Girls' Beach Trip

 Warning: This Post Contains a LOT of Selfies.

My BFF from Manassas, Sarah, turned 40 this month!  She decided to celebrate by having an honest-to-goodness party with a Diet Coke theme and this amazing birthday cake:

I don't even like Diet Coke and I think this is beautiful!

And then she also wanted a quick girls' trip to the beach!  Tracy and I NEVER say No to stuff like that, so before I knew it, we had a hotel booked and we were all set!  They came and spent the night at my house Friday night (and kept things exciting by Tracy entering the WRONG HOUSE and Sarah almost crashing at the end of the T-street into my neighborhood (it's a good thing we don't drink-- think of the trouble we'd be in THEN!)) and then Saturday morning we headed east!

We stopped for lunch at Cafe Rio in Norfolk

and then got all checked into our hotel after first stopping at the wrong one...   Hmmm, I'm noticing a theme here...

We were on the 11th floor AND had a corner room, so we spent a LOT of time just sitting on the balcony admiring the view and listening to the ocean. 

Finally we actually went to the beach and sat on the sand gabbing away.  Around 8pm we were finally a little bit hungry, so we spent a few minutes paddling around the hotel pool to get the worst of the sand off us and then wandered the boardwalk until we found the milkshakes and french fries for dinner.  That's how we adult.

The inside of this place-- the Sweet Spot-- reminded me of Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop, where Harry Potter and Cho Chang share their first and only date.  And the milkshakes were a lot like the Lava Shakes Craig and I got in Waikiki-- a lot of fun, but almost too much trouble to bother eating!

We stayed up until 3am, back out on the balcony talking away until I finally had to call it a night.  I was sad that we had to check out of our hotel by 11 and couldn't just be as lazy as possible in the morning.  We got all packed up (and I made Sarah help bobbypin my hair, something Craig is useless at!) and got our suitcases packed into the car.  Then we walked over to Duck Donuts and had the distinct pleasure of watching Sarah enjoy her first donut from there!  Definite love at first bite!

Then we grabbed our chairs and went and sat on the beach for a few more hours before we finally had to drive home.  It was such a nice little break and SO GOOD to spend so much time with my besties!

So Many Videos to Share!

As the teachers are back at school this week, Craig was asked to make a video introducing himself to the staff.  He ran out of time so it isn't quite as tight as he would have liked it to be, but you still get the idea!  Enjoy!  (My favorite moment is the little dizzy squeak Colton gives right at the very beginning!)

Fostering FAQ

I just barely got the call: we've been approved as foster parents!  This means that, in theory, we could have a child placed with us at any time!  How crazy is that?  It's like being pregnant, but not knowing your due date or how old/what gender/what anything your kid will be!  It's nuts!  I'm so excited!!!

And because I'm so excited, I feel the need to talk about it a lot, so here are answers to some of the questions people have asked us about our decision to foster.  And also some random things I've learned from our training.  I feel a little bit silly writing this because we haven't actually done it yet, so I suspect I'll look back on this post and laugh at how little I knew.  Ah, hubris!

Are you doing this for the money?  NO.  Fostering doesn't pay that well.  If I wanted money, I'd be better off just getting a job.  

Are you hoping to adopt?  Not really?  We have enough kids to try and put through college, I'm not really interested in adding to that expense.  Also, I've seen several families foster a child who the parents wanted to adopt, but then their biological children objected, so the adoption didn't happen.  I'd rather not get some poor kid's hopes up if it isn't going to happen.  And, I figure there are a LOT of people out there who are fostering hoping to adopt, so I'll let them take the kids who might be adoptable.  Our plan is to take the ones for whom adopting isn't an option.  

But.  Having said that.  If by some miracle we have a child placed with us and after a long time the child does need an adoptive family AND if ALL my kids wanted to adopt the child, we would definitely consider it.  But I figure the odds of all those stars aligning is pretty slim.  So, no that isn't the goal, but I suppose it is a slight possibility?

Then why are you doing this?  It's hard to explain very well.  But mostly it's because we know there are a lot of kids in terrible situations and we felt like we could, at the very least, always be reliable for a warm meal and a safe bed.  Or, as we've been saying to ourselves, we wanted to be a soft place for them to land while their parents get their issues sorted out.

