Summer Visitors

I'm terrible about blogging about this one, but we've actually had a TON of visitors this summer and it's been fabulous!  So I guess it's time I remedied that...

Right after we got home from Disney World, our friends the Shaws came and spent a couple nights at our house.  This was perfect for so many reasons-- the Shaws live in Utah and we haven't been back there since we left school.  This was their second time coming out to the east coast and seeing us, which I sure appreciate (last time was two summers ago).  Craig has known Steve since they were about three and when Craig and I were first dating Steve & Emily were newlyweds and we went some great double-dates with them, so I feel like we all go way back.

Anyway, we had a great time with them, although I seem to have taken very few pictures of the event.  Double bonus, Steve's cousin Chris (who also grew up with Craig and is our friend) and his wife Julie moved to Charlottesville within two weeks of us moving here, so the six of us all got to hang out, too-- how cool is that???

 

Hanging out right after scout camp

The kids' table!

Making s'mores

Me trying out Chris & Julie's zipline

Spencer Shaw playing foosball with Bentley & Ryder

Kendra and Evie looked like they could be sisters!

Ryder and Garrett getting into mischief...

Me chatting with Julie (who looks a little grumpy here, but isn't at all!)

My favorite: Craig hanging out with Steve and Chris-- lifelong friends!

The other really nice thing about their visit was that it helped distract Craig as he finished up at CATEC and was about to start his new job.  I think it was nice for him to have other, happy things to think about!  And it kept me busy rather than letting me freak out about how to take care of all my kids while they were home for the summer and Craig was working!

Also, Emily took these pictures of Camille which perfectly capture her facial expressions:

Happy

Fine

Just okay

A little worried

Not happy.

That's my girl!  (Sigh!)  Emily took most of the pictures up there, too, and I just stole them off facebook, just to give credit where it's due.

Anyway, is was great spending time with all of the Shaws-- we feel very lucky to have such great friends in them.  And it was fun showing off Charlottesville to them!


Our next set of visitors was when my sister Rachael, her husband, Ian, and their brand new baby, Nolan, came to see us during the 4th of July weekend!  It was their first time coming to see our new home, so we were really excited to take them around.  We had a great weekend together, even if it did rain all day on the 4th!

Ryder hanging out with Ian and Nolan

Ian told Ryder he was going to wear his dragon costume

He almost got it to fit!

Camille likes the pool

Nolan took a short nap against his mommy's shoulder

Just hanging around, talking with Ian!

Dressed in patriotic colors

At the downtown mall

All dressed up for church

Craig and Colton took them Monticello, where it rained the entire time

I like that Craig is holding the umbrella over Jefferson

Nolan with his cousins (except for Colton, who was napping)

At the end of July, my friends Anna and Vangie came down from Manassas for a few hours.  Anna has started selling LuLaRoe clothes, so I asked if she'd be willing to do a shopping party at my house.  Their stuff is super cute, and I was excited to finally get to try it on and see what I liked!  I didn't manage to take any pictures of them while they were here, but Craig did snap this picture of the racks of clothing that Anna set up:

I had quite a few people come to the party, but unfortunately for Anna, they didn't buy very much.  (In their defense, the clothing is super cute, but it's a little pricey...)  I made up for their lack of shopping by going crazy-- I bought two shirts, two skirts, and a dress.  And I LOVE what I got.  If I had more money...!

But whatever the clothing situation, it was really great to see Vangie and Anna again!  It had been WAY too long!


Last week my friend Tracy came down from Manassas and stayed a couple days.  Her husband was in Singapore for two weeks on a business trip, so she visited me one week and our friend Sarah the other week to help divide up the time on her own.  We were more than happy to help out!  :)

Ryder and Tanner are both crazy

Kendra and Afton are both growing up too fast

And Colton and Alexa are both too adorable!

 We took Tracy to Carter Mountain for the sunset, but didn't take any pictures with her in them!  Yes, I suck as a friend!  But trust me-- we had a lovely time together!

