The girls did more chalk drawings in June. It was easy to find examples of what to draw online, so the girls would look up Disney chalk drawings about the quarantine and then copy what they liked. Tessa did this drawing of Olaf one evening and I’m glad we took a picture when we did even though it’s kind of dark because it rained the next day sadly. He still lasted a little longer, but it wasn’t as clear as this first night. I’m always super impressed with Tessa’s drawing abilities. She’s so talented! Tessa also did this drawing of Sleeping Beauty. There are so many creative drawings and quotes that go with Disney and the quarantine.
Taryn picked the drawing of the Little Mermaid and did a great job recreating it on her own. The quote says, “Look at this stuff. Isn’t it neat?” The white stuff under Ariel is supposed to be toilet paper because at the beginning of the virus, people starting buying and hoarding toilet paper for some reason, so stores were bare and people were worrying about having toilet paper. So a lot of quarantine jokes have to do with toilet paper now. Luckily we had our 3-month, Sam’s club pack supply of toilet paper, so we weren’t ever worried about it, but once we did have to buy more, Tyler did have to stand in line to get one pack because the stores started limiting how many you could buy and they would have workers hand them out one at a time as people waited in line for it. It’s been crazy. Aubrey chose the Tangled drawing with the quote, “Oh you’re tired of social distancing? That’s cute.” Once Aubrey wrote the quote and started the actual picture, she got bored and didn’t finish, so I went out one day and attempted to finish it for her. I’m not a very good artist, but I did my best to copy the example online. I was happy with how it was turning out until I finished her face and realized it didn’t really look like Rapunzel at all. Her face looked pretty manly to me. Well, it was a good try and with the hair, people could still understand what I was going for. The girls had a good laugh anyway and decided it was the eyebrows that did it. They’re just too heavy. I was happy with how the long braided hair and flower around her window frame turned out.
After the next rainstorm that cleared away our drawings, Tessa did a new one with Dory that turned out awesome. She was a little sad when someone rode through it the very next day on their bike or skateboard and smeared a couple blue lines through it, but it lasted for quite awhile on our sidewalk regardless. Aubrey and Taryn had also done their own chalk drawings that I didn’t get pictures of. They were just their own creations with uplifting quotes like “we’re all in this together” and “it’s going to be ok” with hopes that as people walked along our sidewalk, it would make them smile. Taryn did another online enrichment camp through the school and this one was a camping/s’mores class. They spent the entire week working on making a solar oven out of a shoe box so that on the last day of the week, they could cook s’mores in their homemade oven. She was very proud of her box and happy to share the treat with her family. We’re not sure how well the contraption actually worked in “cooking” the s’mores, but with the Texas summer heat, it doesn’t take long for a marshmallow and piece of chocolate to melt no matter what kind of box it’s in. Everyone enjoyed the treat and Taryn had fun creating the box.
Abby made a big deal of her half-birthday on June 19th. Since the other girls are always looking for a reason to bake in the kitchen, they asked if they could make her a cake for her half-birthday. She of course was very agreeable to that idea, so they made her a chocolate strawberry cake complete with homemade chocolate frosting and fresh strawberries on top. Abby celebrated her half-birthday with a photo shoot. She loves to take pictures and edit them using filters and stuff. She took this black and white one right outside our house by our roses.
She always takes a ton of pictures and I pick out my favorites to include in the blog and have on my phone to show off or put on Facebook. These were a couple more of my favorites. I can’t believe that Abby is now 15 and a half. Half way to 16 years old! She’s so grown up. I love how much we hang out and how well we get along. We are great friends and I love that we can talk about anything together. She’s one great teenager!
The week before Father’s Day, our ward put together a drive-by social where the families could drive through the church parking lot and get a root beer float courtesy of the young women organization. We had three stands each manned by one family so we could practice social distancing. Abby, Tessa and I were in charge of one of the stands. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I did get a picture of Tessa as she used the down time to decorate the parking lot with a Happy Father’s Day sign. The families who drove by were very appreciative of the ice cream treat and it was fun to say hi to our ward friends. On Father’s Day we had our usual Kasibbons dinner and we added to the fun by playing a game of bunco. It was so much fun. We set up four tables for our 15 people to play.
