Charlottesville Trip

 Rob and I escaped for a night!!  Big thanks to Mimi for wrangling the kids and getting them off to school AND to Bob for our gift card to Boar's Head.  We spent a very nice day at some wineries and a brewery and headed back home Monday morning to enjoy a few hours kid-free.

Happy 11th!!!

 Aw, my sweet girl is 11!!  Birthdays on a school day are always a bit rushed....presents at 7am before Mommy has to go to work!

 And then it also happened to be a basketball night!  She opened cards from family and answered calls/texts while Fielder played basketball.

 A quick Sweet Frog trip to end her birthday night!

 As Claire's birthday tends to do, we really spread it out this year.  She had a small sleepover (started with 1-2 girls, but ended up 4 plus Claire - YIKES!)  Those girls were WILD animals.  They had a great time though and the 3rd floor recovered from the nail polish, gum, slime, popcorn, and make-up mess!!

The next weekend, she celebrated with Katie and Jenna.  We went to Cici's and had lunch together and played in the arcade.

 Lastly, she had a one-on-one celebration with her friend Norah, but I forgot to get a picture.  We went to lunch and then to see the movie Smallfoot (SO CUTE!!)  11th birthday, that's a wrap.

1st & 5th

 Here's to our 2nd and last year with both kids in the same school!  Fielder has FINALLY made it to 1st (which he wanted every. single. day. last year) and Claire is a big-time 5th grader.

 And here's their report at pick-up time.....thumbs up for Claire and thumbs-slightly-to-the-side-but-mostly-up for Fielder.

 First week and he's practicing his numbers.....hope this peer pressure keeps up.

Topsail 2018

Topsail 2018....Did I take pictures?  NOPE!  Ok, I took like 5.  Here they are and I hope sometime soon I'll dig up the ones Mom and Tara took and post a few more.  Topsail was beautiful as always and we had the most perfect weather.  We tried a new house in North Topsail which was great and the kids were obsessed with the elevator.  There were difficult moments (with a certain boy-child) but overall, a wonderful week at the beach.

Pink Power #3

This might be my favorite race picture ever!  My first time I've gotten to cross a finish line with the kids!!  This was my 3rd year for Pink Power - with almost no training at all I managed to do better than my first year and only 5 minutes slower than last year.  (Last year I trained A TON.)  It was a great race and I had so much fun!!  The 2nd half of the run is just awful with lots of small hills and 1 final BIG hill.  I was so excited to get to the top of the hill and look for Rob and the kids.  They were waiting right there on the field and I waved to them to come finish with me.  Claire held my hand the whole way and Fielder sprinted!!  I managed to place 7th in my age group (out of 46) and 52nd overall (out of 296.)  Not bad!  After the race I got a free massage and 10 minutes with these leg compression things on, then I was ready to go home and REST!!

I said "show your muscles"  - I guess Fielder wants us to check out his sweet abs ;-)

Another one in the books!

The Barnes Family Goes Glamping

Rob and I took the kids on our first camping trip!!  Well, it really wasn't camping.  We were in a cabin and cooked all our meals inside in our kitchen, but still.  :-)

I'd been wanting to do it for a long time and one day at work I looked up Jellystone and we just decided to go for it and booked it!  We had picked the one in Natural Bridge, VA because there is a drive-through safari nearby that we wanted to go to, but we actually never even went there because the kids enjoyed the campgrounds so much!

I took Friday off and at lunchtime we drove to Natural Bridge.  We were able to check into our cabin, get unpacked, and explore everything.  There was a pool area with slides, a splash pad, a giant slip n slide into the lake, a "Wibit" in the middle of the lake, and all kinds of kid activities like bubble parties.  Then we had dinner on our little screened porch!  That evening they had free smores and an outdoor movie.  Fielder could barely stay awake and we called it a night about 15 minutes into the movie.

We let the kids take turns sleeping one night in the bedroom with Daddy and one night in the loft with Mommy.  It was really a very cute cabin!  We had a TV, but sadly the wifi didn't work.  As much as I'd like to fuss about how the kids "couldn't live" without their wifi, I have to admit I was having withdrawals too!  I just wish I had at least brought a book or magazine with me.

Saturday morning we were able to be a little lazy.  The kids were up early, but after breakfast they were happy to watch TV and play non-wifi games on their kindles while we could sleep a bit more.  Then we headed back out for the pools, lake, lunch, and more pool/lake time!  Late in the afternoon we wandered down to the river area and found a gorgeous spot to wade out into the river (really shallow) and sit on the rocks while the water flowed over us.  I'm so mad I didn't bring the kids water shoes!  Rob and I loved it - if only we had a couple floats and a rope to tie us up to a tree.  The beach is my #1, but after that, the view of the river and mountains behind it was as perfect as it can get!
Oh, and they also had these awesome jumping pillows - so fun!

After a round of (free!) mini golf, we went back to the cabin for dinner.  Unfortunately our oven was broken, but the staff made up for it by giving us a free pizza delivered straight to our cabin.  Then we made our own little campfire - I didn't really want one to last a long time so we just gathered up enough sticks to have a short fire, roast marshmallows, and eat smores!!  Then the kids had fun throwing in some newspaper. 

Sunday morning I took the kids back to what might have been their favorite spot - the old arcade!  We played our last games and went to turn in tickets.  It was the most run-down rinky-dink thing, but they each got 3 pieces of candy for all their tickets.

After clearing out our cabin and checking out, we were able to spend another couple hours playing before driving home.  The kids really loved the lake!  Rob was pretty grossed out by it - and at times I was a little nervous they would get hurt, but it was very fun to them!

All in all, I'd say we had a very successful first "camping" trip.  I can't say it's what I would choose to do again, but kids are ready to go back every summer.  I wish I had more pictures of our adventures, but most of the time down by the lake or pools, I didn't even bring my phone. 

Just Peachy

We visited Carter's Mountain for their peach festival this year.  It was our first peach-picking experience.  We were happy to leave the rain behind in Richmond and try something new!  It was beautiful in the mountains with blue skies and no rain at all!  I didn't enjoy it as much as apple picking - you have to be really selective and they weigh more than apples so they add up pretty fast.  We each picked our favorite 6 or so.  They also tried peach cider and peach ice cream (well, Claire had vanilla!) 

After peaches, we were going to try and find a park somewhere to eat lunch, but my gps on my phone wouldn't work and we ended up getting completely lost in Charlottesville.  When I saw a sign for 64, I figured we should take it and just eat lunch in the car!  It was an adventure at least :-)

I thought we'd make more recipes with peaches, but we enjoyed eating them so much they were gone pretty quickly.  I did try a peach salsa (with shrimp and scallops) and it was pretty good!  Our final 2 peaches were sliced up and put in the freezer for a smoothie.