And finally, this last Tuesday, our friends the Konstantys came to see us for the day!  We first met them because their son, Peter, was Bentley's best friend in kindergarten & first grade, and the two did cub scouts together.  We hadn't seen them since they came down last summer, so it was great to reunite Bentley and Peter again.  We had ten kids (six of which were boys!) all running wild through the house, so it was a little nuts, but it was still great to see the Konstantys again.

That's John and Peter in the middle

I like how Camille is just sitting on Colton here

I don't know why I never manage to take more pictures (these were all taken by Craig!), but we hit my favorite splash pad and managed to feed everyone two meals (no small feat!) and have a great time.


I'm enjoying the peace and quiet today.  But I'm so thankful that we have such great friends who are willing to come visit us even though we're a bit far away now.  I feel so very blessed by the wonderful people in my life, and in the lives of my children.

Camping and the Beach!

In the past, we've enjoyed camping on Assateague Island, and planned to go again in August.  But with Craig's new job, his principal told him that wouldn't work, since that was when the teachers come back.  He said if we wanted to take off in July, though, that would be fine.  There weren't any campsites left at the National Park on such short notice, so we ended up going to a private campground on Chincoteague Island right next door!

With Camille in the mix, we didn't really think we could fit all our camping gear in the car, so we bought a car topper to make room for it all.  This was no small feat-- these things get notoriously bad reviews, and it took us a while to even find a store that carried them.  But eventually we wound up with this beauty:

Don't let it fool you-- that thing is huge.

We drove there-- the kids were VERY excited about the bridges and tunnels over and under the Chesapeake Bay.  It was a fairly uneventful drive, in the best way.  And, of course, lots of Hamilton!  We arrived and got all set up-- the kids very much enjoying their new camping chairs...

I really like how colorful this picture is...

So we use two tents now-- all the kids except Camille in one tent (the orange one), Craig, Camille and I in the other.  It worked very well!

Bentley is funny-- yes, he knew we were taking this picture!

 The campgrounds had a clown lady who came and did balloon animals for all the kids and painted this sea shell on Kendra's cheek:

And she painted this shark on Ryder's hand

We were very pleased with the campgrounds that first night.  There was plenty of shade, and nice grass around.  There was a very small pool, but it still felt nice to dip in it!  And the kids were quite happy with the clown lady.  We went to bed very happy that night, and actually slept the best I think I've ever slept camping!  It helped that we finally bought air mattresses a couple years ago (why didn't anyone tell me that they were so cheap????) AND the kids all slept through the night (last time we camped, Colton kept waking up screaming ever couple hours!)...  So this was great.  The only problem was that I woke up early because I had to go to the bathroom, but I knew that unzipping our tent would wake up Camille!  I've never been so anxious for a baby to wake up, EVER!

Anyway, eventually everyone was up and Craig made breakfast for us-- pancakes and sausage!  And then we loaded up and drove to the beach.

Where we discovered that Camille HATES sand and would scream every time I set her down!  Fun!  I think I held her for the first couple hours we were there!

"I do not put up with ANY crap."

I made good use of the sun hat my sister had sent me for my birthday.  Thanks, Leah!

Camille did finally calm down about the sand for a little while when she discovered the joy of digging in the sand with a shovel. That was a nice reprieve...  And eventually she took a nap in Craig's arms, while Colton napped in mine.

I'm always amazed at how FUN the beach is for kids (at least, kids who aren't afraid of the sand).  After about ten minutes, I'm ready to leave.  But they can play for HOURS-- jumping in the waves, digging in the sand, chasing sea gulls...  It never gets boring for them.  Kendra discovered these little tiny creatures-- baby clams or something?  they looked like tiny pebbles, but every time you exposed them they would wiggle back into the sand.  She would dig up a bunch and then play with them.  One time she found some sort of sand flea or something (it looked like the tiniest turtle, but was kind of see through?  I have no idea what that thing was) and named it Mustache, which I thought was hilarious and kind of gross.  She had a lot of fun with that thing before she finally put it back in the water.

