YMCA Sports and Classes

Our summer was filled with camps, YMCA sports and classes, fun activities, and exciting vacations. The camps were mostly Abby's and Tyler's. I already posted about Abby's volleyball camps and church camp. Tyler was gone for two weeks in June: one week for Scout Camp, and another week for High Adventure. He had a great time camping, swimming, mountain biking, and hiking; basically doing all the fun, outdoorsy, stuff he loves to do with all the boys from church. He's not very good about taking pictures though, so I'm sad that I don't have any pictures to show. It was hard having him gone so long, but we kept busy finding things to entertain the girls. To start, we had joined the YMCA again, so for the summer session, every girl played a sport, and Abby played two! Taryn chose indoor soccer and she was counting down the days until her first practice. She was so excited to play. She had a great coach and really had fun learning the basics. She liked to play and was good at chasing around the ball, but we kept working with her to be more aggressive and go for the ball instead of just dancing around the group of kids who were all competing to touch the ball. She really did have a fun time and loved to stop and give us thumbs up during her games. She even made two goals during the season! We were so proud of her. Here she was at her first practice.

And here are some pictures from her first game. 

Finally, here's a team picture at the end of the season. One serious picture, and of course one funny picture.

Taryn also took gymnastics and ballet classes. Here are a few pictures from those classes. She had a lot of fun doing gymnastics and getting better at cartwheels, the beam, the vault, and doing back-bends. Her last month in ballet, Taryn was the only girl in her class. She had fun learning ballet steps and having that one-on-one time with her teacher. 

This was also the first summer that we used the YMCA pools. The older girls would swim while Taryn had soccer practice, but we'd go early some days too so that Taryn could also swim. They had a fun time playing their own games and entertaining themselves in the swimming pools. Aubrey and Tessa had to take tests each week to show that they could swim in the deep end and swim without me in the room. They were awesome of course and loved having the independent bracelet that allowed them full reign of the pools. 

Tessa and Aubrey advanced to Rollers 2 in gymnastics for the entire summer. They love doing the tumbling and especially the vault. I took the majority of my pictures at their last practice. It's so hard to get good pictures of their tumbling, but I found on my camera, I could take action shots that basically show them doing the move in slow motion. And then I picked and saved the best shot from each action. First, here are a few of them together; one from stretching and one from the balance beam. 

Tessa loved the vault and mastered the front handspring over the vault early on. However, one time she over rotated and fell hard and it took her weeks to work up the courage to try again. By that time, Aubrey had mastered it as well and moved on to doing it with a twist. Both were awesome at it by the end of the summer. Here are few still shots of Aubrey on the vault. 

 I've also included a still picture of Aubrey as she did a one-handed cartwheel. I really love watching them learn and perform these hard skills. They're so talented!

Tessa still amazes me with her power, strength, and grace. She was so close to doing a back handspring without any help. She can do it by herself with the cheese mat that gives her an easier angle. And I loved how I was able to get this perfect handstand of hers on the beam.

Tessa and Aubrey both picked soccer for their summer sport. Tyler ended up being their coach since no other parent signed up. He had fun working with them and we made new friends with other lds families because two boys from another ward in our stake ended up signing on our team. The majority of the team were beginners, but they won a lot of their games still. Tessa scored multiple times throughout the season and Aubrey had some awesome blocks when she played goalie. I took a few pictures throughout the season, but we forgot to take an official team picture at the end of the season. Here's a picture from one of their first practices. They were trying to score on Tyler. Most practices ended with the kids scrimmaging Tyler. That was their favorite part - one against seven. Tyler loved it too! 

Here are some pictures from one of their games. Tessa was fast and very good on offense. With a little more ball-handling practice, she'd make a really great soccer player. She was debating if all the running was for her though because when I asked if she wanted to continue playing soccer, she was just like, "eh. I guess not." Aubrey preferred playing goalie or defense because it was less running. We just tried to keep telling her she still had to pay attention to the game and not just visit with her fellow-defense players. :) 

Here's Aubrey and Tessa after their first game. And I also took a picture of them with their teammate, Haydn, who was the only other girl on their team. They all had fun playing together.

Abby had decided at the end of the last school year that she may want to try out for the school basketball team this coming year. The coaches at school suggested that they play on some team before trying out, so Abby signed up for basketball through the YMCA. Besides shooting hoops in the street with friends, she's never played before, so it was definitely a learning experience. Her coach, Kenny, was very gracious and worked with her a lot. She played on a team with two of her friends, Bella and Anahi, who we met when they played on our volleyball team. 

They lost the majority of their games, but Abby had definitely improved. By the end of the season, she was more confident on the court, and wasn't as nervous when she got the ball, and she even attempted a couple shots. She had a good learning experience and now can decide if she really liked it enough to actually try out for the school team come spring. 

We coached two volleyball teams again this summer, but didn't get any pictures until the final games since I'm actually coaching instead of just watching. Most of our girls were with us for at least a year and a lot of them were finishing their final season with the Y because they'll be two old to play once school starts. A lot of our girls were trying out for their school teams and we've just been hearing that they've made it, so we are so excited for them. It'll be fun to watch them play each other for school now, but already have so many friends at other schools because they knew each from YMCA volleyball.  

 We had a great time coaching, but we told them we couldn't coach anymore since Abby was trying out for her school team. We found out just last week that Abby made her school team, and the A team at that! She'll most likely be the starting setter. We're so excited for her and to see her play. Her school games will be the same time as the YMCA games which was the main reason we stopped coaching. It was fun while we did it, and it was awesome to have something that Tyler and I could do together and with Abby too. Now it's time to sit back and just be a cheerleader and spectator as Abby continues to play, but we'll miss all these fun girls and the fun times we had.