Whew.

It's been a while.  Things have been so busy around here.  I really need something to stop, but I don't know how to make that happen just yet.  My life feels very stressful right now and I don't love that.  Last week, the law firm I work at asked me to fill in as much as I could while their receptionist was on vacation, so I went from working approximately 8 hours in a week, to 30.  Now, the work itself was great-- I'd do whatever they asked me to do, scanning and photocopying stuff, sending out mail, walking to the post office to check their box; easy stuff like that.  And if they didn't have anything for me to do, I could sit and read my book (while getting paid to do it!!!)!  So that was pretty sweet, honestly!  But it was still all my time when I couldn't be doing all the other things I usually do at home: cleaning and cooking and taking kids to all their various appointments.  So any time I was home, I was frantically running around trying to do all the stuff in the 20 or 30 minutes I had.  And we did not eat very healthy meals, either, let me tell you!  But we survived it, and I'm looking forward to the paycheck I'll get for that week!

I'm also still doing the occasional wedding for Adam!  This last one was fairly easy-- Adam told me I was basically there to keep running things on the off-chance he collapsed and had to go to the hospital (not a likely scenario, thank goodness!).   But that meant we got to hang out a lot and even managed to sneak away and watch Veep for a few minutes, so that was pretty fun!

This waterfall of flowers cascading off the head table is all the rage right now.  It will probably be passé before very long, but for now I think it's fun!

Pippin Hill continues to be absolutely gorgeous!

{Happy sigh.}

A family in our ward brought sourdough bread in for the sacrament a few months ago.  Camille asked why I never made sourdough, and as I was explaining that I don't even have a starter or really have a clue how to make any of it, the woman piped up that she was happy to give me some of her starter!  A few weeks later, my sister Tracy spent the weekend Facetiming with me every few hours to walk me through the entire process.  It's a funny thing, because (as Tracy had told me!) none of it is very hard or time-consuming, but it does take several days of very easy, 30-second steps that you have to keep track of.  But when I finally got to try it fresh out of the oven-- oh, my!  So delicious!!!

I was almost hoping the bread wouldn't be very good so I could just never bother doing all that work again!  But it was.  It was that good.  And I've already made another batch since then.  And I will probably keep making it now that I know how and have that starter!  Sourdough bread for the very delicious win!

One of our chickens, Dolly, finally started laying eggs!  Dolly is our Easter Egger, so we didn't know what color her eggs would be.  Surprise-- they're this lovely shade of green!!!

Kendra pointed out-- they actually match our new kitchen walls perfectly!  How fun is that???  She's since laid several more, while the other chickens still have given us nothing.  Lazy birds!

The other morning as I walked Colton & Camille to the bus stop, the light was so pretty and golden!  I do love a great sunrise...!

Craig took the girls camping, which he'd been meaning to do for over a year now.  They were super excited.  Camille took this selfie which-- it's not just me, right?-- reminds me of The Blair Witch Project.  😂😂😂

And she was never seen again...

Just kidding!  They had a great time!

The KOA had a very dilapidated jumpy thing that Camille enjoyed

And who doesn't enjoy waving a flaming stick around?

That same weekend was a stake relief society activity which I was singing at (I asked my friends Megan and Stephanie to join me, since I get so nervous singing solo) AND I got to hang out with Sarah!  Fun night!

The following Friday, Craig and I took Kendra to the temple to do baptisms.  When we left, it was raining AND there was an amazing sunset!!!

I mean-- this looks like Disney produced it, right???

If you look really closely, you can see a rainbow to the left of the temple!

On Saturday, we didn't have much going on, so Craig suggested we finally clean Colton and Camille's room, which had turned into The Pit of Despair.  It had gotten so bad I didn't even know where to begin and would walk in, take a look around, shake my head and find something else to do instead.  It was too overwhelming for the very small chunks of time I have at home these days.  Craig ended up doing most of the cleaning, since I kept slipping away to a) make sourdough bread b) clean the house because Camille had a new friend coming over c) meet the mom of this new friend, who sat chatting with me for well over an hour (I don't blame her-- she needed to make sure I wasn't crazy!  But I felt bad gabbing away while Craig was still hard at work!) and d) do more cleaning because Grandma and Grandpa were coming over.  Craig was just working on that room the entire day.  It went from this:

So cringey and embarrassing...

To this...

I love Camille's legs sticking out from under the bed as she drags out all the junk garbage stuff that had accumulated under there!

I had the kids get rid of the clothes they don't wear, which in turn meant we could get rid of all these:

And by the time we were done, it looked like this:

As Colton and Camille both said-- It's like a whole new room!!!  They were so excited and happy.  I made them get everything off their beds (and took that opportunity to wash their sheets) and told them from now on they could have one (1) squishmallow and one (1!) small blanket along with their regular bedding.  NO MORE.  They tried to fuss about it, but then Camille climbed into bed and said, "Oh, I have so much room now!"  No kidding!

We threw away 8 or 9 bags of trash.  We took out a ton of books, which I still need to sort through and donate to Goodwill.  (I hate getting rid of books, but a lot of these were given to them for free from the school and no one has ever read them and I don't care about them, so they need to go!)  Craig slapped some paint on the ceiling where it was particularly gross (they like to tape their artwork and put stickers above the bunk bed and it just looked terrible after a few years of that).  We got rid of two bins full of clothes...  It's amazing how we can accumulate so much STUFF and how hard it is to let go of it, but once you start...  You wonder why you were holding on to it for so long!

Since one of the biggest contributors to all the mess were Colton's Legos, Craig found this thing to store them in:

It's really big, so they can spread the Legos out to look for the right one without throwing them all over the floor.  But then it folds up to a carrying case when you're done.  Hopefully that will make it easier to keep the room clean going forward...

And THEN, it was also Bentley's birthday!!!  He got cash from Grandma and Grandpa, but it was all hidden within a pair of ankle weights, so that was exciting as he searched for each bill wrapped around a weight...

He requested red velvet s'more brownies for his birthday-- always a great choice!-- and spaghetti with meatballs for dinner.  Done and done!  (He's pulling kind of a weird face because he doesn't enjoy us singing to him, but he actually was very happy, I promise!)

Our present to him arrived a couple days late:

I'm so proud of my 17-year-old fellow Buffy fan! 

I'm sure I'm forgetting something important.  I guess it will have to wait until my next post...!