Photo-Dynamic

Once again, I'm dealing with a plethora of pictures that haven't fit into any of my previous blog posts, but that I'm dying to share.  Get ready for randomness and, hopefully, just a little bit of hilarity!  Also, I should explain that these are in absolutely NO order whatsoever.  Blame Google Photos for that.  Or me being lazy...

Colton with Minion goggles

Colton and Camille doing (their version of) side plank with me

Reading time on the couch

I realized Colton was missing.  I finally found him napping like this...

This seems to capture Camille's spunkiness!

I got ambitious one afternoon and made strawberry jam!

This is her favorite face to pull-- you'll see it a lot throughout this post!

He'll be such a good daddy some day!

Ryder enjoys climbing into Bentley's laundry hamper...  It looks like he's in a cocoon!

My kids laying all over me while I'm trying to take a nap

Craig actually succeeding in napping!

Playing so nicely with their stuffed animals

At the splash pad with Sarah and her tiny new baby, Tessa!

Camille's eyes are so pretty, when I manage to pull her hair out of them!

Ryder and Nora at the splash pad-- they always have the best time together

Bentley decided I was treating him like he was in prison (I think I wouldn't let him watch TV?) so he put a number and handcuffs on himself...

Yup, there's that face again!

Camille's siblings bury her in stuffed animals

Peering out

Our friends, the Shaws, took us kayaking!

At the splash pad again, this time with my two friends named Amy!

My parents aren't on Facebook, so when they popped up here it was kind of exciting for me!

Kendra, her friend Madeleine, and the awesome turtle they found

The weirdest caterpillar I've ever seen...

Tracy took everyone hiking when we were in Hawaii

At the library, they were pretending to be driving in a car.  Every couple minutes they'd all switch seats and continue the game!

Ryder took this rather artsy picture of the Lego house they'd built

Ryder and Lilyann at the ward Pioneer Day picnic-- Ryder once again looking like he's on a fun date!

I got this free couch and Bentley has been enjoying curling up in it with a good book

Having fun at the Bounce-n-Play!

With Alexa Scoresby, one of our favorites!

Looking golden in the sunset light at Carter Mountain

Same day, but the sun had gone down and it turned me into a fat, grumpy, wanting more doughnuts kind of mom.  I laughed so hard I cried when I saw this picture.  Craig assures me I don't actually look that bad...

Ryder chose his school backpack because it came with this minion hat

Camille was pretty excited to get her hands on it, too!

Playing with Lego airplanes

Having fun with selfies on a Sunday afternoon

Silly faces

Surprised face!

Back to silly

Ryder lost a tooth!  And I don't know what Colton is doing here, but it cracks me up!

Camille decided she needed to imitate Colton showing off the tooth!

When your little girl insists that you take her picture...

Still perfecting our Batman look...  (Although her hair looks more Joker-esque, here...!)

Our friends let us release their homing pigeons and watch them fly home

Shopping at Toys 'R' Us with Bentley is a treat!

Camille finds Ryder's lion costume

Waiting to order dinner at ZinBurger

Bentley was inspired by The Pirates of Penzance!

Sometimes Colton is just plain weird...

Ryder dressed as a tourist for a relay game at the Activity Day girls' luau

Kendra during the relay

Love this crazy kid!

We love the butterfly bush in our yard!

Camille drives cars on Craig's leg before he can leave for work in the morning

Colton and Camille waiting for the bus to bring their siblings home

Kendra at her (very belated) birthday party

Camille does her best Karl G. Maeser impression...

Crazy eyes!

Making s'mores on a Sunday evening

Completing some requirements for scouts...

Another requirement for scouts-- Bentley had to plan a meal.  He decided it would be nicely rounded out with a coconut...

They made it look easy at the Polynesian Culture Center.  It's not.

Bentley is a good sport about helping Ryder with our morning scripture reading

Our overgrown backyard...

Kendra with the huge weed/small tree she helped Daddy pull

Camille after playing in a (damp) sand pile

Craig titled this, "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home!"  For what it's worth, Bentley is faking...

I love it when my kids play nicely together!

It's even more impressive when the room they're in is clean!

