Up to Memorial Day

Guess who's busy?

WE'RE BUSY!  This is our last week of school and let me tell you, we are barely limping across the finish line of this school year.  I was sort of thinking that we could relax a bit once summer started, until I realized that Craig and I leave on Wednesday to drive kids to youth conference up in Palmyra, NY.  (Yup, the stake decided to copy what Craig did with our youth last summer!)  And the week after that he's taking the Young Men on high adventure, and the week after that, I do the same with the Young Women...  The carousel never stops.  But here are some of the things that we've been up to recently...

Craig and I made it to the temple, and caught this very pretty sunset after!

I once again tried to plan a YWs campout only for it to get rained out and resort to having a slumber party at my house!  History does, indeed, repeat itself!  I just never think that May should be so rainy!  (Sidenote: my friend Megan wore a shirt the other day that made me laugh.  It said, "Don't make me repeat myself! ~History")

Anyway, the girls made red velvet s'more brownies (totally camp adjacent!) and then watched Once I Was a Beehive, which is the rare church movie that I just really like and appreciate.  And then I sent them to bed in the basement and left them alone.  Apparently they stayed up until 4:40am, but Kendra assured me it was all really good talks that she felt helped everyone.  So, I guess that's a win?

Getting ready for the movie!  Lily, Kendra, Jadyn, and Violet; Lilyann, Ember, and McKinley all managed to arrive later, so we had a pretty good turnout by the end!

The next morning, I got up early and headed to Richmond-- I got to attend a regional training meeting with Elder Stevenson!  He even shook everyone's hand before it began!  So that was very cool.  (He actually shook with his left hand because his right hand was injured; I suspect the injury is from shaking so many people's hands, the poor guy...)  While I was there, Missy, Wendy and Anita came back to my house and made breakfast for the (very tired) girls, and then took them to the Snow's farm, where they made Meals in a Jar, which will be their dinner the first night of YWs camp.  I'm glad my people were all willing to step up like that!

I came home from the training and had just enough time to eat and then we headed back out again, this time driving a van full of youth to a fireside with Elder Stevenson (where he shook all their hands, too!).  In the interest of saving space, the grown ups were not invited to attend, so Craig and I headed to a nearby Panda Express and hung out with some of the other parents, which was pretty fun, too!  We got home late and were all properly exhausted.  But it was a really great weekend!  (Just for the record, this was the SAME weekend that we got Charlie!  But I figured he deserved his own post!)

That was all on Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday, Kendra had her final band concert and end of year banquet.  We tried to get pictures of her, but they ended up like this:

Oh, can you find Kendra?

Let me help you out:

Her face is in that circle, right behind Mr. Strickler's clapping hands.  Now, why couldn't you find her?

And here's another great shot:

Sigh.

In other, totally unrelated news, Adam sent me this gorgeous shot of the DC temple that he took:

It's too pretty to not share with you, too!

And walking home from the bus stop, I had to admire the sun coming through the trees.  It had been very foggy that morning (this was the coldest May I have ever experienced in Virginia!), and as it lifted, it made everything very dreamy!

And here's Carter Mountain trying to hide in the fog!

I tried to French braid Camille's hair for the first time ever (I mean, this was my first attempt at French braiding anyone's hair, not just Camille's!).  The results were mixed:

My first braid is a weird mix of French and Dutch style.  So I was a little off, but honestly, I don't think it looks terrible...

The lighting is worse on this side, but my second braid I managed to actually do French style on both halves of the braid, but it got all messed up in there.  I actually think it looks worse.  Ah, well!  Some day I'll try again... 

I dragged Bentley along to the temple with me by promising we could go to Target after.  I'm not above a little bribery!

That's a terrible picture of me, but I was trying to get the Angel Moroni in the shot!

