February 2021, Part 1 - Aubrey Turns 12, Tessa Runs Track

Aubrey turned 12 on February 10th and she had been looking forward to it for awhile because we had set 12 to be the age for when the girls could get their ears pierced. Aubrey has wanted her ears pierced for years. Tessa got her ears pierced at 12 two years ago and ever since that day, Aubrey’s been begging for us to change our stance on when she could get her ears pierced. She was hoping she could get them done sooner than waiting for her 12th birthday. However, we held out, so as soon as her birthday came, it was the top of her to-do list. Her birthday this year was on a Wednesday, so as soon as we got home from school and work, we headed out to the mall to get her ears pierced. We had a little hold up when we got to the store in the mall because their piercer was not at work that night. They were willing to schedule us for the next day, but Aubrey really wanted them done that night. We tried another store in the mall that the lady recommended, but it was a tattoo and piercing store that didn’t allow children inside under the age of 18. We found another piercing place on the bottom level of the mall, but Aubrey was really hoping to have it done at a Claire’s, so we ended up driving to the outlet mall hoping to get there before they closed. Luckily, we made it in time; she got her ears pierced, and she was happy with her blue gemstone studs that she had been planning on getting. We love this beautiful girl and are happy to have her bubbly and spunky personality in our home.

Aubrey has always been our most fashion conscious child who loves to dress up fancy, accessorize, and have beautiful hairstyles. In preparation for her 12th birthday, she decided she wanted to have a new hairdo every day for the week leading up to her birthday. Her first hairstyle of three braids was also a twin day that she had set up with her friend Rianne so that they had the same hair and clothes for the day. She had a friend take a picture of them at school so I’d have it. I remembered to take a picture of her hair some of the mornings before leaving for school.

Most nights Aubrey would show me a picture of what she wanted for the next morning. We are usually pretty rushed in the morning to get out the door, but Aubrey was very good about waking up extra early so that we would have enough time to get the hairstyles in. She was ok with Taryn copying one of her previous hairstyles, so I was able to get two hairstyles in one picture one of the mornings. Aubrey said she got a lot of compliments each day at school as she showed up with new hairdos.

Abby and Tessa made Aubrey’s birthday cake - a double layered heart-shaped cake with a strawberry filling and blue icing. Aubrey’s favorite color is still blue and she loved the way the cake turned out. Aubrey opened up her presents after dinner where we had picked up food from her choice of restaurant. She got a few presents from her sisters, but the big present on the bottom was full of our traditional gift in a gift in a gift wrapping style. She was the last one of our family and the Kasallis family to get her birthday presents wrapped this way, so she had been looking forward to it for a long time. She was very happy with all of her gifts which included air pods, shoes, clothes, and lots of new earrings.

 

Aubrey was able to have a little birthday party at our house the weekend after her birthday. She invited five friends and they made their own pizzas and watched a movie. They had fun visiting and hanging out, and it was fun for me to listen to them as they talked about school and boys and things that they’re in to these days. It was definitely a girls middle school party. They were really cute.

 

The girls had a lot of fun eating snacks while watching the movie and doing karaoke on the wii. These are Aubrey’s closest friends from school this year - Lydia, Abby, Lexi, Aubrey, Rianne, and Angie.

One day as Tyler and I were driving home from an errand, we saw these deer in front of a house in our neighborhood. They blended in really well and at first looked like they were just statues as part of their front yard decorations until we saw them move. So Tyler made a U-turn and we headed back to get a closer look. I was able to get this picture of them as they were wandering in front of the houses. We realized as they started walking that the one in front must have been injured because he did not ever use his back right leg. You can even see it in the picture that he never put that leg down and you can tell that something is the matter with it. He was still getting around fine, but we felt bad for him knowing that there really wasn’t anything for us to do.

This year the middle school is doing a yearbook, but they are having parents send in the student pictures. I included Aubrey’s picture already, but we had taken Tessa’s picture a week or so later, so here it is finally making it into the blog. Tessa also started track in February and after just a few weeks of practices, they had their first meet. Because of the pandemic, fans were not allowed, so I had to drop her off early one Saturday morning and just take this picture as she got out to wait for the bus.

