First Day of School

Craig took pictures of the kids on their first day of school-- thank goodness, because I was running around trying to get dressed before we all headed to the bus stop together.  Thanks, Craig!

I love how Ryder and Colton both wore their Cale t-shirts.  And, this was the best smile we got from Camille-- she was CRAZY!  Also of note, Bentley actually puts gel in his hair now, he just hadn't done it yet when Craig took this.  FYI.

After everyone else left, Camille got herself dressed

My first task with only one kid was to get the safety inspection done on my car.  It had expired in July, but I just couldn't figure out how to get it done with five kids, so I'd been putting it off, hoping I could manage to NOT get pulled over.  Success!  And it only took an hour to do (the first place I went to said it would take 3 hours, so that was pretty good)!

Hanging out waiting for our car

The next day, Camille was so excited to see her siblings again that she offered to carry Kendra's backpack for her!

Colton came home from school bouncing off the walls with sheer joy.  He is loving every second of kindergarten.  I was worried that the Spanish immersion program would overwhelm him, but he is just thrilled with it all.  On Saturday he woke up and demanded, "How many more days until I get to go back to school again???"

Life is good!

Navel Gazing

Change-- like school starting-- usually forces me to slow down for a bit and reflect on what's happening in my life.  And seeing what other bloggers do to mark occasions like this (I'm referring to Stephanie Nielson and her love of back-to-school feasts).  I love the idea of doing big dramatic gestures, but I'm always too busy to do it (well, mostly Craig is too busy getting his school ready for the first day, and I'm too exhausted from a summer home with all five kids!).

So I don't do anything all that remarkable.  But I do stop and ponder more than usual.  This time, I was thinking about the mother I am, compared to the mother I thought I would be.  This is a scary thing to reflect on, because the two do not line up very well and it's easy to get disappointed.  I thought I would be a really fun mom who was constantly explaining things to my kids and helping them be excited to learn about nature or something.  I thought I'd do arts and crafts with them.  I thought I'd read to them all the time.

And that's not exactly how I roll.  But as I try to cut myself a little slack, I'm hoping that's not a bad thing...

So for example, I thought I'd be playing outside with my kids all the time.  But I didn't take into account the fact that I don't really like being outside that much.  I love the IDEA of the great outdoors.  And I like reading about nature.  But sitting in the grass watching ants and spiders coming at me just freaks me out.  Add to that my spring allergies and the relentless summer humidity, and there just aren't that many days when I want to be outside.  So, no, I'm not some fun hippy outdoorsy nature mom.  In fact, I'm more what Jim Gaffigan described as "indoorsy."  Oh, well.

I've also discovered that I hate doing arts and crafts with kids!  It's always SO MUCH prep work and SO MUCH mess for so very little payoff.  I've pretty much relegated that to the schools.  Oh, well.  I'm lame.  So sue me.

I read to my kids at bedtime every night, but not a whole lot more than that.  And I don't feel too bad about that one.  They're all learning to LOVE reading and I think that's a thousand times more important than me reading to them.  So I'm okay with it.  (And besides, even with the limited reading I do, do you have ANY IDEA how many times I've read Goodnight Moon to these kids???)

So, yes, I'm not quite where I thought I would be on those things, and occasionally I'll find myself stressing about that and feeling bad about myself.

Where I get a little more hope is when I pay attention to the things I'm GOOD at that I never really guessed I would be.  It turns out, I'm a pretty good cook when I want to be!  When Craig and I got married, I would make the fancy Kraft mac'n'cheese (thick and creamy-- it's to die for!) and a frozen chicken cordon bleu, and I thought that was fine dining!  I have come a LONG way since that!  I'm also super organized at meal planning and grocery shopping and budgeting.  Who knew?  And to top it off, I even keep a fairly clean house, for having five+ kids always running through it.  No one, least of all me, saw that coming!  Now, I don't actually think keeping a spotless house is the most important thing, especially if you've got a lot of kids.  But I've learned that I get very grumpy when my house is messy, so for my own sanity, a clean house is important.  And, as Janine always said, keeping Mom sane is what matters most.

So I think the stuff I'm good at out-weighs the stuff I'm bad at.  And, more importantly, the stuff I'm good at is what makes me happy, where the stuff I'm bad at is because I have no interest in doing it anyway.  No sense in trying to force me into a mold that wasn't ever going to fit, even if I totally thought it would before I had kids!

A New Gig for Me

School started last week, and life feels VERY different with four kids in school and only one at home!  I haven't had just one kid to take care of since Kendra was born over 10 years ago!!!  I was kind of worried that Camille would be really bored with just me for company.  So, naturally, I found a babysitting gig to occupy our time!

Actually, the whole thing just sort of fell into my lap.  We have a community messaging board (although "community" is very loosely defined to be the southern half of Charlottesville, as far as I can tell) and people will frequently post messages about looking for a babysitter/nanny.  I'll usually click on them-- because who can say no to a little extra money?-- and then quickly realize that there's no WAY it would work.  These people usually want someone who can be in their home, helping their kids with homework and all sorts of demands that I certainly do not have the time for.  So I read them, think, Nope!, and move on.