Anyway, the kids had a blast.  We'd brought a lot of snacks and figured we'd eat those and then have an early dinner.  But we hadn't really factored in for how early we'd gotten up (6am?  I think?) and arrived at the beach (8am).  So by the time we were ready to leave, it was only 2pm!  But everyone was exhausted, so it was time to go.  We drove back to the campsite and splashed in the pool for a few minutes to rinse off the worst of the sand.  Then we split up the kids and helped them all shower off (Note to self: next time, bring TWO things of soap and shampoo so we can do this at the same time!  But good job packing two towels for each person-- one for the beach, one for after showering!  It was nice getting out of the shower and not having to use a sandy towel!)

Anyway, after we were all clean, we headed into town.  There was a food truck I wanted to try out for dinner.  We arrived just as they were opening for business (seriously, time is so off when you get up that early!), so that worked out well.  What didn't work as well was that they had a sign for carne asada, but then it turned out that was yesterday's special and it wasn't available that day.  I was so disappointed-- I hate it when you're all excited to eat something and then have to settle for something else.  We got tons of food for everyone.  Eating on benches isn't really how I like to enjoy a meal, but I knew the kids weren't going to sit still at a restaurant, so I think this was a good compromise.

Enjoying a quesadilla and a little ennui...

We drove around Chincoteague for a bit to get a feel for the island, and then got some ice cream before we went back to our campsite and put the kids to bed.  Craig and I were just sitting down to relax together when the campgrounds turned into party central-- people were blasting Taylor Swift, and as I walked around, I discovered that each site was PACKED with people and tents.  It honestly looked like a refugee site!  It's funny, because I don't really mind any of that stuff, but when I just wanted to sit in the peace and quiet and nature and then go to bed early, I found this pretty annoying.

So, yeah.  Thursday night I liked our private campgrounds.  Friday night, not so much.  And then I remembered that the National Park had brand new bathrooms last time we went, and then my mind was made up: next time, we're going back to Assateague.  But this was a good excursion, too!

Sunset over the minivan.  Gotta love it!

The next morning we began packing up the car and discovered one more problem with our campsite: at that time of day, our site (just ours!) had NO SHADE!!!  And this was the day that Virginia finally decided it was summer and it got to be about a hundred degrees (seriously-- Craig checked the weather app later that day, and with the humidity it said it felt like 108°!!!).  So there we were, trying to pack everything up and load the car, and we were just dying in the heat.  The kids were all exhausted and grumpy, and we just wanted to go home.

But.  We also wanted to see the beach one last time, mostly because we'd paid for a week long pass, just in case we wanted to go back.  Now, we didn't really want to go back, but goshdarnit we'd PAID for it, so we decided we had to at least take one last look at the ocean.  So back to Assateague we went!

We passed through the toll booth and were meandering down the road, and I was staring blankly at the car ahead of us, when it suddenly hit me: I knew that car!  The license plate read, "O 2BE US"-- that was Margie Faint, our next-door neighbor in Manassas!  We followed her to the beach, parked right next to her and hopped out and gave her hugs as quickly as we could!

It was so fun to see Margie again!  We could have talked all day, but she was there with her grandchildren and we weren't planning on staying long, so we kept it relatively short.  But it was a real treat to run into her like that!

Margie's granddaughter snapped a few family pictures for us!

And then, of course, despite their previous complaints, the kids were all excited to play at the beach again:

We could have stayed for hours, again, if only I hadn't already packed all the towels and swimsuits!  Next time we'll plan better!

On the drive home, we stopped right away at the NASA Wallops Visitors Center:

I love Ryder's smile here...  It's perfect.

Ah, Bentley!

And then lunch at Chick-fil-A

And some very sleepy kids for the remainder of the drive!