So you'll be okay with them going back to their parents?  Yes and no?  From what I've read, this will probably be the hardest thing about doing this.  But I am a firm believer that I don't want a government that can easily separate parents from their children, so I'm hoping I can remind myself of that fact when those hard days come.  As some friends of ours who foster explained it, "D- parenting gets your kids back."  Or, in other words, parents who aren't absolutely failing at being parents still get to keep their kids.  And that will be hard, but I also think keeping kids from parents who might be decent is worse?  Maybe?

So what sort of kid will you get?  Good question-- we have no idea!  The only real parameters we've given the agency is that we only want to take in kids who are younger than Camille.  We felt that throwing a kid of any older age into the mix would mess up our kids' pecking order and cause too much havoc.  Hopefully a younger child will be more manageable?  So we're looking at 0-4 years old.  Other than that, we're pretty open.  But the difference between a four-year-old and a newborn is HUGE.  So this will be very exciting, to say the least.

What sort of issues will this kid have?  A lot.  Even in the best of circumstances-- say the parents were falsely accused and are actually really good people who will get their kid back quickly-- any child placed with us will still have gone through the trauma of being taken from their home.  So no matter what, we'll be dealing with child who has experienced trauma.  A lot of our training focused on learning to ask, "What made this child like this?" rather than just the jumping to the less kind, "What is wrong with this kid?" way of seeing.  It's an important distinction to make, but one that I'm sure will be harder in the moment!

What I do know, is that most kids are taken from their parents either due to abuse or neglect.  So it will probably be one of those things.  When we do have a child placed with us, it will NOT be any of my business to share the child's story with others (whether on the blog or on the phone!), so I will not be sharing gossipy details with anyone (and I am a total gossip, so this will be a challenge for me!).  My standard answer will be along the lines of, "Her parents just weren't in a good place to take care of her right now."

Wait, but aren't your kids going to be doing school virtually?  How's that going to work?  Yeah, I have no idea.  We got the call that school would be on-line only RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of our final training session.  I could have cried.  When we first had the idea to foster, I was assuming that all my kids would be in school and I'd be bored.  Now that is NOT going to be the case.  But.  As I was able to mull it over a bit more, it occurred to me that taking on another kid when all my kids have finally gone to school was probably a terrible idea.  Things might be insane here, but I think I'd rather take on another child when I have all my other kids around to entertain this kid and possibly help out a bit.  So, yes, it's going to be a zoo here.  But who doesn't love the zoo?

So how do your kids feel about this?  They are ALL over the map!  When we first told them about our idea, Ryder said he wanted a 10-year-old boy (pretty sure he'd hate that), Camille wanted a teenage boy (she is TERRIFYING), and my other kids were pretty nervous about it.  We explained that it would be kind of like when I babysat Theo, and then Ryder suggested we just take Theo!  (I told Danielle that story and it cracked her up!)  Since then, they've continued to have mixed feelings.  When we get a kid, Ryder and Bentley will have to share a room, and they aren't thrilled with that.  But everyone is also really excited and they keep asking, When do we get our kid?  So I think they feel a lot like I do about it, honestly!

Ohmygosh, that's so wonderful that you can help some poor kid out like that!  (I'm not making that up, a lot of people have said that to me.)  This actually makes me really uncomfortable, because 1) we haven't done anything yet and 2) I don't really think we'll change anyone's life that much.  I hope that the time a kid is with us can be a safe and happy time, and maybe a time that they'll look back and remember a better way to run a family?  But these children have issues that aren't going to get fixed all that easily.  So my goal is just to plant seeds here, I have no real expectations that great changes will happen.  Honestly, this will probably feel a lot like my mission in Japan: I'm going to try my hardest, but I don't expect to see much in the way of real, measurable results.

So that's where we are!  Crazy, exciting times!

MORE Camping!

 Just two weeks after our disastrous beach camping, it was time for the Manassas ward campout!

I have to admit-- neither Craig nor I were looking forward to camping again so soon.  Especially because the forecast did NOT look promising.  The night before, Craig told me, "I really don't want to camp in the rain again."  I whole-heartedly agreed.  We finally decided that we would go and just not set up the tents until it was close to bedtime and only then if it was dry.