But a few weeks ago, one caught my eye.  This person was looking for someone to watch two kids, ages 4 and almost 1, twice a week, from 8:30-3:00, which is exactly when my kids are in school.  And I thought, I could do that.  And Camille would have a friend to play with!  So I reached out, and it all seems to be working perfectly!

Danielle is the mom and she seemed very nice and very reasonable-- she wanted to make sure my kids were vaccinated and that I didn't have any guns in the house.  Fair enough.  I wanted to make sure she wasn't uncomfortable with my being religious (I assured her I wouldn't be preaching to her kids or anything, but you never know how people will react to stuff like this).  And her two kids are Quinn and Theo.  She brought them over last Monday so I could meet them and see how they did here and they were super cute kids and Quinn and Camille hit it off right away.  Thursday will be my first day actually babysitting, so we'll see how that goes.  But I'm excited-- I think this will be a perfect way to earn a little extra money, but since it's only two days a week, I'll still have plenty of time to get done the things I normally do.

Here's hoping, right?

My Life is Weird

I was cleaning up the kitchen while Bentley poked around in the fridge, when suddenly Camille burst upon us.  She stopped in front of Bentley, put on her most charming smile and asked, "Um, how you doing, Bentley?" and then, while he looked at her in confusion, waved her arms in front of his face and yelled, "Distract!  Distract!"

Bentley was dumbfounded.

I suggested he go check on what his little brothers were doing in his bedroom.

Sure enough, they were looting it, hoping to steal his rubber chicken.  They'd told Camille to go and distract Bentley.

Mission NOT accomplished.

Etymology

Why is it that I still want to use the word "Mapquest" as a verb (as in, "I need to mapquest that park to see how far away it is"), but there's no Google version that seems to fit?  To me, googling something means looking it up on the internet, not viewing where it is on a map.

Is Mapquest even a thing anymore?


All this reminds me of this old SNL video...

Strange Addiction

I've got a problem.  With buying basil plants.

At some point after I began cooking real food, I wandered into a Trader Joe's and they had these LOVELY basil plants for less than what it costs to buy fresh basil leaves at my regular grocery store!  That was a no brainer: I scooped one off the shelf, absolutely delighted with my find.  I used the fresh, fragrant leaves a couple times while cooking, so I felt more than justified with my purchase. 

And then one day, I noticed that the leaves on my basil plant didn't look so good.  They were turning brown and spotty, like something was eating them.  Before long, the entire plant was dead.  I threw it away and bought another.  And the same thing happened.

By the time I got to my 5rd or 6th basil plant, I googled what was going on.  Google seemed to think some tiny bugs were eating my plant and the way to fix that was to remove all the damaged leaves.  That just left my poor plant looking even sorrier.  And whatever was eating it just went for the rest of the leaves.  It died within days of my "pruning" it.

I thought maybe it was time I gave up on buying these plants since all I ever seemed to do was kill them (sometimes even without getting around to cooking with them!), but then I had one day where my regular grocery store didn't have any basil and Wegman's only had live plants, so I carefully picked out another one, only to have the entire thing practically fall over the second I got it home and removed the plastic wrap that had apparently been holding it up!

Craig came home that day and saw my sad plant and said, "Not another one!" and I had to protest, "THIS TIME IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

But this little plant has proved much heartier than the others!  Despite the fact that its kind of growing sideways, it didn't just die!  And when we left for a week in April (and again in July) and it didn't get any water or sunlight and basically turned yellow, it revived again when we returned home and I got back to watering it and opened the blinds so it could see the sun again!

So that's been nice.  It's a sad ugly little plant, truth be told, but I've kept it alive for quite some time now and I'm quite pleased with it.  I've only bought one more basil plant since then.  To keep it company, obviously.



I actually have one other plant-- a hanging flower basket on my front porch-- that my mother bought me when she was here in May.  This one was doing fine until a little wren built this messy, mossy nest under its leaves.  Then, every time I'd try to water my plant, the wren would shoot out of the basket, giving me the stink eye on her way out.  So naturally I felt so guilty that I stopped watering the darn thing at all.  After two weeks of neglect, I came back from Florida to a VERY dead-looking plant.  I gave it a healthy watering just in case, AND IT CAME BACK, TOO!  And the wren seems to have moved on, so I can water guilt-free again. 

It's probably too soon to start feeling proud of my green thumb, huh?

Portrait Outtakes

As promised, here are a few of the funnier portraits...

Craig is pointing at something just so we'd look like that.  I actually like the picture, but deep down I know that it's cheesy as all get-out.  (The photographer did NOT tell us to do that--we're actually that dorky all on our own!)

I love Lindsy laughing here, but I'm sure she hates it

Craig is nervously eyeing that wave...  (Too bad, because the sunset behind us was GORGEOUS!)  He was right to be nervous, it totally got his knee wet!

There is so much I love about this picture.  But my favorite is that Bentley looks about ready to be in the next big boy band here.  Zoom in on him.  Go ahead and do it!  Eat your heart out, Justin Bieber!

Awesome jump, Bentley!  (I TOLD you it was hard to get everyone to jump at the same time!)

