Milly’s school planned a beach cleanup day at Wrightsville Beach for today. I didn’t say anything to Milly about it originally because I wasn’t going to have her today, but circumstances did give me Milly from last night to today and Milly mentioned to me a few days ago that she wanted to go help out, so I took her to that this morning after getting Fawkes and Phoenix up and changed.

There weren’t a ton of people and they generally scattered in all directions to scour the beach for trash, but her teacher was there so the two of them walked down the beach and picked up what they could find.

I, perhaps somewhat selfishly, took the opportunity to try out a bunch of stuff with my drone. I mean, there wasn’t that much trash anyway, so they didn’t need my hands. I took advantage of not being in a restricted flying zone and not having a bunch of trees and telephone wires around to try out a bunch of the smart features of the Mavic 2 Pro. Here’s a mashup of the footage I came up with set to some song I found on Google.

I added a neutral density filter, which allowed me to put in some good manual settings and made the color pop. I mean, I’m pretty blown away by the picture quality and just how good it looks.

Since I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable with it and we were in a nice, wide open space where fewer things could go wrong than at home, I told Milly I’d let her fly it a little bit. We got back to the parking lot a few minutes after we were allowed to be there and the lot was filling up though, so instead of doing at the beach I took her across from the Port City Community Church parking lot (which I assume is probably overflow parking) and let her mess around with it some there. Under very close supervision, of course.

Tristen was somewhat conscious when we got home, being pretty constantly tired from feeding Griffin at night and also perhaps feeling a little bit of whatever Fawkes and Phoenix have come down with. All three boys were sleeping, so Milly and I checked out the drone footage and watched an episode of a Netflix choose your own adventure thing.

After Fawkes and Phoenix got up and were given a snack, I took all the kids but Griffin for a walk to try to give Tristen less to have to worry about. Milly and I had seen Nick and Luka on our way home and Nick told us they were having a yard sale for as long as they could today to try to get rid of a bunch of stuff at their house, so I wagoned the boys over there while Milly walked along.

I set the drone to follow us the whole way to their house, and it did a great job. I made sure set the altitude above any phone wires, so the only concern was a few trees that stuck out into the road. I watched as it smartly maneuvered away from those as we went.

We all hung out there for a little while. I spotted a game of Carcassonne there and asked about it. Nick and Miles said they only played it once, and when I looked inside the box it did look untouched, so I asked Miles how much he wanted for it. He said a dollar and I told him I’d give him five. He said three and I told him five, because the game is $40 new and it’s already a steal at $5. I didn’t have any cash, so I owe the kid five bucks.

Fawkes and Phoenix were playing with a Fisher-Price airplane, so Nick told me to take it. In addition to those two things, Rye sent me home with some herbs for Tristen. Jacob and Annabelle were there too, and Milly joined them and Miles in trying to sell lemonade to everyone who walked up. I think the small cup was 50 cents, but the larger one was $1.50. After getting caught taking a larger cup myself as everything was winding down, I pointed out that I could get a 16 ounce bottle of whatever I wanted at the store up the road for that price. I said I’d make it up somehow though.

I let Milly stay to hang out with her pals and took the boys back for lunch and a nap. Amanda was originally supposed to pick Milly up around lunchtime, but she said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to nap and asked if it was okay to pick her up later. She ended up getting her around 3. Milly gave her a Mother’s Day present before she left.

Fawkes and Phoenix were rather snot-nosed today, particularly the former. We did what we could to keep them  entertained. As much as I do enjoy playing around with them, I do look forward to them actually playing more together.

Tristen and I finished watching the third (and it’s been announced, final) season of Santa Clarita Diet. They left off in a way that is decent for an ending, although they were setting up plenty of other stuff.

As I type this I have just come from feeding Griffin. I think I’ll try to regularly feed him during his first late-night feeding so Tristen can get more continuous rest. Right now he’s hanging on my shoulder and he’s just let loose with a few noises from a part of him that is a scant few inches from my nose. Fortunately it’s not terribly smelly at this point.