August and September Weekends

Here are a couple things we did with pictures to go along with them...

Colton and Camille waiting for the bus to bring their siblings home to them

The weekend before Labor Day was our annual ward campout with our Manassas buddies-- as always, it was great catching up with everyone.  There was a small hitch in that our usual campgrounds were under construction, so Crystal (who is WONDERFUL about organizing this every year) found us a different location.  The new place was lovely and bug-free (!!!!!!!), but unfortunately it was also VERY small so our tents were set up practically on top of each other, AND the bathrooms and parking lot were about 1/4 mile away.  There were wagons to transport your stuff, but it was still a royal pain.  I felt especially bad for the pregnant girl in our group-- imagine getting up in the night to use the bathroom and having to hike that far away!!!

Those aren't even the tents that were packed in tight.  And see the pregnant girl there???

The campout always follows the same formula-- bring your own dinner and cook it while setting up tents.  Roast marshmallows, then try to get the kids to sleep while the grown-ups stay up super late chatting.  Unfortunately, the 2-year-old in the tent next to us couldn't manage to settle down, so we didn't get much sleep.  Ironic, since it was the best my kids had slept all summer, but oh, well.  In the middle of the night as I listened to that poor kid and was starting to get irritated, I suddenly realized just how much her mom must be dying trying to figure out how to calm her down and I let it go.  At least it wasn't my problem!

In the morning, Crystal provides breakfast for the whole gang-- sausage, pancakes, fruit and juice-- and then we all go hiking.  It's kind of amazing-- how does Crystal do all that???

On the hike I told Camille to look up at the trees and not only did she do it, she put on this perfect bemused expression, too!

Later on when we made her walk, she was less happy

Some of the kids on the hike (poor Isaac on the right there!) (and actually, Camille was only slightly happier!)

Not related to camping...

Colton pretending to be asleep on a mountain of stuffed animals

For all you Moana fans out there: SHARK HEAD!

Camille enjoys coloring

I can sorta put my hair in piggy tails!

Ryder and Craig selfie

For Labor Day weekend, Rachael and Ian and Nolan drove down from NYC to see us!  I LOVE having visitors-- I love having an excuse to make extra yummy food and show off fun stuff in Charlottesville...  If you're thinking about coming, TOTALLY DO IT!!!  We want you here!!!

My kids LOVE their Uncle Ian!

Ian had a much-loved bunny as a kid, so he was excited to introduce Nolan to Oreo.  Here he and Craig are trying to clip her claws...

Nolan was quite captivated by Oreo!

He also appreciated our grocery store shopping carts a LOT more than my kids do!

Getting milkshakes at the downtown mall (and Rachael showing off her baby bump!)

And we always enjoy making s'mores!

Come again soon, Rachael and Ian (and Nolan)!

A History of Our Family Portraits

We did family portraits Saturday morning, and I'm so excited to see how they turned out.  We don't do a lot of waiting in this day and age, so this suspense feels a bit nostalgic-- it's the closest I can get to turning in a roll of film and waiting to see what gets developed!

But this has made me think about all the portraits we've done throughout the years, and I'm realizing that they are scattered all over the computer and internet.  It made me worry that I wouldn't be able to find them all, so for this post, I'm finding as many family pictures as I can.  It will be a little trip down memory lane...

The funny thing is, we didn't really do portraits for a long time-- we were just too poor and I never felt that I could justify the expense.  The most we would do was one 9-month portrait of each kid.  Other than that, we faked it as best we could-- so most of these (as you'll see) are FAR from professional.  And even the professional ones often leave a lot to be desired.  But it's good to have them anyway--  I don't always realize that Craig and my appearance have changed so much over the twelve years we've been married-- and, obviously, the kids are changing at lightspeed.  So here we go with all the family portraits I can remember and/or find!

This was Bentley's baby blessing, taken outside our church building.  Yeah, we look very young here!  And REALLY tired...

Christmas 2006 all of Craig's family went to South Carolina and a friend of Aunt Lynda's did portraits of everyone.  Why we thought it would be a good idea to put white socks on Bentley with that outfit is a mystery to me...

Kendra's baby blessing.  I like that her hair is kind of mohawk-y.  And that Bentley looks like he's trying to pick Craig's pocket...

Christmas 2008, and we were so proud to own a house!

I think this was in November of 2008-- my Mom sent us all Bay Hay & Feed shirts, so we had to document us wearing them!

Christmas 2009 when we went to Disney World with my family-- we never managed to get a very good picture, despite lots of shots taken!

For this one, Craig set up a tripod on the battlefield.  It took SO MANY shots to get us looking this normal!

This is just a family picture I liked (and which I used as my blog banner for a while) when we went to Mount Vernon with my parents shortly after Ryder was born

I think we just handed the camera to a stranger at the temple and wound up with this one-- not bad!

This was our Christmas card in 2011.  I'm pretty sure Craig photo shopped Bentley to look less blurry, but I can't find that version right now...

Right after Colton was born, my visiting teacher was just starting her photography business and offered to do these portraits for free-- she did SUCH A great job!  I was so happy!