Craig had to work in the morning.  We had a notary coming by to help us sign papers on refinancing our house (huzzah for low interest rates!), and then we headed out shortly after that, with Craig still attending Zoom meetings on his phone while I drove.  This time we did NOT get lost, so that was nice!

Thanks to COVID, this year's camp out was much smaller than normal.  Also, the person who has organized it the last few years, Crystal, had moved to South Carolina and put Emma in charge of the whole thing.  So this was what Emma was doing with it.  So this year, it was just us, the Johns family, the Atkinsons, and Betsy Hayward.

And it was WONDERFUL!!!

Practicing being ninjas

Ryder and Luke

Bentley made it his goal to photobomb every picture

Kendra and Lily

This picture makes me laugh

Emma's youngest, Henry, was too cute for words

Another picture that makes me laugh-- Bentley takes GREAT shots with my phone!

Ryder's friend Oscar taught him how to sharpen sticks with a knife, and they spent a lot of time doing that and feeling very proud of their spears!

The kids trying to start a fire when everything was damp

Oh, look-- I was there, too!  And Emma, behind me!

Everyone except Betsy, who left right before we had the idea to take a group photo

It did rain, but just a little and even that was when it was time for the kids to go to bed, so we tucked them in and then sat under the pop-up chatting and it was great.  It was pleasantly cool, too, which was a nice break after such a hot July.  It rained more at night while we were sleeping, and it sounded like it was POURING, but it's hard to tell in a tent because everything sounds loud!  When I got up in the morning, everything was damp, but not flooded, so I think maybe it wasn't raining that hard after all?  Who knows?  Also, at 5:30 in the morning after a quick bathroom trip, I heard an owl hooting in the woods, so that was cool.

And it was SO GREAT getting to see my friends and letting our kids all play together!  I'm so glad we braved a lousy forecast for that!

On the drive home, it rained non-stop.  Who would have guessed that the weather would be so much better up in the mountains?

15 Years

Happy Anniversary to my Craig! It was just 15 short years ago that we were sealed for time and all eternity in the Seattle temple!  I've been enjoying looking at my wedding pictures again-- they make me so happy. That day was probably the happiest day of my whole life and it was the perfect start to our wonderful life together.

 

That look on Craig's face cracks me up.  I was nothing but happy, but I think he was maybe 98% happy, 2% completely freaked out?  And in this picture, you can glimpse that!  (Edit: Craig claims he was just being funny on purpose.  You can decide who to believe there!)
 

 

And this is just hilarious.  We could NOT stop smiling and laughing.  My cheeks have never hurt so much from over-smiling!

I kind of love how cool Craig looks here

Not gonna try for humility, I think this is a great picture of me!

So here's a long, rambling story that will eventually meander to our wedding day.

When I lived in the Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR), there was a girl who was fine and I mostly liked her, but sometimes she got on my nerves because she was always trying to be SO PERFECT that it could be a bit much.  She was the kind of girl who would raise her hand in Sunday School and quote looooooong scriptures.  Verbatim.  It just seemed like she was trying too hard, you know?  One day in Relief Society, she talked about how she used to dream of being sealed in the temple and gazing into her husband's eyes during the ceremony.  But NOW, she explained, she didn't want to do that.  Instead, she was going to focus solely on the temple sealer (almost always an old man) and listen to the words in the ceremony and the tremendous blessings he would be pronouncing on them.

I was so irritated at this.  She had just ruined my future (at this time totally unplanned) wedding because now I was going to feel like I wasn't as good as her if I just wanted to look at my husband on my wedding day!  How dare she one-up all of us like this!  I was so annoyed that it stuck with me and even two years later as I was about to (finally!) be married, I was conflicted over where my eyes should be during the ceremony.

A few days before our wedding, Craig and I went to the temple to do proxy sealings.  As the temple worker was getting our names, he assumed we were already married and started to write down my last name as Smith.  I corrected him, "Actually, it's Bentley."  

At this, he suddenly took a closer look at me and said, "Bentley?  Paul Bentley?"

I smiled back at him, "He was my grandpa!"  