It was nice to be home and showering in a real shower again.  Craig unloaded the car and vacuumed all the sand out of it, despite the ridiculous heat.  I did my usual five loads of laundry or whatever.  And we enjoyed being home again!  It was a good trip, and I'm so glad we pulled it off and had so much fun!

Next time, though, we'll be sure we get a spot at Assateague National Park!

An Update

Sorry I've been absent for so long!  Having all the kids around all the time (and often having a friend or four of theirs galloping around the house, too) has been on the insane side.  I'm getting more and more excited for school to start-- to get my own kids out of the house and all the neighborhood kids, too!  It will be nice to have it just be me, Colton, and Camille for a few hours each day.  That sounds so...  peaceful!  (Oh, man, if present me could visit past me when I was pregnant with Kendra and stressing about how difficult it must be having two kids!  What a joke!)

Anyway, I feel like I'm very far behind on this blog, so for now, we'll just do a quick update on each person.  And then I'll hit other stuff in a new post (hopefully soon?  but maybe when school starts in a couple weeks...)...

Craig is enjoying his new job.  He leaves early and comes home early, which thrills me-- last year, he kept trying to do that and, without fail, his evil boss would always corner him and talk to him from about 3:30 until 5:30 or 6.  It drove me crazy because I could never figure out when to have dinner.  And trying to cook with five hungry, whiny children under-foot is not easy or particularly fun.  Craig came home one day and announced that in the meeting he'd been in, he'd said something and someone else had said, "Good idea!" and he realized it had been a year since he'd enjoyed such a pleasant meeting.  (This both pleases me and makes me want to weep for everything he went through last year.)  He's a little nervous for when school starts, all 2,000 students show up, and his job really kicks into high gear, but I have great confidence that this will be a great year for him!

Bentley continues to harass me to let him play more video games.  We have found an uneasy compromise in the form of Pokemon Go.  I love that it gets him outside and walking around!  And he's got a friend a few streets away who goes Pokemon hunting with him, so that's great.  We're letting him use Craig's old cell phone (which already has a small crack on the screen), so this works well, I think.  He's loving comic books (like, the funny pages, not graphic novels) and I absolutely love talking about Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, and Pearls Before Swine with him.  He's a boy after my own heart.  He's also pretty bored-- it will be really good for Bentley to be back in school and busy again.

Kendra has also been a bit bored, but in her case it's because all of her neighborhood friends have been off at various camps all summer!  So she's missing her playmates.  But she's very good at playing with her toys in her room.  And we go to the library frequently to get books for her (and Bentley, and everyone else).  She also gave us a scare by having our first food allergy-- we think it was a raspberry that caused it, but she had hives for three days, so I'm too scared to give her another to confirm our theory!  I guess in the scheme of things raspberries are pretty easy to avoid, but this was still very new (scary) territory for me to wade through.  We went through a LOT of benadryl that week...

Ryder has apparently turned feral this summer.  Maybe I've been letting him watch too many violent cartoons?  It's like all of a sudden he's absolutely crazy.  I've vowed to be more careful with what he watches-- more "Chuggington" and less "Justice League"-- maybe that will help?  And hopefully his kindergarten teacher will know how to calm him down?  (Poor lady!)  We've been having him practice writing his name before kindergarten starts, something he's very happy to do with candy as a bribe.  As much as I worry about how crazy he is, I have to admit that it's pretty funny to watch him run in place (cartoon style) building up "speed" before he takes off!  That kid can make me laugh like no other...

Colton has been following in Ryder's footsteps, I'm afraid, and is also crazy.  I've always maintained that 3-year-olds are incredibly difficult*, and it's like this last month Colton's age finally caught up with him.  Where I used to have to beg and plead with Ryder to get his shoes on, now it's Colton running around ignoring me (or actively fighting against me) while Camille sits patiently waiting for her shoes to be put on.  I have high hopes that getting a little more attention from me once the kids start school will help calm him down a little.  That and turning four next spring...  Colton also managed to fall down the stairs this week (first time anyone's done that in this house-- let's hope it's the last time, too), so that was awful.  Yes, there's a baby gate at the top of the stairs.  He pulled the entire thing down and they tumbled down together.  No serious injury, just a few bruises on his back, so I guess we were lucky.  Also, I'm gearing myself up mentally for potty training.  I'm thinking we'll start in September.  I hate potty training more than just about anything in the world (except maybe house centipedes), but I think it's about time...