So then we hired her to do these portraits when my whole family was in town for Colton's baby blessing

And she did it again with all Craig's family at Christmas time.  Unfortunately, I chose to wear that rather unfortunate lipstick.  And I was fat.  But what can you do?

This was taken on Bainbridge Island when we flew out for my Grandma's 100th birthday and blessed Camille while we were there.  I hate how fat my face looks here, but I like how the kids look!

For this one, in 2015, we just handed a good camera to a friend and told her to take as many pictures as possible.  This was the best we got, and I like it a lot!

I know that doing pictures inside a studio is totally not the hip way to do things, but I couldn't find any outdoorsy photographers in Charlottesville and this was the best I could figure out.  Despite the lameness of being inside, I love how everyone looks here.  So it was worth it!

So that's what we've got!  It shocked me how hard it was to find all of these-- I've started working on saving them all in one place on the computer so this won't be so hard in the future.  Isn't it funny how we take so many pictures these days that we can't keep track of them at all???

Anyway-- stay tuned for our newest ones, coming soon!

My Kryptonite

I know people who really have to watch what they eat in order to feel good.  They avoid sugar or dairy or, especially in the case of my family members who have Celiac disease, gluten.  When Craig and I did the Fuhrman diet and ate vegan for 6 weeks, I was excited to see how eating healthier effected me.  Secretly, I was hoping that I would suddenly find myself tapping into hidden wells of energy and that I would turn into Wonder Woman or something.

A girl can dream, right?

Anyway, that didn't happen.  In fact, I felt pretty much the same as always (except occasionally grouchy and hungry when I wasn't allowed to eat the unhealthy things I wanted to eat).  That was a little disappointing.

By the same token, I also have friends who absolutely swear by essential oils.  They find themselves healthier or healing faster or happier with a dab or two of the right oil in the right place.  And I've gotten all excited to try out their remedies and also had no luck.  (Note that I'm not claiming these things don't work for my friends-- they just don't seem to work for me.)

And all this is fine.  I'm very blessed to be so healthy; I just feel extra lucky that my body seems to work just fine with whatever food I put into it.  If I were a car, I would NOT be one of those fancy models that requires high octane gasoline-- just throw in whatever's cheapest and I'll run fine!

But it really hit me today that while food doesn't seem to have much effect on my health and well being, sleep matters A LOT. 

I cannot handle life without a decent amount of sleep.  The other night Craig and I were wrestling with insomnia, that left me on less than four hours (which, actually, a lot of people survive just fine on less), and I thought I would die.  I felt nauseated and dizzy.  AND GRUMPY.  It was bad.  (I might have resorted to letting the kids watch TV so I could nap at 8:30am...  Maybe...)

So, yeah, food doesn't make much difference to me.  But I can barely function if I don't get at least six hour of uninterrupted sleep.  And eight would be better.  (I daydream about how good I'd feel on nine...!  Squee!)  And it's good that I know this about myself.  In the same way that I applaud people who eat good so they can feel good, I do my best to sleep good so I can be my best.

Happy napping, everyone!

TOSVA

I told you all about joining The Oratorio Society of Virginia (hereafter to be referred to as TOSVA)-- but I never got around to posting about our concerts or anything!

So, yes, we had two concerts last spring.  One was in a local church where we sang Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen (who has his summer home in the San Juan Islands! and who also sent us a very nice email wishing us well with the performance!)-- I had never heard this music before, but I quickly grew to love it.  It's kind of like Gregorian Chant, except it actually gets somewhere by the end, if that makes any sense.  My favorite recording is probably this one on YouTube, or you can find it on Amazon Music, if you want to listen to it.  I play it on Sunday mornings as I get ready for church, and it puts me in a wonderful mood.  Or if the kids are stressing me out and I need to calm down, this is a go to for me...  The concert was awesome, except I was wearing shoes that weren't comfortable-- that was a mistake that I won't repeat!  And, I was standing on the edge of the stand right over a drum set and was terrified that I would accidentally fall off.  That would have been so beyond embarrassing!  Fortunately I managed to stay firm-footed the entire time, painful shoes and all.

Our second concert was on Mother's Day, and for that one we sang at UVA's concert hall!  The theme for this concert was A Celebration of Great Choruses, and some of what we sang included the opening song from Carmina Burana, the drinking song from La traviata, "Dona nobis pacem" from Bach's B minor Mass and we ended with the Hallelujah Chorus.  It was fabulous.  And I wore shoes that didn't kill me.

Rehearsal at the concert hall.  You can barely see me in a yellow shirt way off on the left, second row up.

There you can actually see me as we're getting on stage.  Craig informed me that my dress made me look like the Angel of Death...

All ready to start singing

Anyway, I was so glad I had the opportunity to sing again and learn new beautiful music.  TOSVA breaks for the summer, which was nice, and then our first rehearsal back was on Monday.  As I drove myself there, I found that I couldn't stop grinning-- I was just so excited to get singing again!

