My Grandma, Jeanne Solheim, will turn 90 in September of this year, so my mom planned a big family reunion to celebrate her birthday. We all met in Phoenix, AZ the weekend of July 24th in honor of Grandma Jeanne. Those who were coming from out of town all stayed at the same resort and my mom reserved their clubhouse for a lot of our meals. The first day there, everyone arrived, got settled, and we took the kids swimming. Here are the girls with their cousins. So many girls!
As we ate our first big meal together, we took some pictures. It was fun to catch up with my cousins and have my kids meet some of their second cousins that they'd never met before. My grandma was so excited to see so many people and be loved by everyone. We played games in our free time, inside and outside the hotel rooms. Besides the pool, the resort had a sand volleyball court, shuffleboard, horseshoes, and a place where we set up a cornhole game. It was so fun to hang out with everyone and visit.
We had a little program and talent show at Grandma's church on Saturday. My dad played the pan and even Tessa prepared a number on the pan to perform. She did great playing in front of a bunch of people she didn't know.
Tessa and the other drummers in the family played a percussion number that was brought back by popular demand and requested by other family members because they remembered it from our last family reunion years and years ago. There was face painting and Taryn enjoyed playing with my cousin's daughter, Skye, who thought Taryn was just the most fun girl to play with.
Taryn and I went and sat with Grandma Jeanne while waiting for the program to start and while watching the slide show that my mom put together. We were all about the selfies so we could have some pictures with Grandma.
Grandma told us some of her favorite childhood memories and stories and ended with her testimony of the gospel. I was so happy to have my children there hearing the stories and testimony directly from their great-grandmother. It was so cool. I grabbed a quick picture of Grandma with her three oldest kids, my mom, Uncle Danne, and Aunt Denise as they brought out her birthday cake. Grandma also has 5 more kids from my Grandpa Ray's first marriage, and Uncle Matt, who was born after everyone else. Most of my aunts and uncles were there to help celebrate and it was fun to meet new members of the family and to reunite with those we hadn't seen in so long.
Each child under Grandma was assigned a bandana color so we could tell which kids belonged to which line of the family. We were black of course. Abby had me take a picture with her outside the church and I thought it was so cute. I love this girl.
I took some pictures of Abby with Tyler while waiting for the festivities to start. I thought both of these pictures were so awesome that I couldn't just pick one. They both had to be included. They look so much alike!
Here's a picture of all the black bandana folk. My mom and dad and all of their kids and grandkids with Grandma Jeanne. I think everyone was there except for John's wife McKaye who had just started a new job and couldn't take the time off from work.
I had to take some more generation pictures. Here are the four generations with Abby. And then a picture with just my family with Grandma Jeanne.
We set Grandma up in a comfy chair for all the pictures she had to be in. I took individual pictures of the girls with Grandma too, so here's Taryn and Abby.
And here's Tessa and Aubrey. I always love mentioning Aubrey when she gets her picture taken with grandma because Aubrey got her middle name, Jeanne, from her great-grandma and I love having her picture taken with her namesake.
One more picture of the cousins while we waited for the program. The girls got to dance to music that Abby had set up because Grandma loved to dance, so we did a lot of group dances. Old songs and some new to entertain the family. They had a fun time. Taryn played a little sand volleyball with her second cousins once she was tired of swimming in the pool.
With all my brothers there, we decided to take a picture together and I found a memory on Facebook that showed a picture of all four of us together, so we tried to reenact this photo, but Nevla said we didn't do a very good job of getting all the same facial expressions right. But I still thought it was cute and loved having the time to hang out and visit with my big brothers.
After our sibling picture, we needed one with just our family. I love these guys so much.
On our drive home from Arizona, we stopped at an Arby's in a gas station and this huge A was on the wall next to where you order. Aubrey thought it was pretty neat and asked for a picture by it since she determined that it was "A for Aubrey."
Abby finished up her volleyball league games when we got back into town. They played almost every week during the summer, but we missed some while we traveled, but I grabbed a few pictures at her final couple games.
As the summer went on, Abby practiced more and more with her high school to prepare for the school's volleyball season. The high school has you sign up for a week-long volleyball camp to help prepare for the school season. They bring in coaches from out of state to work with the girls because the high school coaches aren't allowed to technically coach until school starts, so they spend a lot of time doing open gyms and game playing during the summer so the coaches can observe. And then when they have their official tryout, they can make the team decisions based on the entire summer. At the Excel camp, Abby was working with most of the JV team from the previous year. She was a setter and her coach for the camp was named Kai and he was from Hawaii originally, but he's from SVU, which is a school with similar standards to BYU. He was very helpful in coaching Abby and even finished the week by giving her advice about college and telling her to consider SVU in her future. She had a great time that week and learned a lot.
I was able to go to the temple at the end of the summer, but since I walk across the border while the driver goes through an express lane, I asked some friends to go with me so I wouldn't have to walk alone. Audrey and Jessica were both able to go that day and we had a great time attending the temple together. I have great friends!
We had a few final fun days to end our summer including swimming playdates with friends. We swam at the Andersen's house and I took a picture with Meg while we hung out in the shade and visited. When Meg was on my lap while I talked to her mom, Jessica, Abby came over, so Jessica made my daughter sit on her lap, so we could take this last picture. I thought it was pretty cute.
Our summer of 2019 turned out pretty awesome!
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