My grandfather, I should explain, died when I was one.  In fact, he died very unexpectedly of a heart attack in the Seattle temple during its dedication.  And I've never met a stranger who knew him.  It turned out that this temple worker was President Nash, who was a stake president many years ago and my grandpa was his executive secretary!  He was very close with my grandparents and knew my grandpa really well, always giving him credit for keeping him organized as a stake president.  He's also the man who trained my grandma to be a dental hygienist, which turned out to be a long and successful career for her.  We asked if he could come back and be our sealer for the big day and he said he would be delighted.

So it already felt really special to have a sealer with such a personal connection to my family (often it's just a stranger who has been assigned at random).  And then, on the actual day, as he began speaking to us, the first thing he said (and I am absolutely convinced that he was inspired to say this) was, "Now don't worry about looking at me.  I know you want to look at each other!"

It's hard to describe how happy it made me to be given permission to gaze at my husband and to be released from any guilt I might need to feel about where I should be looking as we were sealed.

It was such a small thing, but it made a perfect, beautiful, happy day that much more perfect and happy.

Janine always reminded us that God is in the details of our lives.  This felt like just another instance of God being even in a very small detail of a huge and wonderful day.

Happy 15 years, Craig!  I look forward to so many more years, also filled with remarkably tiny happy details.

Quiet

I was at the pool with the kids while Craig virtually attended a baptism when the entire neighborhood heard an explosion-- a transformer had blown, apparently!  And it ended up taking almost exactly 12 hours to fix, so we had a pretty hot evening!  Fortunately the dinner plan had always been Costco pizza, so no change was needed there!

After the kids were tucked into bed, Craig and I had to close the pool.  It was a beautiful full moon and for once the pool lights were out, so Craig managed to snap this awesome picture:

 (The red dots are radio towers on Carter Mountain way in the distance.)

It was very peaceful walking around the neighborhood in the dark.  And I enjoyed an excuse to eat so much ice cream!  But I didn't like reading by flashlight and the kids just could NOT wrap their heads around the fact that we couldn't watch TV or stream anything on the laptop or anything at all.  They were dying of boredom.  Fortunately the basement stayed relatively cool and we have a spare bed down there, otherwise I would have been a LOT grumpier about the whole experience!

Trending

There was one summer, I think before I started middle school, when my best friend at the time and I decided it would be a hilarious joke to show up on the first day of school wearing makeup and super girly clothes and look nothing like what we actually looked like (which was a couple scrubs who didn't care what we looked like and had no idea how to wear makeup).  When I told my Mom about this hysterical plan, she expressed concern that maybe this wasn't the way I wanted to start out at a new school and gently tried to nudge me away from the idea.  Fortunately, before she had to try very hard, my friend changed her mind so it wasn't an issue.  Which was definitely for the best.  I have never regretted the decision to show up for school looking like myself.

Along those lines, I feel like there's a plot device in television shows where a bunch of girls all decide to band together for something-- like wearing comfortable clothes around boys, or not wearing heels to the prom or something?-- basically they're figuring that if they all lower the bar together, they'll all be happier and boys will get used to them looking like themselves.  But.  It always backfires because as soon as just one girl breaks the rule, giving herself a chance to outshine all those other girls who now look drab and boring compared to her, then they all run back to their makeup and uncomfortable-but-fashionable clothes.  Anyway, I can't actually name a tv show where this happened as an example, but I'm pretty sure I didn't make that up.  

So.  A couple weeks ago when I went hiking with a bunch of my friends, I was horrified to realize that a bunch of them had LOST WEIGHT since I last saw them.  I THOUGHT WE WERE ALL GETTING FAT DURING COVID!!!  

I feel like everyone lied to me and I've been the only one stuffing my face with ice cream all summer long.  Naturally, I resolved to change my ways and try to start moving my weight from the "gaining" to the "losing" side of the pendulum swing.  But then before I could get very far in that direction, we lost power for about 12 hours so obviously I had to eat all our ice cream because it was all melting!

But consider this blog post a warning to you: they're lying to us!  Not everyone is getting fat right now!!!

But if you do want to keep packing on the pounds, you've got a BFF in me.  😊

(But here are some more pictures from that hike-- I really did have a lovely time!)