Camille has been progressing by leaps and bounds.  Did I ever blog about the fact that she learned to walk?  Well, she was walking at 14 months (which was VERY early, for our family-- Kendra, Ryder and Colton all walked at 16 months!  Only Bentley walked earlier, at 13 months).  She quickly moved on to running, and it still cracks me up to watch her try to balance with her shoulders and half-run, half-fall whichever direction she heads.  These last few weeks she's been really working on talking.  She can say binkie and bottle (bah-doh), yeah and no (usually while waving her hand away as if she's disgusted with whatever she's saying no to), nose and ear (said while either pointing to her own, or grabbing yours), "gah" for her giraffe...  And she understands a LOT more, of course.  It's very fun to see her learning so much.  She likes to laugh along with whatever we're laughing at, and tries her hardest to copy Colton (heaven save us!).  She loves Ryder's Big Bear and will run and flop down on him whenever she gets a chance.  She loves to give kisses and hugs to everyone, usually by inclining her heads towards you and then making a kissing noise.  Or, as Craig put it when she did this to me from across the room, "She's blowing you a hug!"  As much as she is so sweet loving on everyone, she's also still incredibly opinionated-- she loves to beg me for things and then be mad at me when I give them to her.  It's super fun, especially this last week when she had a cold and was very whiny.  But I sure love my strong-will little baby!

And me...  Well, I've been reading a lot.  It's my happy thing.  (I'm a little bit jealous of those people who enjoy doing projects or working out-- they must have so much more to show for their happy time than I do!  But this is one of those things where I'm happier accepting who I am than trying to change myself.  And while it would be nice to be incredibly fit or to have amazing projects I could show off, I still don't see "excessive reading" as a flaw in need of fixing!)  I've also finally been writing in my journal-- which is probably part of the reason my blogging has dropped off.  A woman in church quoted extensively from a graduation speech given by Sheryl Sandberg** and one of the parts that really struck me was when Sandberg said that she would "write down three moments of joy before I go to bed each night. This simple practice has changed my life. Because no matter what happens each day, I go to sleep thinking of something cheerful."  I absolutely loved this idea, and vowed to do the same thing.  Over the weeks, it's morphed into just writing down three things of significance from each day (if I ever find myself trying to cope with a major tragedy, I will definitely try to get back to writing specifically about joyful things), but it feels nice to finally be consistent about writing in my journal (not that I didn't view keeping up with this blog as a form of that, but a personal journal is good to keep, too).  I guess the real question will be if I can manage both?!  So, yes, mostly I've been reading and writing.  And trying to keep up with the craziness that is my family!

Ironically, since I'm talking about Sheryl Sandberg, I've also been severely restricting my facebook time again.  It seems I can't look at it without being subject to everyone's political opinions, and the whole election right now depresses me so much, I'd rather try to ignore it for a few more months.  (I'm pretty sure Virginia is in Hilary's pocket anyway, with Tim Kaine as her running mate, so I don't think my vote-- whoever I decide to vote for-- will mean much.)  It's kind of amazing how many more books I read when I don't look at facebook!

Anyway, there's a lot more I could say about all of these things, but this post is getting pretty long and I can always spout off on my opinion some other day!

More soon-- I promise!




*From Jim Gaffigan: I bet whoever coined the phrase "terrible twos" felt pretty stupid when their kid turned three.

**I can't even tell you how happy it made me that someone at church was quoting Sheryl Sandberg.  I nearly squealed in delight!

