The Middle of July-- Birthdays and Camping!

The next week, we were home, but that's when the Canadian forest fires were raging and it was just gross outside.  The week slipped by with my birthday (47! and I forgot to take a single picture to mark the occasion!), and I thoroughly enjoyed myself!  I made the kids watch The Sheep Detectives with me!  All my family called to chat, so I spent a huge amount of time on the phone, which I love.  I made Craig help me to prepare this amazing dinner, and then he and I got Coldstone and hung out at the pool while the kids were at their Tuesday night activities!  I even got my FULL milkshake, just like they always do at Goody's!    😁

Later in the week, I also managed to go walking with my friend Brittney, and go to the temple (and afterwards get doughnuts) with Megan.  So the whole week was great, in spite of all the smoke!  

And then the next week we had stake YWs and YMs camp!  Kendra was going as an adult this time (once again our ward was short on leadership-- but this begs the question: if Kendra could count as an adult at this camp, why did I need to go to their high adventure???), so she headed out Monday.  I didn't hear from her much, other than this picture (caption hers):

snek

They named him Frederick, and were very concerned for his well-being when it rained!  But they spotted him again after the rain, so I guess he was fine.  (I don't think any snake would manage to grow that big if it didn't know how to survive a rain storm!)

A different leader sent me this picture:

Kendra with her bestie, Madeline, who just got home from her mission in Utah!

Craig and the boys left super early Wednesday morning, but Kendra wasn't coming home until Thursday, so I decided Camille and I should use that day with no one else home to go and visit my friends in Manassas.  We left around ten, and met up at Cafe Rio and had lunch with Emma Johns, Christina Atkinson, Betsy Hayward, and Andrea Kunz (who was flying out to Utah that afternoon, so how she managed to squeeze in a last-minute lunch is a mystery to me!).  We were there for over four hours just gabbing away and having a wonderful time and unfortunately not taking any pictures.  Seriously, what is wrong with me???  But it was great.  And I appreciated Camille for her patience!!!  To reward her, we got ice cream at the Moo-Thru, and then met up with my friend Jacquie at Urban Air, where Camille got to jump and rock climb with Jacquie's son Carl while Jacquie and I caught up.  (I was also supposed to see Vangie, but her daughter got into a car accident the day before and that threw off our plans (but her daughter is fine, don't worry!).)  I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but here are two:

Brave Camille!

Me and Jacquie!

As I was driving from place to place, I would call various family members, and I managed to talk to all four sisters and my parents AGAIN!!!  And I'd just barely talked to all of them the week before!  It feels like hitting a grand slam or something!

We got home around 10pm, so it was a long day!  But I was glad I'd made good use of my time.  Kendra got home the next day, and the boys were back on Saturday.  And everyone seemed very enthused about their camping experiences!

Here are a bunch of pictures from the boys in absolutely no order whatsoever!

Colton and Gideon (and some other kid?) and I believe that's Jason in the background; I think this was part of the camp olympics

Gideon, Colton, Jason

Camp service project: Ryder (wearing the yellow hats that all the YCLs wore!) building a bench with Jesse Cramer!

Thanks to a well-placed hammock, our van now looks EXACTLY like an Amazon delivery van!!!  😂😂😂

Sparklers are a fun idea!

Building rafts

And then testing them in the water!

Can you tell which bench has been re-built?  (I remember sitting here at the of camp my first year and these benches were the WORST-- perpetually wet, mossy, and splintery!!!)

Assembling for closing ceremonies on the last day, there's Ryder front and center!

Colton caving!

Playing D&D in the dining hall; must have been a rainy day...

Fire building for the camp olympics

And this, folks, is how Ryder lost his glasses in the lake!

Craig belaying Colton

Ryder supervising his kids building their raft

Ryder playing gaga ball, his absolute favorite thing in the world

Colton's group after they were done with the cave

Ryder's cave group (he's in the very back grinning so big!)

Ryder's group-- they're all pulling this exhausted face?

Colton in the middle in the yellow shirt!

And finally, my favorite picture:

They did a great job spoiling him on his birthday!!!  (I tried, from a distance, but it's hard, so I was glad others were making it a fun day, too!)

High Adventure(s)

The following week, my middle three kids all had high adventure!  For the boys, this meant a three-day trip canoeing down the James River.  Neither Craig nor I had anything to do with this, but the pictures (which I'll share below) looked like they had a great time!  And for Kendra, this meant an overnighter that they ended with a float down the James!  The YW leadership had a bit of a problem where one of their leaders suddenly realized she needed to leave early, so they asked if I could come along for the float, which I agreed to do.  Then they figured out that leader needed to leave even earlier than they thought, and they asked if I could get there first thing in the morning.  That felt like a bait and switch, but I didn't really see how I could say no.  So I had to get myself to a Richmond camp site an hour away from me at 7am on a Saturday.  Lame.  I rolled out of bed super early and drove there, helped make breakfast, urged the girls to take down their tents and get packed up, and get outta there.  We were supposed to go hiking, but the girls were slow and we ran out of time for that.  (It was very hot; I was not sad to skip the hike.  Neither were the girls.)