Climbing and pretending to sleep on Daddy's car

Bentley had four teeth pulled in preparation for braces...  Poor kid.  He was actually more upset about getting his hair cut that same day!

Ryder and his buddy Owen had the same idea for how to wear yellow for field day

Camille wearing her pajama pants like they're a scarf (?)

Whew, that was a LOT of pictures.  Thanks for sticking through it with me!  In the process of finding these, I discovered a lot of other things I forgot to ever blog about, so I'll be busy in the next few days getting caught up!  Stay tuned!

An Exciting Week

Wednesday was the first day of school!  We've been attending open houses and everyone has been getting very excited for this day (so no, not just me!).  Kendra was keeping a countdown going, and had written "Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!" all over the chalkboard.  Ryder was giddy when we went back to school to meet his teachers.  Bentley has been nervous, but overall also very excited at the prospect of starting middle school.

6th grader, 4th grader, and 1st grader.  Ryder was beyond excited to wear his new minion hat...

Bentley is in his socks still because his bus comes later.  Ryder is trying to look like the palest thug ever...

And this is the cutest picture ever

I sent them all off (I made Bentley use his extra 40 minutes to practice piano-- YES!) and then just prayed that they would have good days.  I also texted Craig a lot, because he was the only one I could check in with. 

They all came home smiling, so I guess that's about as much as one could hope for!  I'm excited for another school year-- I've been really happy with my kids' schools so far, and I hope that will continue!



Unfortunately this week, we also had one major problem...

It all started Monday night when Craig looked at the thermostat and said, "Why is it 81 degrees in here when it's not supposed to go above 78???"  He began poking around and determined that our air conditioner was not working.  At all.  I had a guy come out the next morning and he found several broken things (including leaks in our indoor unit) and confirmed that our HVAC unit needed to be replaced.  This was not how we were hoping to spend the money we'd made selling the mini-van.  But even though school has started, summer weather is far from over here.  And it's not like we won't need heat in the winter, either...

So this coming Thursday, I'll be getting a new HVAC.  And in the meantime, we've got two huge air conditioners set up in our bedroom and the girls' room (which gets the hottest).  And I've got a lot of ants invading my house, probably helped by all the windows we've got open.

I shouldn't complain too much, though-- Tuesday was miserably hot, but since then it's cooled down quite a bit and with the windows open it's pleasant for most of the day, until about 4pm.  It even got a bit chilly at night, which seemed rather delicious.  And I'm using this as an excuse to barely cook at all.  (It's too hot to turn on the oven or boil water?  Then I guess we'll just have to eat Eggo Waffles!)

A Tribute to Our Minivan

We finally sold our mini-van this morning!  And I feel like that deserves a proper goodbye. 

We bought that mini-van in January of 2007, just a few months after Bentley was born.  We hadn't planned to go full-on mini-van so quickly, but Craig's car died and we were stuck with one car.  The housing market was booming impossibly (literally, since it began crashing just a year later), so the cash we'd saved up for a down payment wasn't going to help us be able to afford a home, so we decided to use it on a car instead.  Car salesmen kept trying to get me to buy a sedan, but I was adamant that I wanted a mini-van.  I knew that I wanted more kids, and the jump to a bigger car seemed inevitable, so I didn't see the point in stalling with a smaller car that would only work for a few more years.

We found a used car and convinced the dealer to let us test drive it.  We told him all we could pay was $10K (he was asking $12.5k) and he took our offer.  We filled out all the paperwork, wrote him a check, and drove home with our new mini-van.  At that point, it was the biggest purchase either Craig or I had EVER made and we were terrified.  We were so scared that it would break down on us and cost more to fix than it would ever be worth.

A little over a year later, we had Kendra and I knew a mini-van had been a good idea...  We were filling it up quickly!

Bentley, at age 2-- still so little!

There's our funny little Kendra!

And it did break down a few months later.  I was at Costco and it wouldn't start.  Fortunately, Costco was about a ten-minute walk from our apartment, so it was easy to get home.  The next day we had someone look at it and the batter was dead.  We replaced the battery.

