!!!  So it was really an amazing night all around!  (Yes, I'm going to share a few pictures.  The longer exposure made the pictures even cooler than what we saw with our own eyes, so while it was super cool, please know that it was not actually as cool as these pictures!)

Shortly after he took this picture, I was brave and knocked on our neighbor's door and asked them to please turn off that (awful) yellow light so we could see it better, and he was super nice about that!

I really would have loved to have slept in the next morning, but we had a YWs activity planned that my younger class president had worked really hard to organize, so I hauled myself out of bed and took a bunch of girls to an animal rescue shelter out in Gordonsville.  This one has more farm animals rather than just dogs and cats, so we all enjoyed getting to see the goats, donkeys, alpacas, cows, horses and pigs.  (My favorite was a hog they recommended we stay away from because she was grumpy.  They'd named her Dolores which is just hilarious.)  The girls mucked out stalls, brushed the animals fur, and then mostly played with them.  A good time was had by all, and I was very pleased with my awesome class president planning the whole thing herself!

Kendra was in love with this 10-day old kid

He kept trying to eat her hair

Now I'm back to wanting a goat...

The younger girls had the best time climbing on this hay bale

The next day was Mother's Day, so Craig got to bug the kids to get ready for church and get their shoes on and all that good stuff.  And after church I got all my lovely things:

Flowers!  Cards!  Journal entries from the kids!  Bath salts!  A really great cupcake!

And then once I'd had some lunch, I headed to Old Cabell for Concert #2!  This time Craig and the kids and Tom and Donna and Adam were all in attendance, and it was so nice to have some friendly faces to smile at!

Old Cabell is a fun hall-- I love the pillars and mural (and the acoustics are fabulous)

Can you see me, sixth from the left, smiling at Craig?  I could see he was taking pictures!

And here's the full choir, full orchestra, soloists, and piano all just barely fitting onto the stage!  (Like, literally-- they rolled the piano out just for the Choral Fantasy and we were worried the legs would go off the stage it was such a tight fit!)

Anyway, the second concert was a raging success.  I was so happy with my own singing and everything just felt amazing.  Getting to be a part of this musical masterpiece was honestly a dream come true.  (And it was pretty fun having a strange old man up front watching with more enthusiasm than most people have for a close tennis match and cheering for everything and coming back stage during the break and announcing to me that I was "absolutely gorgeous."  He was very gay, so it didn't feel like harassment, just a lovely compliment from an incredibly eccentric, retired conductor.)

And then, to top it all off, we got home and ate a delicious crock pot meal that Craig had prepared beforehand, followed by caramel brownies.  A perfect Mother's Day!  {Chef's kiss!}

In less gushing news, Sydney's grandma sent me this great picture:

Love the matching socks!!!

And speaking of matching, these two didn't plan to dress like twins, but that's pretty much what they did!

Also, Colton is a goofus:

Nothing to see here, folks!

And Colton got invited to do an escape room for a birthday party, and this picture is hilarious:

Walker, Leo, and Colton-- all too cool for school

He had a great time, but then had nightmares that night and couldn't sleep.  We thought it was a mad scientist theme, but it was less along the lines of inventions and chemistry experiments and more along the lines of Frankenstein with body parts and decapitated heads.  So that was too bad.  I should have read the description more closely.

Next up: Bentley's senior portraits!

And the Rest of April!

Once we were home, it was right back into the fray!  Of course, we saw what we could of the eclipse-- we didn't get full coverage here, but it was pretty close.  It clouded right up during peak coverage, just like the last time we had an eclipse here.  You can't win.  But it was still very cool!

If you zoom in and look really closely, I actually got a pretty cool picture of the sun about the size and shape of a thumbnail

I hadn't bothered to order glasses, so I was glad the school gave them out!  Camille cracks me up...

Our neighbor's cat, Caramel, came to hang out with us.  And then proceeded to squat in our grass puking up a hairball.  Gross.

We got a package from BYU containing some swag for their newest recruit.  I truly love this picture of Bentley-- I was worried he was only going to BYU because we basically told him he had to, but this is one very genuine smile from my eldest!  I'm so excited for this next chapter in his life (even though I know I'm going to miss him like crazy)!