We moved to the put-in location and I got the girls to get their tubes all inflated and eventually we got in the river and proceeded with our float!  I did this a few years before for my friend Josephine's birthday.  That time, the river water was very low, so it was moving incredibly slowly.  I remember really enjoying the first couple of hours, and then getting more and more miserable the longer it went on-- five hours total!  By the end I was bored, exhausted and so sunburned.  This wasn't a whole lot better, but at least we put in further down on the river, so I think it ended up taking three hours?  Maybe more.  I don't know.  I also was much better about wearing my sun hat, rash guard, and reapplying sunscreen, so I did NOT burn.  And it was at least relaxing enough that I fell asleep for a few minutes, which was pretty great.  Right at the end, it suddenly started pouring on us, so Kendra and I hurried to the landing site, where Wendy was there to meet us with my van.  (Which Amy had thought we wouldn't need, but I was smart and ignored her on that count.)  

That was when I realized that the van was full with the girls' stuff, so there was nowhere to put the innertubes!  The rest of the girls were still floating down the river, so I told Kendra we'd be back as soon as we could, and Wendy and I drove back to where she'd left her car and retrieved that.  The girls, meanwhile, were having a blast splashing each other under the bridge.  I had a hard time getting them OUT of the river!  But I'm glad they had fun!

It was a long day, and I didn't take any pictures.  Amy took this fabulous picture of me right before I realized she was doing it:

I swear I was having more fun than it looks like here!

A few of the girls wading-- the river was so shallow!

And here are pictures from the boys' trip!

On the bus heading to their start out spot

Ryder and Gideon sharing a canoe

Colton and Calvin sharing one, with Cedric in a kayak behind them

Yup, definitely having fun together!

And they got pizza right before coming home!

Meanwhile, we had Jason visiting, so we decided to have a Smith temple trip all together!

And that was lovely, of course!

4th of July 🇺🇸

We got back from Branson and had a couple days to recover, and then I got to do a cool thing on the 4th of July...!  Every year on Independence Day, they swear in new citizens at a naturalization ceremony at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello!  I've always wanted to go, but it's usually so hot, and I don't actually know how to go about getting tickets, so I've never bothered before.  But this year, my choir was singing at it, so I got to go AND I got to park up on the mountain rather than having to use the shuttle!  WIN!

Unfortunately, it was still insanely hot, and they had us seated in the very very back of the tent, so I couldn't really hear much (although I did catch some of what was sort of like testimony meeting for any of the new citizens who wanted to talk about their experience, and that was very moving!).  So it wasn't ideal.  But I was still glad that I got the chance to be there!  Go, America!!!

First time I think we've ever been allowed to wear open-toed shoes with no socks or hose.  Which should tell you just how hot it was!!!

Check out my red and blue accessories!

We got up and sang three separate times.  The middle set, we had to cut short because the governor was there and decided to go off-script and shake all the new citizens' hands.  I guess politicians gotta politick.  I also ran into my friend Raptor from FIA, who I hadn't seen in several years, so I was very excited to catch up with her!  (And I was even more excited to learn that she'd had the baby she had been desperately hoping for!)

Overall, it was a cool experience. But I sure was happy to take a cold shower afterwards!!! (And a nap. I think we met at the carpool location at 6:30am???  For the summertime, this is INSANE!!!)

We were supposed to go to the pool and grill with our neighbors in the afternoon, but then it just poured all afternoon so that didn't happen.  (That was not really a bad thing, since it was the beginning of the end of our drought!)  It cleared up enough for the fireworks show around 9pm, and then we did sparklers in our driveway and stayed up way too late to watch Trump's speech (which was hilarious) and the crazy fireworks in DC on the television.  A very late night, but a very patriotic day for everyone! 

Final Branson Post

After all that, we finally headed home Tuesday!  It's a fifteen hour drive from Charlottesville to Branson, so splitting it up makes perfect sense.  But I know myself, and when all is said and done, I just want to get. home.  (And I really don't want to shell out money to try and get all the kids settled down in a very crowded hotel room when a few more hours of driving could have gotten us home to our individual bedrooms!)  So we decided to get out the door as quickly as we could and just make the drive in one day.  We left around 7:30am (packing to return home is always so much faster than packing to leave home!) and just drove and drove and drove.  We listened to Nate Bargatze's book, Big Dumb Eyes.  We listened to a lot of Taylor Swift.  We got lunch at Subway and ate in the car.  No one could think of any fast food that they wanted to eat for dinner so we just didn't bother.  And we rolled into our house just a little after midnight.  And it was soooooo nice to be home!

The crazy thing was that I hadn't realized until that week that I was hosting book club the next night (technically the same day?) so we spent Wednesday getting unpacked and the house all put back together.  I even managed to make a dessert for my people!  I will admit-- I did *kind* of feel like super Mom for that!

Anyhoo.  Tracy created a shared album for us which I've been stealing from for all these blog posts, but as is often the case, I keep finding pictures that I missed, so I'm just adding them all here finally.  Enjoy!!!

Kendra, Ryder, Adam and Tracy in their pod getting ready to go up to the top of the St. Louis Arch

At the Arch Museum

Waiting our turn for the elevators

SIX SEVEN!!!!

Signage in the boys' room

Not sure what's happening here, but it looks exciting!

In a major break from tradition, the Bentleys decide to spend time standing around NEXT to the kitchen, instead of inside it!

Cora, Claire, Hazel, Harper, and Hunter meet the horses at Stampede!

More cousin rough housing!

Claire fixing London's hair in the girls' room

Natalie was so excited to see this skunk that she took pictures (and accidentally chased it towards Camille, who ran away FAST) rather than running away like any sane person would do!!!

The Aveytuas stopped at Ted Drewes' on their way home-- I'm so glad they finally got some frozen custard!!!

Ryder was very excited to play poker with everyone!  (Nice hand, Colton, as he tries to keep a straight face!)

Colton puts up with a lot of love from Clayton...

Craig noticed this while we were eating lunch-- perfection!