We spent a week off our screens.  Trust me, the kids were NOT happy about this idea, but it actually went very well.  I read a LOT more than I usually do, so that was nice for me.  And I actually played chess with Ryder, which I am always putting off doing.  So that was fun (even if he did beat me).  And, it was nice seeing my kids reading more instead of just scrolling on their phones or texting their friends.  When we called for someone, they actually heard us because they didn't have noise-cancelling headphones in their ears!  Amazing!  I also felt like I got a lot more done in the evenings since I wasn't sitting around watching The Office with Bentley and Ryder.  Although I do love watching old shows with my kids, so I don't mean that in a disparaging way!  But it is nice to get a little more done at times, too!

Craig thought it was hilarious that we were holding the exact same pose as we played!

After our week was up, we did a pirate-themed escape room as a family to celebrate (it seemed fitting to do a non-screen thing for this, right?) and that was a lot of fun, even if it was very difficult finding a time when everyone could make it!

I hate the face I'm pulling here, but whatever.  Everyone else looks cute!  (I like Kendra's "It was all me" sign because she was SUPER good at solving the puzzles!  That was the fastest I've ever finished a room, and I think it was all thanks to her!)

During that time, it occurred that I have never ever cleaned my oven.  And I've lived here for ten years now.  I didn't actually know how to do this seemingly impossible task.  At BYU they used to make us clean our ovens, but we just turned on the self-cleaning thing and it made our whole apartment reek.  Also, we always forgot to take the racks out beforehand, and they always ended up damaged and rough, it was so sad.  But having the YW over and realizing that they might see the inside of my oven embarrassed me enough that I thought it was probably time to figure this one out.  A quick google search assured me that this wasn't actually all that hard, you just needed oven cleaner and a lot of elbow grease.  

So on a really fun Friday night, I had Craig take the door off the oven so we could vacuum out all the burned up charcoaly crumbs in there (there have been at least two incidences where cookies rolled off the cookie sheet 😬), then he put the door back on and we sprayed the crap out of it and left it overnight.

In the morning, he removed the door again and I got to work scrubbing.  Most of the grease came off pretty easily-- it was kind of amazing.  And I spent a good couple hours scrubbing away before suddenly I was just done.  At that point, I needed to take Colton and Camille to a friend's house (who lives 30 minutes away), so I showered and got them there.  And when I got home, Craig had finished the scrubbing for me!  He'd managed to get off almost all the really tough spots that I'd failed at, and he'd finished the door and put it back on!  The oven looked brilliant!!!

I really should have taken a before picture, but it was just too embarrassing

Shortly after that, I took a nap, and when I got up from my nap, Craig had done the dishes!!!  I teased him that he was going to teach me all the wrong lessons if every time I left him in the kitchen, I came back to find it cleaner!  

Anyway, I picked Colton and Camille up later-- around 9pm I think?-- and the farm still had a bit of daylight left, so I managed to snap this picture:

I am way too lazy to live on a farm, but when I see sights like this, I do get a bit wistful...

We didn't have much going on that Sunday (a nice change of pace!) so Kendra baked cookies for some of the YW who hadn't been at church that morning, and we also visited Akston's grave, something I'd been meaning to do for a while.  And then that evening we enjoyed having a fire out on the deck.

For Memorial Day, we wanted to give the kids something fun to do that didn't involve their screens (since this was still during our break), so we took a few of them kayaking.  We were borrowing Adam's kayaks but it was taking us a while to get them loaded and the kids were starting to fight with each other, so I suggested they go look at Adam's chickens (he was driving up to Syracuse, otherwise he would have come along with us!).  So the kids were very surprised when they heard Adam's voice saying Hi to them!  We'd forgotten that he has a webcam in the coop that alerts him if something big comes inside, so the kids had set it off!  I think Adam was very relieved it wasn't a bear disturbing his chickens!  Anyway, that was funny.  And the kayaking was delightful, if a touch cold.  

I took a turn, too, but mostly I sat and read my book and let everyone else have a turn.  And that was pretty great, too!