Luckily when she came home after her meet, Abby’s friends Astrid and Braelinn talked Tessa into a photo shoot so I could have a lot of pictures of Tessa in her track uniform. I really liked these pictures and those girls were really good about getting candid and natural poses out of Tessa that I loved.

After a few practices, they had their time trials and Tessa was one of the fastest 8th grade girls. She was entered into three events for their meet. She got to run the 100M, the 400M, and the 4 by 400 relay. She thought she’d be placed with the other long distance runners since she’s comfortable with those distances because of cross country, but because she was so fast in the trials, she was happy to do some of the shorter distances too.

She had a friend take a picture of her at the school where their first meet was held. She said it was a lot of fun and she did so well at the meet. She placed 4th in the 100M, 2nd in the 400M, and her team placed 1st in the 4x400 relay. She really enjoyed it and I was sad to miss watching it. Continuing on with sports, Taryn has continued playing basketball games every week and you can see the kids improve with each practice and game. 

Abby had a tournament in February on the east side of town. I was able to watch her play and she had a great day. Her friend Josh came to see her play as well. They were short on some players because of injury so Abby got to play all around and hit while in the front row. She really loves hitting even though her main job is setting. She was so excited to be able to play the front row at this tournament and I was able to get this picture of her as she scored a point from her kill. She also got to be the team captain for the day because the regular captain was the one out due to injury, so all around it was a great day for Abby and I loved watching her play.

Abby’s high school volleyball team posted this picture of all of the girls from Varsity and JV on their social media page. I saved the picture and was happy to have it here so that she can remember her volleyball career in high school.

All of our girls are awesome. We love how dedicated they are to their passions and how they like to grow as they learn new things. I love their positive attitudes and their amazingly good examples that they set to those around them. We are so proud of them and all that they do!

January 2021 - Family Fun, Taryn Starts Basketball, Midland Tournament

Our new year started off with Abby spending the evening on her first “date.” Abby and a group of friends met up downtown to check out the Christmas lights. She went with her friends, Braelinn and Astrid, and three boys that are from Astrid’s stake on the east side of town. The boys were Josh, Timmy, and Timmy’s cousin, Ethan. Abby had met them at the pantry where she volunteers, and since then the boys had wanted to get together. They stopped by our house afterwards to play games and we were very impressed when the boys came in to introduce themselves to me and Tyler. Josh was the first one to introduce himself and shake our hands. Since Abby had turned 16 a couple weeks earlier, we considered this her first official date since the boys planned it and there were the same number of boys and girls. Abby said she had a good time.

Our first Kasibbons dinner of the year was on January 3rd and that’s when we finally got to celebrate our Christmas together. After dinner, we all sat around the tree one more time to exchange gifts. The girls all got gifts from the Kasallis family that they had picked out for them from their trip to Disney World. They got Tyler our favorite drinks from Hawaii, and Tyler made Grandma V a planting box for gardening. But the best gift, and reaction, was Logan and his gift. Tyler got him his very own mini-fridge and sodas. Logan was so excited, he pulled it out right away and started setting it up to use. We love this family and are so happy that we get to hang out so much together and have our kids grow up together.

As the girls continued school virtually, we finally found out that we could start school in person in January. We opted for our girls to go in person since I would be at work too, but Abby talked us into letting her stay virtual since she’s in high school and getting great grades from home. This was a project that Aubrey did before going back in person. She did a history project and chose to do it on Thomas Edison and the light bulb. I was very impressed with her ideas and it was all her own work to put together this board including using lights that she poked through from the back. I also found this filtered picture on my phone that Aubrey took and saved. She looked too cute that I had to save it. My beautiful Aubrey.

The middle school is still planning on doing a yearbook for this school year, but instead of having a picture day at school (since half of the students are still attending virtually), they asked the parents to upload our own pictures of our kids for the yearbook. I took this picture of Aubrey one day after church and we sent it in to be her yearbook picture for this year. This second picture is our official “first day of school” picture that we finally got to take on January 19th, 2021 - 10 months after the last time they were in school.