Pre-jump

Um, who's that guy behind us?

(I recognize that kid back there!)

Leave it to a youngest child to stand RIGHT in FRONT of his own father!

And last, but certainly not least, I give you this:

This was when my hair blew right into my eye.  Classic.  Craig looks adorable, though!

It makes me think of this Lucille Bluth gif:

And, of course, Michael's response, "How can I get you to never make THAT face again?"


Me and Lucille Bluth, soul sisters!

MORE Portraits!!!

You're going to think I do family portraits every other month!  I really don't-- in fact, I used to NEVER do stuff like this at all and I'd feel really guilty for not documenting my family well enough!  But this year...  well, between actually doing them in the fall, and then my family doing them in the spring, and now Craig's family doing them in the summer...  Well, we're apparently on the seasonal track, aren't we?

But I'm going to stop sounding apologetic, because these portraits turned out BEAUTIFULLY.  So yes, I have to share them here.  #Sorrynotsorry

The whole gang!

Houston Smiths

When the photographer told them to turn around from the previous pose, they didn't let go of each other's hands and they got completely tangled up-- it was hilarious and awkward

You have NO idea how hard it is to get people to jump at the same time!

We look kind of... tan, actually!

Brothers!

I'm SO happy with how these turned out!!!  (And there were more that I liked-- I'm going easy on you to limit it to only these!)

Next post: hilarious outtakes!  Stay tuned...

Dollywood!

At some point when we were planning all this, Craig noticed that Dollywood was right on our way home from Florida.    And, his aunt had just moved to Atlanta, and that wasn't too far out of the way, either.  (Update: Craig claims it was his brother who figured this out.)  So we decided if we were going to be driving all over the southeastern quadrant of the United States, we might as well see everyone and everything that we wanted to see!

So we drove to Atlanta and visited Aunt Lynda and Uncle Greg and got to see their beautiful new home.  (As is often the case, I didn't take any pictures.  Seriously, what is wrong with me???)  We visited for a couple hours and then got back on the road, finishing the drive to Pigeon Forge.

We took turns swapping kids around so my kids (and Craig!) could have a chance to ride in Jason's RV-- this made everyone VERY happy!

What a way to travel!

The kids were EXHAUSTED the next morning!

Dollywood was a lot of fun!  It felt sort of like Disneyland's Frontier Land-- everything was centered on Tennessee industry, such as timber mills and mining.  But it was very clean and family-friendly and we all had a good time!

Craig and Ryder (you can just see the top of his head!) going on the thing that drops you from way high up .  I steered clear of that one...

My favorite ride was the Fire Chaser-- it was a fairly smooth roller coaster, not too intense but fast and fun.  All of our kids could have ridden on it, but the youngest two chose not to (Camille tried it once, but didn't like the part where they have fire-- the roller coaster part didn't bother her at all!)

Lynda, Greg, and Craig ride the carousel together!

Getting ready to ride the Wild Eagle!

Here's most of our group all trying to figure out what to do next

Group hug for Bentley!!!

After getting to drive the go-kart, Bentley was even more excited to try out bumper cars!

Ryder had missed out on some ride, so I hoped the chance to ride on these piggies would cheer him up.  It didn't.

Dollywood has a fabulous eagle sanctuary with 17 bald eagles!

The next day was spent at the water park, Splash Country.  It was lovely, but the water was a bit cold.  We discovered there that when we wear sunglasses and almost matching swimsuits, my niece Kamryn and I are a bit hard to tell apart!  My kids kept calling her Mom-- I thought it was hilarious, and Kamryn was very gracious about the whole thing.  (Craig noted that he needed to be very careful who he tried to put his arms around!)

If my hair had been dry for this shot, our coloring would have been even more similar (although Kamryn has about five times more hair than I have!)

Donna had rented 3 cabanas for all our families, and they were SO NICE to have!  We could leave our stuff (and lock it up!) and not worry about it getting moved or stolen, and they were nice and shady.  And I could send Craig to find food and we had the perfect meeting place.  It was awesome.

Camille living in the lap of luxury

Selfie with Colton

Bored Bentley

I love Colton running towards Camille here

No alcohol is sold at Dollywood, so I'm not sure what these two crazies were imbibing...

The tickets to the park were the same price if you got three-day passes, so that's what Tom had gotten for us.  Little did he realize that we are INSANE so OF COURSE we would go back inside the park for our 3rd day before heading home.  I mean, why NOT???  So our third day we packed up, said good-bye to our hotel room and to Grandma and Grandpa, and met up with the Houston crowd back in the park.  Gotta squeeze a few more hours of fun out of this trip before we drive home!

Waiting to ride the Fire Chaser again

Bentley is one cool dude

Colton took his driving VERY seriously!

Bentley endures a hug from Lindsy

One last cousin picture

We let everyone choose one favorite ride and managed to see the bird show one last time, too.  And then after a late lunch, we finally figured it was time to hit the road.  We left at 3pm, barely stopped for gas and to switch drivers, and were home by 9.  The kids, having already endured so much time in the car, barely batted an eye.  I believe Bentley's exact words were, "Only 6 hours?"

What a great family vacation!