There were several new people at our first rehearsal and they all had the chance to introduce themselves.  One had majored in music in college, and pretty much all of them had sung in their college choirs (and most of them were all UVA students, so they'd sung for our choir director, since he also conducts the UVA Singers).  I felt like a bit of an imposter, especially when it was pointed out that 27 people had auditioned and only a handful had gotten in.  I never sang with any of the BYU choirs!  I guess I'll be working extra hard to earn my keep-- but lucky for me, that will be a lot of fun!

Blogging Milestones

So how's this for craziness...

This is my 1,000th blog post!!! 

Yup.  As of the hitting of that "Publish" button, I have officially published one thousand posts...  (There are another forty or so that never made it past the draft stage, but those don't really count.  I have, however, been reading through them and seeing if there's any material there that I should revisit!)

I know blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside for most of the world-- facebook and instagram have taken over as a way to share our lives and keep in touch.  But I'm glad I've stuck to blogging.  Just this last week my big kids pulled out the blog books that Craig and my mom have published and spent several days perusing them.  And then I started re-reading what I'd written as I was putting the books away (because heaven forbid they put something back when they're done with it!), and I was just tickled reading about some of the things my kids did when they were smaller that I would have forgotten about otherwise!

I've come a long way since when I first started blogging-- back then (in 2008) Kendra was just a baby, I had two kids and lived in a little townhome style apartment.  Craig and I were already looking for our first home to buy, and within a few short weeks we actually found one and bought it and moved in.  That seemed like a miracle at the time-- actually, it still sort of feels like a miracle.  And then suddenly we were having oodles more babies and life just kept accelerating on us!  I'm glad I've managed to record some of the minutiae and I'm even more glad that I occasionally have pictures matched up with the memories.  There are so many time each day when I think, "Oh, I'll have to remember this!" but so often those things slip away-- like a few weeks ago when Craig was asked to help pass the sacrament at church, and Ryder spent the entire time enthusiastically waving to him, while Camille sat on my lap quietly chanting, "Go, Daddy, go!  Go, Daddy, go!"  You would think Daddy was a football star or something.  It was adorable.

These kids might want to make me pull my hair out sometimes.  But more often than not, they just keep me laughing.

It's a good life.

I want to keep remembering everything that I can.

And while I'm allowing myself to be a bit sappy, thank you for continuing to read along with our family!  I wanted to do some sort of giveaway or something, but that new HVAC is being installed as I'm typing this and I'm feeling very poor.  And besides that, I have no idea what I could possibly give you that you would want.  But please know that I value your friendship (otherwise I wouldn't have invited you to be one of my readers!) and I honestly do appreciate that you bother to keep up with me and my crazy family! 


P.S.  I have no idea why this is double spaced.  I can't seem to be able to undo it.  For posting 1,000 times, I sure do suck at actually doing computer stuff...!

My Kids as Caterpillars?

While we were in Hawaii, Tracy took the kids to Carter Mountain and snapped these pictures of them.  I'm not usually a huge fan of those wooden cut-outs for you to stick your face in, but something about these just cracked me up (it probably helped that I was missing my kids)-- so I'm going to put them up here, too-- mostly so they'll make it into next year's blog book!

Colton, sweet as always

Camille, barely able to reach it

And Ryder, looking like he might actually be that little caterpillar!

I know-- it's so silly.  But I love it!  These crazy kids of mine!

Remember Easter?

As seems to be happening more and more, I think we celebrated Easter about five times (back in the spring, when Easter happened.  Ya know).  And I even took pictures at some of those! 

The first was our neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  We haven't been able to make it in the past, so it was fun to get to go this time.  They overestimated how many kids would be in the three-and-under hunt, so Camille came away with a bucket spilling over with eggs!  She was pretty pleased with herself, although it led to Ryder and Colton feeling a bit jealous!

Look-- I actually did something with her hair!

It was bright outside, so everyone is squinting at the camera

I need to buy my kids some sunglasses

That's Ryder grabbing an egg out of the bushes

Kendra found one of the golden eggs that got her a big chocolate bunny!

Around the same time was Charlottesville's TomTom Festival.  We headed to the downtown mall to see all the booths that had been set up, and then of course we had to get pizza for the kids, and food truck stuff for me!  I love going to the downtown mall for stuff like this-- we always see friends (and it's not like we're even terribly social people, so that's really saying something!) and it all just makes me happy.  THIS is what Charlottesville is like, not whatever you've been reading in the news recently.

Craig and I are such scrubs here-- I didn't put on makeup and he hasn't shaved.  But I kind of love this picture in all its honesty!

And then on actual Easter we went to Craig's parent's home for Easter dinner.  We hadn't been able to dye eggs yet, so I brought all our stuff so we could do it there.  We thought we could set up in front of their house, so we wouldn't have to worry about spilling in the house.  But it turns out that this is a recipe for disaster-- we spilled more dye than we have in all our other years combined!  But at least it didn't really matter!  But in case you were wondering: using a table is key for a decent egg-dyeing experience!

Dinner was, of course, wonderful, and we all had a wonderful time!

Quite the fashion going on here: Camille is in the same dress as before; Ryder is wearing pajama shorts and his church shoes?  And I believe Tom's sporting duct tape on his shoe!  We're a classy bunch!

So, yes, we enjoyed our Easter!  But next time we'll use a table!!!