End of Summer Fun

By the time all the kids' camps were done, summer was just about over.  The boys started marching band the very next week-- practicing from noon until 9pm for the first week, and then from 6pm-9pm the second!  (And yes, for those of you who are really paying close attention, Colton has joined the marching band even though he's still in middle school!  So that's pretty cool!)

The youth also had a temple trip, which Craig tagged along for, since they can always use our van!

Look at this great group of kids!  l-r: Ryder, Truman, Jason, Gideon, Colton, Topher, Lydia, Ember, Madeline, Marianne, Kendra, McKinley

And then the next day, Wendy and I did a special temple trip with just Kendra and McKinley (which was why I was happy to let Craig go the day before, even though it really should have been my turn)!

I should have taken a picture before we did baptisms and all had wet hair!

Afterwards, we got dinner at Wong's Tacos, a very fun Asian-Mexican fusion restaurant, followed by ice cream from Blue Cow.  It doesn't get much better than that!

And then the next day, I finally remembered to take a picture of my three kids all in braces

because right after that, Camille got her braces off!!!!

Look at those straight teeth!

I'd be more excited, but I'm afraid they're just going to want to put them back on in a few years.  Modern orthodontics just feels like a big scam to me...

Anyway, we had a lovely day spent at the beach at Lake Monticello with our friends the Huffs and the Knuths (that's two all-boy families in our ward!).  I didn't take any pictures, but Megan took this very fun video of the kids all racing into the water.  I cannot stop laughing at little Murphy trailing behind everyone-- it's so hard being the youngest!!!

They had a preview night for parents to see what the marching band had been working on.  I took a short video, and here are a couple (admittedly rather terrible) pictures from before they'd started:

Colton on the keyboard!

Ryder all ready with his trombone!

Craig had taken the girls camping that night.  Usually he just takes them on his own, but this time the ward had organized a father-daughter campout.  So that's cool!  Yay, feminism!

Who doesn't love a colorful fire?!

Camille enjoying a "wolf-em"-- this is where you cook pie crust wrapped around a wooden mold, and then fill it with pie filling?  I guess?

Looks like a delicious breakfast!

There's the whole group in the morning-- Smiths, Woolstenhulmes, Hardys, Hughes, Oviatts, and Stoners!  (The Sorensens were there at night-- I'd be willing to bet money that McKinley was responsible for the fire!-- but went home to sleep in their beds)

And then they spent the morning and most of the afternoon climbing around Devil's Marbleyard (a place I STILL haven't been to!)-- they seem to have had a great time!!!

And then Sydney and Beth's grandma (Yaya) took Colton and Camille to walk along Rivervew Park and get popsicles before school started, so that was lovely of her!

The river was too shallow to actually jump into, but they had fun with the rope swing anyway!

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-- I got to celebrate my birthday (47! and I forgot to take a single picture to mark the occasion!), and I made the day very fun for 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 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!