We Joined the YMCA

I'm trying to stay caught up before school ends and I have to post about each of the girls' school years, so here's an update of April and May. Taryn and I have great fun while the girls are in school. We go to the park weekly, exercise classes where she gets to play with her friends, and a mom and me music class. Her best friend right now is Teagan and they love to play together. They are so excited when they see each other and when they are apart they ask about each other all day long. Here are a few pictures of them when they've been together lately.

The Kasallis family is our good friends and even though they have four boys and we have four girls, our kids get along great. Our two oldest, Abby and AJ, are almost a year apart in age but they are good friends. I embarrassed them and made them pose for a picture after church one Sunday because they unknowingly matched and it was too cute to not take a picture. 

The girls' school this year has done a lot of fund raisers through restaurants, so anytime they have one, we go for dinner and the school gets some money. A couple weeks ago, they had a fund raiser at Whataburger so we went and the girls got a picture with Whataguy. Aubrey was too nervous to get that close, but the other girls didn't mind. I thought it was a cute picture and even though it's school related I didn't know whose post to include it in, so I thought I'd include it here.

As for my post title, I also wanted to include some pictures of the girls after starting classes at the YMCA. We joined for the summer and the girls immediately picked out three classes they wanted to do. Abby decided on tumbling, cheer, and hip hop. Tessa and Aubrey both picked tumbling, gymnastics, and ballet. Taryn is doing a parent/child gymnastics class and ballet. They are all so cute and seem to enjoy them all. Here are a few pictures I took from their first week.

They've all learned so quickly. Tessa has even been asked to join the next level of gymnastics for June. After three weeks, she's already doing front walkovers by herself and almost doing a backbend by herself. Aubrey is doing cartwheels much better and all three girls know all the ballet feet positions.

Abby and Tessa learned a cheer that they performed at a YMCA fund raiser and this month Abby was the only one signed up for her hip hop class. It made her a little nervous, but we told her having one on one lessons is awesome. We'll see what they change or keep doing for the next month, but so far they are staying busy and enjoying it. We've entered the realm of after school activities so twice a week, we are running around town and having late dinners, but I'm hoping once school's out, it won't seem too hectic. Abby will also be playing volleyball at the Y once school is out. She has been waiting to do that for over a year, so she's really excited about that.

Tyler and I were hoping to get more use out of the YMCA classes, gym, and racquetball courts for ourselves, but so far the girls' classes have taken up all our time. Maybe this summer it will be a little better. I've had to come to the terms that this YMCA membership may just be more for the girls than for me and Tyler. But the more classes they have and the busier they are, the more we are getting our money's worth, so we're all happy. :)

Finally, for an early birthday present for me, Tony and Audrey Kasallis bought us all tickets to a dinner theater show at UTEP. We saw Mary Poppins and had a yummy dinner of chicken cordon bleu complete with dessert. The show was good, but a little long. We had a good laugh at the intermission because both boys thought it was over and they were shocked when we told them it was only half way through. We did know that getting our husbands to do something like a play would not be easy; but Audrey and I figured if we all went together, at least the boys would have each other to make it through the entire night and they did. They even said besides the length it wasn't that bad. It was a fun night out and our girls enjoyed having a babysitter, so it was a win-win for everyone.