And that was the last time it ever died on me.  Not that we haven't done any repairs since then...  Craig is great about making sure we get the oil changed.  I insisted on new tires every now and then.  And pretty much any other work we've had done on it was simply so it would pass state safety and emissions inspections.  I think the biggest problem it ever had besides the emissions test was the time a mouse started living in it (that was just plain gross)...

In the ten years we have owned it, that car has been INCREDIBLY reliable.  I wish Toyota made a huge van like the one we just bought, because I am a totally loyal Toyota customer now. 

This must have been after a ward campout

Anyway, a car like that, even with 160,000 miles on it and being fifteen years old, we figured it was still worth a few bucks, so we refused the dealer trade-in of only a thousand dollars.  We were sure we could do better with Craig's List (and the dealers told us we could, too, so this wasn't just chutzpah on our part).  We listed it way too high and didn't get any takers.  Then the battery died (for the second time in ten years) so we let it sit in the garage for several weeks until we could get around to replacing it (no sense in trying to get someone to test drive a car that won't start!).  Finally we got a new battery and lowered the price.  A week later a nice guy texted asking if he could come see it.  He and his wife drove it with Craig and we managed to agree on a price.  Done!

We took it to them this morning and they gave us cash.  We signed away the title.  We were just about to drive away when they came running out of their home to stop us.  As Craig rolled down the window they asked, "Does it have a name?"

We looked at each other.  "Not really...  We always just called it The Van."  (See previous posts about my family's awesome ability to give things THE most boring names ever!)  Finally I said, "If you come up with an awesome name, please let us know!"

We drove away, waving to the car as we passed it.

Honestly, I can't believe what a great car it was for so many years.  We've taken it on so many trips-- camping and up to New York and Pennsylvania and Kentucky...  Down to South Carolina and to the beach...  I'm pretty sure we even drove it to Houston...  Not to mention all the day-to-day stuff I've relied on it for...  I hope it will be continue to be as reliable for its new owners.  How lucky were we to have found it when we did?  Who would have guessed we could outgrow it so quickly?

Stupid Reasons for Unimportant Decisions

So after much deliberation, I've decided to let my hair grow long again.  I've really liked my short hair, and my reasons for going back to long hair are actually really stupid.  But I'm okay with that.


Reason #1. Ponytails.  When you're in a rush and you can't be bothered to style your hair, NOTHING beats the ponytail.  I realize that some people have hair with its own natural body and short hair does not require any or much styling, but alas, that is not the case with me.  If I want to not be embarrassed by my hair, I absolutely MUST blow dry it and usually curl it, too.  And that's a lot of work for every single day.  (Even once it's long I'll still do this most days.  Because my hair really is that lame.)

The irony here is that my hair usually looks pretty good when I first wake up.  No showering necessary!  But just because my hair looks all right, doesn't mean the rest of me doesn't want a shower.  So I end up re-styling my hair even though it looked fine!


Reason #2. It's cheaper.  When you go from cutting your hair once a year to cutting it every month, suddenly you're spending twelve times what you used to spend on hair care!  I know getting a monthly haircut isn't exactly excessive, but when I do the math, it feels excessive.  I'm a cheapskate.  Sorry.  (I seriously considered putting some pink highlights into my hair, until I figured out the cost and how quickly they'd probably wash out.  Not worth it.  Although I love it when other people put fun colors in their hair!)


Reason #3. I hate the process of getting a haircut.  This is probably the lamest reason ever, but there you go.  I hate making an appointment.  I hate trying to decide if I care enough to request the same person or gamble on someone else doing the cutting.  I hate trying to explain what I want done (because what I REALLY want is for them to magically make my hair thick and curly-- but it turns out that these poor women are NOT miracle workers).  I don't mind making small talk while they snip away, but it's not something I really look forward to, either.  I hate trying to figure out a reasonable tip afterwards.  And I hate hate hate that I'm never really quite sure what I'm going to be charged for my haircut-- did those 30 seconds of running a blow dryer across my head count as "styling" and now it's going to cost an extra $8?  (Because-- see Reason #2 again-- I'm cheap!!!)  And then do I need to tip on that extra money that I didn't even know I was spending, also???  (YES, this has happened to me.  Many times.  Can you tell I've been traumatized by it???)