Sunrise as we drive to the trailhead.  I love looking down on the fog!

Stopping for a quick breather about half way up? 
(YES, I always blink.  Also, I had no idea my shoes were actually quite that bright...)
l-r: Me, Cassidy, Marilyn, Kristen, Brittney

At the top of Humpback Rock!  It had a FANTASTIC view!
l-r: Brittney, Kristen, Marilyn, me, Kari

New Adventures

I post so many things on this blog that it sometimes surprises me when I realize that there are things I've completely left out!  I don't usually do that on purpose, but if I don't have pictures of something, it often doesn't occur to me to blog about it. 

So!  One of the things that we've had in the works for a while now is finally getting really close to (maybe?) happening!

Back in October, before we'd even heard of COVID-19 or had any inkling that 2020 would turn out to be the hideous year it has devolved into (and to think-- I was just dreading another election year!  How naïve was I???), Craig and I had one of those family planning talks where we decided we really didn't think we wanted to have any more children (I only cried a little over that), but we felt that we still had more parenting that we could do.  And we wondered if maybe we didn't want to become foster parents?

That was honestly WEIRD because I have NEVER wanted to be a foster parent before.  I've always been very impressed with people who do it, but always in a, "Better you than me!" sort of way.  So to suddenly be drawn to this was a bit shocking.

But once it hit me, I was (as always) full speed ahead.  I reached out to a couple different friends of ours who are foster parents and then began speaking with the agencies they worked with.  I found an agency I felt comfortable with and we talked about beginning training.  But unfortunately, Craig NEVER had time to do it.  With his schedule of having to be present at sporting events at his school, blocking out one night a week when he could be present for three hours and then repeating this for NINE WEEKS seemed almost impossible.  (And, I also had choir every Monday night, so that was another thing keeping us busy.)  When the agency asked if we wanted to start training in January, we told them we had to wait until after basketball season ended.  And then Craig was made bishop and I wasn't sure how this could ever be possible.

And then... everything. shut. down.

Including foster training.

But-- like so many other things-- eventually they figured out how to do the training on Zoom.  And even then, with our Texas and Ohio trips and this most recent camping, it was STILL challenging to be available for three hours every Thursday evening!

But even if it was challenging, at least now it was possible.  And we did it!  We just completed our training last Thursday.  We've got *most* of our documents turned in.  We've done the bulk of our interviews.  We just have to have our home inspection (on Wednesday!) and then the committee meets later in the month to vote on whether or not to approve us.

And then...  Then we might just be becoming parents-- again!  How crazy is that???

Beach Camping

Since our Outerbanks trip didn't happen, Craig figured we might as well get to the beach and camp there.  We'd heard about another park, First Landing, from some friends of ours and we were able to book a campsite there, so we had a plan!  Of course, as soon as it was booked, Craig remembered that he was supposed to have his leadership retreat those same days, but since EVERYTHING has been canceled, we weren't really sure that this was happening, either...  So rather than figuring out what was going on, we mostly forgot about everything.  Typical of Craig and I, especially these days.

So, of course, we had a bit of a crazy wake-up call when we realized we WERE going camping but I'd accidentally scheduled oodles of dentist appointments at the same time and had to scramble and reschedule everything.  But we got it figured out!  We always do!

So this was another camping on the beach adventure for us-- our 4th time doing this!

And, not gonna lie, it was a bit of a disaster.  No, let's not use that word.  Let's say it was a "fiasco."  That sounds a little more fun, doesn't it?

It started out just fine.  We spent the morning packing and getting food prepped and arrived right when we were allowed to check in.  Craig got the charcoal heating up and I helped him set up tents and then took the kids to the beach while he finished organizing our campsite.  We headed back to eat and Craig was just getting a good flame going so the kids could roast hotdogs when it began raining.  We'd been aware this was a possibility, but the forecast said to only expect .01 inches of rain, so we weren't particularly concerned.  We'd closed the tent windows (which I totally left open last time we were camping in Shenandoah and all our sleeping bags got soaked-- that was NOT particularly fun!), put phones in the car, and set up the pop-up over the picnic table.  We figured we'd be fine.

And then it just DUMPED on us.  For twenty minutes.

