Why I Haven't Blogged in a While...

Here are the things I've been doing this month:

1) I'm running Ryder's preschool.  I managed to form a coop preschool group in my new ward, and this is my month to be in charge.  Every time I do stuff like this I always feel like I'm doing everything wrong and stressing everybody (self included) out.  In this case, I'm pretty sure a big part of the problem is that while Ryder is 4-and-a-half years old and just missed the kindergarten cut-off by a couple months, all the other kids are only 3-and-a-half years old.  (Because most of the kids who are Ryder's age turned five two months before him and started kindergarten.)  It turns out that when you're trying to do crafts with a bunch of kids, a year makes a BIG difference in their fine motor skills!

Add to that moms that are occasionally late to pick up their kids (which makes me want to tear my hair out) and another mom asking if the foster kid she just took in could join up for a few weeks (my weeks, of course-- and our curriculum only has supplies for the number of kids we already specified) AND Camille crying any time I'm not holding her AND Ryder crying because...  honestly, I don't even know why Ryder was crying...  Because it was at our house?...  Anyway, it's all very exhausting.

I have many friends who have worked for various preschools.  Clearly, I am not cut out for this kind of work.  I tip my hat to you, friends who enjoyed working for a preschool.


2) We put Bentley and Kendra in the local soccer league.  And man, is soccer a pain.  I intentionally signed them both up for Tuesday practice, so we would have our other evenings free, but their playing fields are 20 minutes apart, so on days like yesterday when I had to take them both, it meant dropping Bentley off at practice, then Kendra, then turning around and picking up Bentley from his practice and immediately going to get Kendra.  We got dinner at a drive-through and headed home, and I figure we'd clocked 2.5 hours in the car.  And scouts had been cancelled, or it would have been a LOT longer!  Saturday mornings are fairly similar, although sometimes there's time to go home between the games, so that's nice at least.  Let's just say that when we had one crazy rainy week where everything was canceled, I did not cry about it.

3) We had a yard sale.  The whole thing was organized by our neighborhood, so that meant I could finally clear out some of our toys without having to put signs up all over the place.  (I actually had big plans to do this back in the spring, but the move and the kitchen remodel nixed my yard sale ideas.)  My sister Tracy happened to be here (see #4) and she was a HUGE help getting things all organized.  It took us two days to get all the toys laid out in the garage and all their pieces matched back together.  (Lots of people who stopped by commented on how impressive it was that we had all the parts for most of our toys.)  I was kind of stressing out about the whole thing the night before-- did we have stickers to mark prices? How should we lay it all out?-- when Craig very calmly reminded me that the only reason we were doing this was to get rid of stuff.  So the worst thing that could happen would be if we gave it all away for free.  So, basically, we couldn't fail.  This helped me immensely.  Craig is-- as always-- a very good match for me.

This was during the organizing stage.  I turned in a complete circle to get this panorama.

Craig and Camille just happened to be coordinated, so I had to document it.  So classy in red and grey!

The yard sale went well and I'm enjoying having a little more space in the house.  But I wouldn't call it a fun thing to do.  Fortunately, the last thing on this list was VERY fun....


4) Craig and I went to Williamsburg!
After we enjoyed his last conference so much, we were quick to sign up for another one, this time in Colonial Williamsburg.  It was a lot of work getting things as ready as possible before I left Tracy in charge of our rather numerous offspring-- I think I did six loads of laundry the day before we left!  And having that yard sale right beforehand definitely threw me off of my A-game.  Camille also made us very nervous about leaving her when she refused to let Tracy feed her solids the day Tracy arrived and wouldn't take a bottle the first time we tried, but after those initial scares, she calmed down and was great for Tracy, so she got left behind, too.  (But if she had decided not to eat, we figured we could meet up in the middle and pass her back to me, so she wouldn't have starved!)

It turned out to be three days with no kids for me!

We took off Tuesday morning, arriving in time to check into our hotel and grab some lunch before the first session of Craig's conference (where, he found out, lunch was served-- oops).  I took a quick nap (all that laundry wore me out) and then headed out to the Revolutionary City.

I was kind of in awe of just how big these oxen are-- see the guy behind them???  They're huge!!!

I made a big mistake by not buying a ticket for that first day.  I was trying to save money, but the next day I ended up just getting a pass that was good for the rest of the year, so it would have been smarter to have bought it right from the beginning.  Live and learn.  Without a pass, I only had access to the stores on the main street, and those were pretty fun to explore for a couple quick hours.

The next day I went whole hog, with my pass on a lanyard around my neck and running from place to place trying frantically to make it to everything I found interesting.  Lectures presented by George Washington!  Tours of the Governor's Palace!  A debate between Patrick Henry and James Madison!  For the next two days I crammed in as much as I possibly could, and mostly came away feeling like I REALLY needed to study my U.S. history a lot more.  (To that end, I just requested Washington: the Indispensable Man from the library-- squee!!!)

George Washington with some other people I don't know.  This guy was great-- and I loved that he'd been a history major with a minor in performance art.  I guess this was the right job for him!

So I kept busy.  In the evenings, Craig and I would go to dinner and even managed to see a couple movies (The Martian, and The Walk, where I learned that I have a total fear of heights.  I walked out of that movie a complete stress case...)  We also did one of the Ghost Tours that the town offers, which was fun.

Did I mention that the weather was absolutely PERFECT???  Check out that gorgeous October sky!

Friday, Craig's conference ended and we toured everything together.  I made sure he saw all the stuff that I thought was particularly interesting (like the Capitol Building and the jail).

Peaking out of the cell where Blackbeard's pirates were held until trial

And Craig managed to sign us up for a backstage tour of the fifes and drums, which was probably our favorite thing-- these kids get on a waiting list at the age of 8, and then when they're 10, if they're accepted, commit to spend the next EIGHT YEARS being part of the town's programs!!!  I can't imagine committing to anything like that, but especially not as a kid!  Wow...

Getting everyone riled up for the Battle of Yorktown!

Anyway, I ran myself ragged.  I had terrible shin splits by the end of it all (I guess flipflops aren't meant for walking 5+ miles a day in...), but I had a wonderful time.  This was kind of the opposite of our previous conference, where I was 8 months pregnant at a beach town in the winter and spent the entire time we were away either reading in bed or napping...

Tracy took great care of the kids while we were gone, as evidenced by the fact that they were all still alive AND very sad to see her go.  I think they were more sad for her leaving than when I left!

Tracy hiking with all the kids-- it's hard to take a selfie that includes six (wiggly) people!

She took the boys to Monticello, and then to UVA campus where Ryder recognized Thomas Jefferson and remembered that they'd gone to the place where he was buried!  So Tracy was a good babysitter AND a good tutor!

At Bentley's soccer game, before we had to take Tracy to the airport

So, to sum up, October has been crazy busy and crazy awesome.  And there's still 10 days left to go!