I realize that an overall dislike of the haircut process is a bit childish and stupid.  But there are plenty of people who never leave their homes because of fears similar to this.  If my biggest fear means for now I only go to the hair salon once a year, I don't really care.


So, yes, long hair is on the horizon.  For now.  Until I change my mind again!

The Hill Cumorah Pageant

When Craig was in high school, he spent two summers on the work crew for the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York.  For those of you familiar with Mormon stuff, this amounted to what was basically a month-long EFY experience, plus construction work.  Craig loved every minute of it.  A few years later, I flew out to New Jersey to see Craig while we were engaged.  He realized that the Hill Cumorah Pageant was going on while I was there, and got his parents to agree to drive us all out for the show.  Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from that trip:

I'm not one to get overly excited over pictures of myself, but I do love this one...

Aren't we so young and skinny?

Craig loves the pageant, and could hardly wait to take our kids there.  He's been talking about it for ages, so it was about time we actually went.  He's hoping Bentley will want to be on the work crew some day, and that we can all be cast members together.  I'm not really sure how that would work, but I do know that Craig has an amazing ability to just make things happen, so I'm not ruling it out.

Our ward had talked about doing an unofficial trip to the pageant this summer, but nothing really seemed to come of it.  We only knew of one other family that was planning on going.  Fortunately for us, this family, the Patchetts, are people that we really like AND they have kids who play with our kids.  So we begged and pleaded with them to caravan with us.

In addition to Craig being excited about the pageant, we were also excited to really put that new van to good use.  As Craig loaded up all our camping stuff, he got more and more thrilled with it.  He would come back in the house after each load and announce, "There's just so much room there!  It's AWESOME!"  He didn't actually start squealing with glee, but you could tell he kind of wanted to.

When it was time to go, we offered to let the three Patchett boys (Addison, Ivan, and Cedric) come in our car.  And they took Kendra.  Our car was super loud.  But everyone was happy.  And best of all-- they were all so busy playing with each other, that no one wanted to whine at me!  It was fabulous.  Best road trip we've had in a long time!  (And Kendra said she very much enjoyed how quiet her car ride was.)

We made it up to New York in good time, found our campsite and got the tents all set up and sleeping bags rolled out.  Craig was anxious to get to the pageant right away, so we headed right back out again (our kids were a little disgruntled to have to get back in the car so quickly).  Once there, we saved seats for ourselves and the Patchetts and then grabbed food from a vendor.  I got a taco-in-a-bag and was only slightly embarrassed by how much I liked it.  Once everyone had eaten, I went and found ice cream for myself.  Then I sat and continued saving seats while Craig took the kids on tours of the area until the sun set and the show could start!

Helping me save seats

Family picture!  I like that I'm holding up my ice cream cone.  And I LOVE Ryder's face!

Sharing popcorn with Addison right before the show starts.  Camille enjoyed every chance she got to flirt with Addison.  He's ten years older than her...

We enjoyed the show, although I was surprised by how much the weather had cooled down!  It had been SO dang hot before, that I hadn't even brought sweatshirts for anyone!  Fortunately Colton and Camille both wanted to sit on my lap, so that kept us all a bit warmer, even if they were very squirmy the whole time.

The pageant is fun, especially considering all that it's trying to accomplish-- basically give a run-down of the Book of Mormon and how Joseph Smith came to translate it, all in about an hour and a half.  It's a lot of material to cover, but it was written by Orson Scott Card, so it's got that in its favor.  It also has lots of flames and water spouting around the stage, which is always a good way to liven up any story-- the kids (and Craig, and I) enjoyed it!

Getting out was a mess, of course.  It was funny counting all the other huge Transit vans in the parking lot (we'd found our people!), but backing one out without running anyone down was a different matter.  And then of course, there was the waiting.  I think we sat without moving for a good 20 minutes because everyone in front of us was being polite and letting everyone else go.  And then, when we finally were moving, I got stuck in the mud!  That was stressful and terrifying.  People came running and managed to push us out in a matter of minutes, so it really shouldn't have been a big deal, but it kind of was to me anyway.  I was proud of myself for not freaking out and either screaming at everyone or bursting into tears.  Or both.  Once we were free of the mud, Craig and the parking attendant both insisted that I not stop moving for anything, so I plowed through the rest of the crowds, cutting people off in slow motion and basically looking like a big jerk.  Oh, well.  It worked, and we got back to our campsite without further incident.  Phew!