We had a "hands tied" meal with the Young Men and Young Women where we sat everyone around a giant square and everyone's hands were tied to their neighbors', and then we served them salad and spaghetti and watched as chaos ensued.  Eventually it evolved into a food fight of sorts, which we were expecting-- we made them walk around (still tied together!), trying to pick everything up!  And then we served them ice cream, which meant they had to figure out how to get back to their seats!  It was hilarious and they looked like they were having fun, so that was a win!

Jadyn decided to just not bother with silverware, which is a choice, I guess!

It kind of looks like they're doing an elaborate dance?  

Notice the kids trying to climb over the table

At some point they decided that it was easier to go under the table!

It was at this point that Craig and I finally kicked it into high gear working on the condo and getting it in better shape to show it.  I also had Craig take a few new pictures of it, since the one we had posted on Zillow was kind of dark and forbidding looking.  

But this looks nice and friendly, doesn't it?

And yes, we finally got renters, and I handed over the keys last Wednesday, so that's a huge weight off my mind.  We've never had it empty for that long before (almost five weeks?)-- I think I got spoiled finding renters so quickly in the past!

Adam and I found time to go kayaking, something I think we didn't manage to do at all last spring!  When we first got out on the water, we thought there was a lovely mist over it, then we realized we were just seeing so much pollen!  😂  On a related note, I've been taking double the recommended dose of Zyrtec and my allergies have never been better!  I've even gotten where I can swallow the pills pretty consistently.  It's a spring miracle!  (Not really, those pills are tiny.  But I'll take any win I can get!)

And speaking of Adam, he made sure he took our spring family portraits, too!  I never would have gotten around to it without him reminding me-- I'm so lucky he's my friend!  So now we have two of our Four Seasons of Smiths!

We'll start with my favorite-- Adam happened to find these amazing azalea bushes and how great of a backdrop are they???

My pants are certainly apropos!

And we're all wearing crocs!

I love the clouds and sky behind us!

We probably use them too much, but fences are such an easy way to make the pictures a little more interesting!

And now that the weather has been so nice, I've discovered that it's really lovely to take the chickens down to the grass and read a book while they peck around the yard.  I feel like I'm accomplishing something-- being a good chicken owner-- while I get to sit and read!  The kids arrived home from school during my reading chicken time, and we learned that the chickens really like all the keychains on Camille's backpack!

The face Camille pulls during this!

We had a YWs activity where Craig had the girls building fires and I had them practicing a mountain climber's knot out in the parking lot.  (That's pretty much the only knot I can tie, but I'm really good at that one, thanks to a lot of practice when I was at Girls Camp many decades ago!)

Lydia, Julie, Marianne, McKinley, and Lilyann, somewhat tied up 

Violet and Julia working on their fire

And now, time for s'mores!  (Not sure how Calvin snuck in there, but all the girls love him, so they were probably happy to share their s'mores with him!)

L-R standing: Ella, Sabrine, Liberty, me, and Missy, and then sitting, Abby, Megan and Megan (with Brahm) and Valerie

I got to spend a few hours at the hospital holding my friend Brianne's very sweet baby.  She'd been in the hospital for a couple months and finally got to go home last week, so that was very happy news!

We had a very busy afternoon, so I had to make a time sheet for Craig and I so we didn't forget anything...  (The main activities were just tennis lessons, piano lessons, and an open house for rising 6th graders at the middle school, but there were a lot of moving parts to make it all happen!)  And this barely included Bentley and Kendra!

We did not plan this.  How did they end up so adorably matched???  Beth, Sydney, and Camille, playing at Pen Park before tennis lessons!

And Saturday was prom!!!  Once again, I can't believe Bentley is a senior and so close to being done with high school!

How handsome is he?

He didn't ask anyone, but had a big group of friends which changed for each activity, but here they are for pictures  

I love that the guys got matching pajama bottoms for themselves (and I was very impressed that Bentley still managed to get to church early enough to set up and bless the sacrament)!

Last fall the trampoline mat-- which was here in the yard when we bought this house nine years ago-- finally died a very painful, ripped-to-shreds death.  I bought a new mat and net, but decided not to fix it until after winter.  So the kids are very excited to have their trampoline back, now that it's spring! Here, they were jumping while spraying each other with a hose.

And last but not least, Ryder had his end of the year band concert!  He played great and Craig and I were pretty happy to enjoy a Tuesday evening where we weren't in charge!

April was a good month for us!