The Art of Social Media

The other morning, I got up and found Bentley all wrapped up in a blanket with his favorite stuffed animals reading a book.  He insisted that I take his picture, put it on my blog, and caption it, "This is what summer's all about!"  So here am I following direct orders.

This is what summer's all about, yo!

What's awesome about this story is the fact that as soon as the picture was taken, Bentley put the book down and proceeded to play on the iPad for an hour.

How does he already understand the art of social media so well???


In related news, my sister sent me the BEST birthday card.  It reads, "May your year be even more fabulous than it looks on the internet."

Too true.  And may I wish the same for all of you!  ♥

Surprise!

So, Craig started at his new job on Friday!

Yeah, I guess I didn't mention that on ye olde blogge, did I?

That was mostly on purpose-- we weren't supposed to talk about it until it went public.  And it didn't go public until we were at Disney World, and then I've been too busy since then to blog about it.  But yes, Craig has a new job now: He is an Assistant Principals at Albemarle High School here in Charlottesville.

Here's the good in all this:

1) He no longer works with his evil evil boss.  That's probably the biggest thing.  She had such a nasty, soul-sucking way of running everything, I'm so relieved for him to be away from her and out from under her thumb.  (She is now "consulting" for CATEC, which I think means that they'll let her go as soon as the new administrators realize just how incompetent and toxic she is?  Come to think of it, I'm not sure how she's lasted beyond Day 1!  Maybe the 4th of July holiday threw them off...)

2) Albemarle High School is a great school, kind of the pride of the school district.  So this is a perfect opportunity for Craig to learn from what they're doing right here and be part of their success.

3)  The superintendent over the county was named superintendent of the year for Virginia schools, so working for her will be a great opportunity for Craig.

4)  This job feels like a real career track position.  When Craig was informed that he would no longer be at CATEC next year, we were really scared that the superintendents might place him in some dead-end job for a year and then let him go (which is what they're doing to his boss, I think).  That would have been terrifying.  But this job doesn't feel like that at all-- it's exactly where he would want to go next.  In fact...

5)  This seems to be the next step after CATEC.  One of CATEC's previous directors worked as director for 7 years and then became AP at Monticello High School (which is right next to us, but not quite as good of a school), so Craig sort of jump-started that next step by only being at CATEC for a year...

6)  For you nosy types (because I'm one, I assume most everyone else is, too), salary and benefits all stayed the same.  Phew-- We won't have to go looking for a smaller house to squeeze into!



The bad about all this (because nothing is ever perfect) would be:

1) Craig really wanted to stay at CATEC (provided his evil boss was gone) and see what he could do with the place.  He was disappointed to not get to follow through with the many plans he had for the school.

1a)  We're a little worried that Craig being at CATEC for only one year will not look great on his resume.  But hopefully things will go well at his new school and that one blip on his resume can fade into the background.

2)  Until we realized that his evil boss was also being replaced, we had a feeling that she had "won" and we had "lost."  Now that we know she's (most likely) on the way out, we're less concerned with that.  The feeling we're getting is that the superintendents were tired of everyone complaining about the boss and decided to teach everyone a lesson by letting both Craig and his boss go, showing the staff that they couldn't tell the superintendents what to do.  Or something?  So Craig was sort of caught up in all that even though none of it was really his fault. 

3)  The commute is a few minutes longer, but not much.

4)  As an AP at a regular school with sports teams and all that stuff, Craig will have much busier evenings than he's had.  He'll be required to attend all home football games, for example.  I'm hoping that I can manage to bring the kids and meet up with him for a bit, but we'll see how that goes.  This will certainly be something we have to figure out as we go.  And I may have to start to pretend to like football again...  (Although who am I kidding-- if I'm trying to keep five kids happy, there's no way I'll see any of the game anyway!)


So I think that's it for now!  Wish Craig well on his new job!  Friday morning (his first day) he sent me a text that he'd had a meeting that only lasted for an hour and was quite thrilled about that, so I think we're off to a good start!