And now... Elder Smith!

Bentley arrived home late Thursday night after once again catching a very quick connection in Baltimore.  Why do we keep scheduling these tricky flights?  He was supposed to land in Richmond at 9:50, but arrived early and managed to get his luggage before we even got there, which meant we just pulled up to the curb and grabbed him!  And it was only 9:45!!!  So that was awesome (even if I did feel really bad that we weren't waiting for him to come through security like we usually do)!

I'd canceled seminary for the next day, which was nice-- we were up way too late that night!  So I got to sleep in a little bit, and then got kids to school.  Once everyone had left and I'd showered, Bentley and I went to Target to get him whatever toiletries he would need for the Mexico MTC, and then we also stopped by Costco to get a few more groceries before the storm.  I was dreading both these stores because I figured they would be absolute zoos.  And they were plenty crowded, but they weren't terrible.  So that was good to get done!

There was time for lunch and naps, and then Adam picked up Bentley and they went to the temple to both do missionary pictures and let Bentley do a session.  Here are way too many of my favorites:

You gotta have a shot like this!  (And I like the temple behind him!)

I really love the lighting in this shot!

This is what we picked to go on his missionary plaque!

I love our Richmond temple so much!!!

I know he's not really smiling here, but this is such a Bentley look!  And I love that orange lighting in the background!

And I love that there's some green in the background here, despite it being January!

As always, I can never thank Adam enough for helping us out and taking such beautiful photos.  Where would we be without him???

We had a dinner date that night, and Adam got him back right in time!  We were celebrating Donna's 80th birthday (!!!!) by eating at the Melting Pot and what a delicious evening it was!!!  We all ate way too much, but we had so much fun being together!  The meal went on for about three hours (which is insane, even for fondue!), but I wouldn't trade a minute of it!

The balloons were fun!

That evening we also added another kid for the weekend-- the Gaskins were going to Utah for their granddaughter's baby blessing and they asked if Sawyer could stay with us while they were gone.  We LOVE Sawyer, so that was an easy thing to say Yes to!  Bentley had two movies he wanted to watch before he was set apart, so after the Melting Pot we stayed up way too late watching About Time, which is probably my favorite movie ever.  (I did do some light editing to clean it up just a little.  I'm not a terrible mom, I swear!)

The next morning, I took Camille to her volleyball game while everyone else stayed home watching Bentley's other movie choice, La La Land.  (I was sad to not get to watch it with them, I love that movie, too!!!).  And then we all met up at the stake center so Bentley could be set apart!  This was a change-- it was supposed to happen after church on Sunday.  But with this crazy winter storm coming, we were pretty sure none of that was going to work after all, and it seemed very strange to have Bentley begin Home MTC not officially set apart, so this was our best option.  (It did mean that I sat at the YMCA cheering Camille in my church clothes!  I looked extremely formal compared to everyone else!)

Camille searched for our various mission locations on the map while we waited a few minutes for the stake president.  (Sawyer offered to sit outside, but we told him as long as he wasn't being disruptive, we were happy to have him stay!)

Google is being dumb and putting my pictures all out of order.  But here we all are right after he was set apart:  

Group photo with Sawyer!

And a shot of just our family!

And here's Bentley with President Papin.  This man has been so patient with our whole family as we've gone through this process, I cannot sing his praises enough!

Puerto Rico bound!

Camille got to put his pin in the map, so it was a good thing we'd had her looking at it beforehand!

And this is back to when we were still waiting

From there we split up.  Craig took Colton and Camille with him up to Culpeper to buy a new hot water heater for us (!!!) and also stopped by to check in on his parents and take care of a few things.  I took everyone else back to the house for lunch and to hunker down before the storm.  Topher was able to come by and visit with Bentley, which was really nice.  And Craig managed to pick up pizza from Costco on his way home, which made me happy!

That night we watched Coco-- a little more G-rated than the previous two movies in honor of our missionary!-- and the snow started falling around 10pm.

Church was, of course, canceled (and along with it, Bentley's farewell talk.  I'll guess he'll give it as a "testimony" next Sunday instead).  And after it snowed quite a bit we got a layer of sleet freezing on top of it, so the roads are just awful.  I have no idea when school will reopen!  I have to say-- this is quite possibly the ugliest snow storm I've ever seen!  It didn't stick to the trees or anything, it's like frozen white sand that just sort of drifted around.  

For comparison's sake, last Sunday we got a little bit of snow and it was beautiful!!!  It was also kind of worthless, because it happened after church and the next day was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so we already had the day off, and it melted so fast we didn't get Tuesday off, either.  But at least it was pretty!!!

See???  This is pretty snow!  Not like what we got this weekend!

Anyway, we all slept in, and I was kind of shocked when I finally woke up and looked out the window and saw how ugly it all was.  But then Craig made cinnamons rolls and I just was happy we were all staying home together!  We had home church and a family testimony meeting, and then the kids played games and played in the snow.  

We loved how Kendra, Ryder, and I ended up being color-coordinated like this!

Then Kendra pointed out that we were also in gradiated shades of grey with our choices of sweatshirts!

And then she noticed that we were also standing in height order, which was way less cute of her to say!

How did I end up as the short one???

We're probably lucky he didn't break his leg trying this...

See what I mean about it being all drifty and ugly???

Looking down the sledding hill

Kendra took this video of them sledding down the hill-- you can see how icky the snow is!!  NOT Utah powder, that's for sure!

And here's Sawyer pretty successfully using his sled as a snowboard!

We ended the night with lasagna soup for dinner, which was absolute perfection if I may say so myself!  And then the kids all played Culpeper-opoly!

Camille was actually having a great time, I don't know why my kids insist on pulling these dumb faces for all my pictures

And finally, we watched a couple episodes of The Chosen before playing Among Us all together!  What a GREAT snow day!!!

Which brings us up to this morning!  There's a thick, crusty layer of ice on top of all the snow, I have no idea when we'll go to school again!  The Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl, so that's happy!  Craig has been outside with (most of) the kids shoveling our driveway

and Bentley began his Home MTC experience!  He'll be doing this until February 5th, when he'll fly to Mexico to spend a month at the MTC there, and then it's on to Puerto Rico!!!  😱😱😱

I can't believe this is finally happening!!!!