We got everyone in bed in record time and then went to sleep ourselves.  I think I nodded off around midnight.  And, of course, Ryder woke everyone up at 5:45, asking Craig to look for his stuffed animal.  Ugh.  Craig made breakfast, and I was so tired I fell back asleep despite all the noise they were making, something I NEVER do.  After breakfast, I took the kids to the camp playground while Craig cleaned up and got himself dressed.

Colton and Camille were very serious about making car noises while they were swinging

And this enormous slide was a big hit

Then we headed out to visit church history sites.  We stopped by the Palmyra temple quickly just to take a couple pictures.  They weren't great, but I'll still take 'em!

Looking out towards the Sacred Grove

For balancing his phone on the ground and hitting the timer button, this isn't too bad...

We went to the Smith farm next and toured their first houses and the Sacred Grove.  During that time Ryder experienced a whole rollercoaster of emotions.  Crying because he was too tired to walk any more, and then perking back up into full-on happy mode.  It was interesting and exhausting to watch.  Almost as though he didn't get enough sleep the night before...  Anyway, letting him take pictures was an easy way to cheer him up, so I now have at least ten shots of a gravel pathway, and too many to count of various flora and fauna along the way, most of it blurry...

Selfies with happy Ryder

They were happy here, too!

Craig took the big kids around the Sacred Grove and they had a really nice time, so that was cool.

Another family picture, this time with the top of the temple barely visible in the back ground (nice, since it got cut off in our previous family picture!)

The weather surprised me again by not being hot or humid at all.  Upstate New York in July, I figured we'd be roasting the whole time, but it was overcast and really pleasant.  It kept threatening to rain, but never really did.  And it was just...  nice.  I'd worn the most heat-friendly muumuu I had (just got it in Hawaii-- thanks, Mom!), and I would have been fine in regular clothes!  Go figure.  But I was so glad to not be too hot...

We went to get lunch next.  We'd heard good things about some Mexican restaurant in the next town over, so I decided we should check it out.  The food was pretty good, but the service was really slow.  That's one of those things that doesn't normally bother me, but when I'm sitting there with five kids, I think it's in everyone's best interests to get our food out to us as fast as possible.  Also, they charged for chips and salsa, which is just wrong.  But on the plus side, Bentley snapped this adorable picture of Camille:

Love that smile so much.

Revived with our food, we went back to the actual Hill Cumorah.  I wanted to climb the hill with the kids-- you can drive to the top, but it's a nice, quick little climb and the view at the top feels more rewarding when you put the work in somehow.

Then, because we're Mormon, we had to get ice cream.  This place we went to had HUGE portions, and only took cash.  Totally worth it, even if none of the kids could finish.

That was the smallest one you could order...

And then we went to the Grandin Print Shop where the Book of Mormon was published.  In hindsight, loading the little kids up on sugar and then expecting them to demurely walk through a tour that would only interest a geek like me was probably a bad idea.  (But who isn't fascinated seeing how a printing press runs?!?!)  We were maybe halfway through before I finally pulled Colton and Camille away and let them run around on the sidewalk outside.  We try, though, don't we?

Bentley is super gangsta with Moroni...???

These three were pretty good at least!

By this time everyone was pretty much done, so we headed back to the campgrounds.  All the kids were very anxious to swim in the pool there with the Patchetts (who'd been doing all the same stuff we'd done, but in a different order), so as soon as we were back they threw on their swimsuits, dove into the pool, and were told that it would be closing in 20 minutes.  We had checked the closing time earlier and knew it was supposed to stay open until 8pm, so we were a bit confused.  It turns out that the campsite had a favorite activity they called "Christmas in July" where they would load up everyone onto a trailer, pull it around by tractor, and take us Christmas caroling around the campgrounds.