Even under the pop-up, we were all soaked.  We were splattered with mud.  All our coolers and bins of food and camping chairs were equally splattered with mud.  The campfire was put out and sadly my dinner was not even close to cooked.  (Some people might have been okay with a little raw steak, but I am not one of those people.)  It was pretty miserable.

We finally ducked into the car and I passed out twinkies to everyone for dessert.  I was glad I'd impulsively bought those, since we clearly wouldn't be roasting marshmallows.

The rain let up a bit and we decided we may as well head back to the beach.

That was pretty awesome-- the storm had churned up the Chesapeake Bay so that it was full of whitecaps and now there were legit waves along the shore!  The kids were delighted and we learned that Camille must somehow be a daughter of Poseidon, because she ran back and forth into the big waves cackling maniacally for the sheer joy of it all.  She'd roll around in the sand and then dash back into the water to wash it off and then go right back to the sand.  She'll make a great Navy SEAL some day. She also comPLETEly ruined her cute little sundress.  But oh, well.  She would have outgrown it soon anyway.

So that was actually really fun, even if it was also pretty crazy.  But I was worried it was going to start raining again, and began urging Craig to get the kids back to the campsite and ready for bed.

He finally listened and we found everyone's toothbrushes and were busy brushing their teeth in the bathhouse when the second round of the storm hit.  We got thoroughly drenched-- again-- in the 30 second walk back to our tents.

Craig figured out a plan, which meant moving the pop-up over the entrance to the kids' tent and then drying them off one-by-one and helping them into their pajamas as they stood in the mud before allowing them inside the tent, one foot at a time as we toweled off each foot.  It was a VERY slow process, but it kept their tent clean and dry, so it was totally worth it.  By the time we had Ryder, Colton and Camille all tucked into their sleeping bags, the rain had let up again.  The big kids were hoping to see bioluminescence at the beach, so Craig took them back and I crawled into my tent with my book and got some dry clothes on myself, which felt wonderful.

As soon as I was dry, it began raining.  AGAIN.  I couldn't believe it.

This also meant I had to close the tent windows again, but this tent is a black-out tent, so now I couldn't see anything.  And I'd left my phone (ie, my flashlight) in the car, but there was no way I was running out and getting wet again.  So I was just stuck.  I sat alone in my tent in the dark, waiting for the rain to stop again.  Craig and the kids had come straight back (at the beach, it was blowing so hard the rain and sand HURT), so they hit the showers since they couldn't come into the tents until the rain stopped, either.

So that first evening was a mess.

And that was definitely a WHOLE LOT more rain than .01 inches.  Thanks, weather forecast.


The rain continued for about half the night, but I think it stopped around 2am?  The kids were awake by 6, and the sun was shining, so we hit the beach for real.  And had a marvelous time:

The good news about 7am beach: no one else there!  Can you see my kids all bobbing around together?

We're lifeguards!

And now they pose "cool" for me...

Colton spent a chunk of time pretending to be a puppy...

I came back from the bathroom to find Ryder buried up to his chin!

This little guy totally freaked me out when he went scuttling past!

Awesome hermit crab!

Camille loved floating around on this boogie board

I got some good reading time in!  Happiness!

So silly!

She looks cold, but trust me, she wasn't.

Kendra hardly got out of the water

He named this, "Shelly."  Naturally!

How to eat fruit-by-the-foot in one bite!

The beach was WONDERFUL.  The water felt great.  The kids played and played and played.  When people got hungry, Craig or I would wander back to the campsite to scrounge up food.  He made french toast for everyone.  I made sandwiches.  We probably could have stayed all day except (despite our best efforts) everyone was getting sunburned.  So we finally decided we'd had enough around 3pm.

And even though the forecast kept changing another rain storm was getting less and less likely, I just couldn't bare the idea of a repeat of the night before, so we finally decided just to head home early.  Craig packed up our campsite and left me with the pop-up for shade.  When he came back for the pop-up, we all headed back and took showers and put on whatever dry clothes we could find before we drove home.  We stopped and got Five Guys on the way, so that made everyone happy!

And it was sooooo wonderful to sleep in my soft bed with the air conditioning blowing and everything perfectly dry.  Nothing makes your home feel more lovely than a miserable camping trip!