Another phone photo blog before I talk about our beach vacation

I downloaded (uploaded?) all our phone pictures so that I could write about the beach, but I realized we still had a lot of pictures of things that happened before that, so here's a bunch of pictures!

 Kids at a park in Maryland while I was in the temple.

 Dan went to climb an old bridge base thing downtown with a friend from the climbing gym. He loved it and he's planning on going again soon.

 We blew up the inflatable slide from G&G Cheney (which we will gladly share at any future Cheney gatherings) and had some fun.

 We met Dan for lunch. Sam's picture faces are all over the map lately.

 Had a little photo shoot with Eli. It's a lot easier now that he can sit up! He started sitting around 7 months.

 Crying about something.

 Before I cut her hair. I just trimmed off a few inches.

 Weekly library time. I feel like I take a very similar picture each time we go to the library...

 A few pictures from the zoo that we took on Dan's camera so they weren't included in Afton's birthday post.

  On a train tour of the African area.

 Afton and Sam (but let's face it, mostly Sam) putting together her new Frozen castle before church last week.

 All done!

 I don't know how she can be so serious astride a purple stick unicorn, but she can. Modeling her new nightgown.

 This was at the park the day of her birthday playdate.

 She's gotten a lot of mileage out of that hat!

A rare occurrence these days...

All the fun just wore him out.

Afton's fifth birthday

Today our sweet, fun, spunky, beautiful little Afton turned five! The festivities began a few days ago...

Afton had mentioned that she'd like to go to the zoo for her birthday. Saturday Dan had some stuff to do in the morning. After an early lunch we headed to the Richmond Metro Zoo. It was better then we expected! Lots and lots of animals and we could see pretty much all of them (not too many hiding asleep in the shade).

 We could feed the giraffes. Sam and I both fed this one. Yuck.

(In honor of Grandma and Grandpa Cheney coming to visit, our kids decided to wear their Cheney shirts.)

We met my parents back at our house, visited for a while, and then headed out for Afton's second request - Chick-fil-a. Then we came back to our house for presents and cake. Afton opened her presents first.

This baby stole the show. It's a Frozen themed Lego castle.

She also received shoes, a dress, a nightgown, a puzzle, a pillowcase, and Sleeping Beauty.

Afton had drawn a picture of what she wanted her cake to look like:

I gathered she wanted a layered blue and pink cake (similar to one she saw in a Sleeping Beauty book). Here's what I came up with. It was a little rough (especially the drapey things on the sides) but she didn't seem to mind. It was my first tiered cake.

She's the cat's pajamas.

Our traditional pic with the birthday kid.

Sunday she got sung to during primary and we ate leftover cake. She and Sam put together the lego castle and played with it pretty much all day.

Today, her actual birthday, I invited a bunch of people from church to meet at a park for a playdate. She had lots of friends come and it was a beautiful morning. She wanted to watch Sleeping Beauty, so she and Sam did that, too. We also went to the gym and they gave her a free shake. We had pasta for dinner, and she got to blow out another candle. (I had an extra "tier" left over from the first cake, so I decorated that for her to use today.)

 We got a little creative with our wrapping. Dan drew this picture of Afton astride her purple stick unicorn, Majesty.

She had a great birthday! We are so blessed to have her in our family.

New River Gorge with the Roomie and our families

I have been so lucky this summer to have seen three of my former roommates. First Destiny, then Katrina, and now Brittney. With Destiny, we lived fairly close to each other (before she moved) so it was easy to take a short drive up or down. Katrina's parents still live near my parents, so when she's in town, it's also a quick drive over to Charlottesville. Betsy lives near Dan's parents, so whenever we head to Washington, I try to see her, too. Brittney lives in Ohio. For the foreseeable future, I won't have any relatives in Ohio. But I hadn't seen Brittney since I went to her wedding six years ago. That is too long to go without seeing her! She and I decided that needed to change. I looked at a map to find what was smack dab between us. Beckley, West Virginia. Close to the New River Gorge National Park. Bam. We hatched our plan.

Both of our husbands (who had never met) agreed to take a Friday off so that we could play Friday and Saturday. We drove out Friday morning, stopped for lunch, and met at one of the visitor's centers in the park. I had to restrain myself from doing a cheesy slow-mo run into a big hug when I saw her. We caught up a little bit while the kids stretched their legs and watched a video about pollution and how we are killing the planet. We stopped briefly at a waterfall overlook (Sandstone Falls), then drove on to another visitor's center with a beautiful view (Horseshoe Bend) and a park for the kids.

I deeply regret not using my phone's panorama setting to take a picture. Britt's husband did and it was an awesome picture!

 The weather was perfect.

I think Britt has a picture of all of us together. I'll have to get that from her.

After playing at the park and seeing the view. we took a little hike (once we actually found the trailhead) with the strollers, which started out well and then got worse as the terrain got more rocky...
Then we found another playground which was shady and secluded so we stayed there until it was dinnertime.

I had previously looked on tripadvisor and urbanspoon for restaurant recommendations in the town where we were staying, Oak Hill. We chose to go to what was supposedly the best of the town's 26 options, Los Vaqueros. Not the greatest, but I guess I shouldn't have expected much. The company, however, didn't disappoint!

After dinner we headed to our hotel. Brittney's girls (cute little Lucy and Claire) were pretty pooped so they went to bed while Dan and I took our three for a swim.

The next morning, Dan arranged to go rock climbing with a local company. The park has something like 1,600 different climbing routes and is one of the best outdoor areas to climb within driving distance of us, so it was a great place for Dan to go. I dropped him off bright and early and then we met up with the Martins at Canyon Rim Visitor's Center to check out the awesome bridge. Sam liked to read all the signs and then regale us with the various facts. Fact 1: You can fit one Washington Monument and two Statues of Liberty (without the base) on top of each other under the bridge. (And have 20 feet to spare.) Fact 2: It is the largest single-arch bridge in the Western hemisphere. Fact 3: It is made of a steel which rusts on the outside, but not on the inside.

It was nice and early so we had the whole overlook to ourselves.

We decided to do another hike, Endless Wall hike, I think. This one was about two miles and had a nice overlook which was straight down and pretty nerve wracking for us moms with little kids. We didn't get too close to the edge.

Lucy, Afton, Claire, Sam.

I can't stress enough how perfect the weather was! Oh, it was so nice. And this trail was well shaded which was perfect.

We met back up with Dan who told us all about his climbing adventure while we ate PB&J's and watched the kids sword fight with sticks.

 I was jealous that Lucy lets Brittney do her hair in all these cute ways... Afton usually just wants her hair down.

We grabbed some ice cream nearby and hung out a little bit longer before saying goodbye.

 Love that girl!

Oh, it was so great to see her! And it meant so much to me that Ryan would take the time off and that they would bring their girls and everything. It was just great. We won't let another six years go by again!

After saying goodbye, our family went back to the bridge view, since Dan hadn't seen it yet.

 It was much more crowded this time...

On our way out, we also found a crazy little road that got you down the gorge for another cool view of the bridge.

Not quite sure what's going on in the next picture down. They look so forlorn.

We piled back in the car and headed back home.