Now, I love singing and I love Christmas and I LOVE Christmas caroling, but I just can't get excited about Christmas in July.  There's just never any magic there.  And closing the pool so this could happen just really felt like cruel and unusual punishment to my older kids.  I went along gamely (because my little kids were really excited for the wagon ride), but nearly lost at the end when they insisted we had to sing all the verses of 12 Days of Christmas.  Seriously???  Was I being held hostage by Christmas songs???

Fortunately for everyone, they did open the pool up for quite a while after that, or else we might have had a rebellion on our hands.  But I probably won't ever stay at that campsite again.

The Patchetts had rented these two little cabins-- aren't they cute???

After all that, we roasted hotdogs and s'mores and foil dinners and sat around the fire enjoying one another's company.  I think we spent a lot of time talking about people who'd lost fingers-- who can resist conversation like that???  I slept great that night.

The next morning looked like it wanted to rain (it never did, though), so we packed up our tents pretty quickly and headed out.  It was Craig's birthday, so we stopped at a Dunkin Doughnuts, and I promised to make him a real celebration dinner the next night.  The drive back was long, but fine.  And it was good to be home again.

As always, Craig manages to make trips like this absolutely fun.  I'm so glad we went!

Swim Team 2017

When we lived in Manassas, most of our friends signed their kids up for swim team each summer.  They were always trying to convince me to do it, too, but I always resisted.  It just felt like WAY too much work.  Plus, my kids couldn't actually swim, so I didn't understand how that was possible...

Right after Camille was born, I was finally ready to try (with the help of a friend who offered to take Bentley on days when I couldn't manage it) and then we found out we were moving.  So that never happened.  And then last summer we were going to Disney World, so I didn't see the point in trying.

But this summer we finally did it!  We signed up Bentley, Kendra and Ryder, but then Ryder was not able to pass the (very basic) swim test, so just the two oldest kids were on the team.  (Ryder got signed up for the two week swim class instead, and came away actually able to swim, so that was its own sort of success.)  I was very nervous for how this would all work out, but it turned out to be a really good experience.

Speaking of nervous, this was how Bentley felt about his first meet

Kendra put on a braver face, but she was pretty nervous, too

Now-- a couple things were different that made it a lot more do-able for us.  First of all, the swim team here meets at 9:15, as opposed to the one in Manassas, which met at 7am.  I'm a huge fan of the later time.  And the meets in Manassas were always Saturday morning at 7, but usually an hour away, so you'd need to leave before 6am to get there.  Since Craig and I are NOT morning people and he always had his summers off in Manassas, that all sounded miserable to us.  We liked our lazy summers of sleeping in every day.  But here, he has to go to work like a normal person with a normal job, and getting out the door before 9 is something I can do.  Also, the meets here are on Wednesday evenings.  I'd much rather lose a Wednesday night than a Saturday morning.

Then, we got an added bonus of a bunch of our neighbors also signing up and working out a carpool where they just took my kids for me.  (This was before we bought our big van, and they knew I couldn't fit any extra kids in my car, but they figured I could use the help.  I have really great neighbors.)  As soon as we bought the new van, I joined in on the carpooling efforts, but I got a sweet deal for those first couple of weeks!

Plus, Camille isn't a baby any more, so all the little kids could play on the playground during practice, rather than me having to carry her around while I chased after the other little ones.  Anyway, all this to say that swim team here felt like a lot less work than it would have been in Manassas a few years ago. 

Kendra competing in back stroke

Bentley doing the same

But enough about my own convenience.  The real win with doing swim team (which is what all my friends already knew) was getting my big kids outside and exercising every morning AND learning to swim better.  I felt like they were happier because of it, and it's been really nice watching their skills improve.  Their team tried to focus on their individual progress, so they'd get ribbons every time they improved their time-- since Bentley and Kendra started out pretty awful (sorry, but it's true-- they really could just barely swim at all), they would get time improvements every week!  Bentley improved by 13 seconds one week!  One time, Bentley's race included doing the butterfly for 25 meters-- he certainly couldn't do that at the beginning of the summer!  So that was fun for them and fun for Craig and I to see, too.

They had their awards dinner on Tuesday and we came home with this:

I'm very proud of my kids for working so hard.

I hate to admit it, but we may have to do this again next summer...!

Added bonus: I also figured out that swim goggles are the BEST solution to keep me from crying when I chop onions!