I was happy that my parents were able to attend too and I could spend Father’s Day with my dad. Bunco is a dice game that’s perfect for large groups where you switch tables and partners after every round, so you get to visit with everyone while you play the game. It has treats for the top winner, the top loser, and other silly reasons, so it was perfect for our two families with a lot of kids that are very competitive. Everyone said it was a lot of fun. I had planned it out for a couple of weeks and was very happy that it was a huge success.
We celebrated the dads with lots of cakes. Audrey made a lemon poppyseed cake and a chocolate Texas sheet cake, so we grabbed a picture with the three dads before digging into dessert. It was a great Sunday. We love our Dads! The girls spent a day learning how to cross stitch and had a fun time picking out designs and working on the pattern of a small cross stitch design. They got the hang of it pretty quickly, but it didn’t take long for the mess to take over my enter dining room table.
Abby picked up cross stitch later the same day, but wasn’t in the picture because she’s been taking summer school classes. She decided to get ahead on her required credits, so she took Health and Speech as a summer class and after five weeks of daily zoom conferences, she aced both classes and now has those requirements complete for high school. Here’s some pictures from another photo shoot that she did with her friend Sabrina. She sent me her favorites and I love them all!
I dropped them off at a church up the hill from our house where they took most of their pictures. The church has these beautiful blue windows and Abby really wanted to take pictures there. As they walked home from the church, they took other pictures along the way. I love her beautiful smile and her happy demeanor. She’s such a beauty - inside and out.
Sam Kasallis’s birthday was the end of June. He’s been very into Harry Potter lately, so he had a Harry Potter themed birthday. We dressed up and ate Harry Potter themed food. I even made pumpkin pasties two ways - a sweet one that tasted like pumpkin pie, and a savory one that I thought tasted like garlic bread, but no one else really liked that one because of the pumpkin texture. We took a picture of both of our families in our costumes. I love this picture so much! Everybody was so in character, from the kids with their wands, to the adults who were the professors and of course Tony as Voldemort. So funny! Abby dressed up as Professor Trelawny, the spacey divination teacher, but the funny thing to me was she looked exactly like my childhood best friend, Bente, in high school. Just the way her hair was and the scarf and glasses, every time I would look up at her, I would see Bente and just smile. I had to send a message to her the next day to let her know how much my daughter reminded me of how she used to look in high school. It really was a fun evening.
Abby has been doing volleyball still for school. They did a couple of weeks of in person practices, but then ended up going back to zoom workouts by the end of the month. One of the requirements was a square piece of wood that could be leaned against a wall for some volleyball drills. But when Abby told Tyler what she needed, he ended up making an awesome hitter’s box complete with wheels so she can move it around easily. It’s so nice to have a dad who’s handy and likes to build things. She’s really liked having something to hit the volleyball against that’s not the side of the house. We still play a lot of games as a family and one day we played a goofy game called Quelf that has you do silly things. Abby had to wrap her head with toilet paper until she rolled a four or something like that, so I had to get a picture of our teenager playing a silly game with her family.
Our final picture for June is of Taryn who got all dressed up fancy and went over to the Kasallis house to help Sam and Teagan serve dinner to AJ and his girlfriend, Brynn, who were having a date. I talked her into wearing the black dress because I told her that usually servers or waiters wear black and white, but the first thing she told me after she got home was as soon as she walked into their house in her black dress, the boys came downstairs in their blue suits. Oh well, it was just the thought I had, but didn’t remember that their boys currently have blue suits, not black. They had fun and did a great job. Coming up with creative ways to stay busy and not get bored has been the thing of the summer. We are very glad to have good friends and neighbors who our kids can play with so they can still have a fun summer even though we’re all stuck at home.
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