I’ve been working full-time this whole school year at the school and in January, I finally started back to work in person. Abby’s car was loaned to another family for a couple of weeks in January, so there were a couple days when Abby needed my car to get to and from her volleyball workouts, so she had to drop me off at work and pick me up afterwards. One time she was waiting in the parking lot for me when one of the teachers came out and saw her behind the wheel. It was Ms. DeMore who taught Abby in the 3rd grade, so she’s always shocked when she hears about Abby’s growing up milestones. She also shares a birthday with Abby, so Abby really is one of her favorite students that she talks about a lot. She took this picture of Abby and then sent it to me because she couldn’t believe that Abby was already driving. This second picture was actually taken by Tessa of our mountains after we got a skiff of snow one morning. This is my kind of snow - pretty enough to cover the mountains and houses, but it melts within the day. I thought it was really pretty and I’m glad Tessa thought to take a picture as we drove to school that morning.

The last Sunday in January was another big day for our family. Tyler was called into our ward’s bishopric, which meant he needed to be ordained a high priest. He was able to ask his dad to come out to do that ordination and they were able to come. Tyler’s dad was scheduled to have cataract surgery that same week, but they still drove out for the weekend just to do the ordination and be there for his calling before they started on their journey back home. They drove multiple days to be here in town less than 24 hours, but we were so grateful that they were able and willing to come and spend that time with us. I was so happy that we were able to get a picture all together before church that day. We love our family.

As we go to church in person, Tessa and Aubrey have started wearing high heels every week and they are pretty much my height with them on. It was really noticeable when we had a Kasibbons dinner one night and we saw the difference in height between Sam (who’s short for his age) and his good friends Tessa and Aubrey who were both towering over him in their high heels.

During the three day weekend in January, Tyler had the day off too and he wanted to play. He looked up fun things to do and ended up scheduling some bays at Top Golf. We took our family and the Kasallis family and we golfed for a couple of hours. Abby brought her friends Astrid and Josh, so we divided up our two bays between Tyler and the teenagers, and Audrey and I and the little kids. It was the first time for a couple of the kids, so it took us awhile to get the hang of it, but we all had fun golfing and eating yummy food. 

 

Tyler and the teenagers played on the second bay and they had fun too. Tyler loves to golf and he got 75 points multiple times because he hit the ball so far, it went to the very back of the range. It was a lot of fun and the perfect way to celebrate on our vacation day. I got this picture of all the kids before we left.

Logan and Tessa were not able to go to Top Golf with us because they already had plans to go to White Sands with their group of friends. Three of the kids, Reve, Seki, and Blaire, have January birthdays, so their moms took the group for the day to celebrate. I love Tessa’s group of friends. They love to hang out and they have fun together. They pretty much get together every week to hang out and/or party. I’m just glad it’s a great group of kids and that Tessa gets to be a part of it.

Taryn started basketball through the YMCA in January and she loves it so much. They are the orange tigers and she and Teagan are on the team together. They spent weeks talking me and Tyler and Audrey and Tony into letting them sign up for basketball. Taryn’s never played basketball before, but she’s picked it up quickly and really enjoys playing. It’s great exercise for her and I’m happy that she’s doing something active. She was very excited at the first practice to find out that there was another girl on the team with her. They are on a 1st and 2nd grade team even though she and Teagan are the oldest and tallest players on the team, but since it was her very first time to ever play basketball, we figured it was a good starting place for her.

Their first game happened to take place the same weekend that Abby and I were out of town, but thanks to technology, we were able to watch via FaceTime as Tyler was there in person. Taryn made five baskets during the game and earned herself ice cream that Tyler promised her if she scored a basket. The younger group is a lot more laid back on rules and points. They don’t even keep score, the basket is lower, and they don’t call fouls or have violations for traveling. They aren’t allowed to steal the ball either, so it was a good place for these kids to start and just get the basics of the game down. I loved watching her play even though it was just from my tiny phone screen. Luckily Audrey took some videos of her shots so I could save and share those on social media.

 

Abby had two volleyball tournaments in January. The first one was a local tournament on the east side. It was the first time since the pandemic started that I was able to watch Abby play in person again with her club team. She’s playing with the Sol volleyball club again, but this year they had her play with the 18s team since they needed a setter. One of her good friends, Hailey from her team last year, also moved up to the 18s team so they’ve gotten really close this year. They wanted to take pictures before they started the tournament, so we found some space outside the gym to get this close up picture. Abby’s coach this year is Coach Jose and Abby loves him. He worked with their team last year, and she did a camp with him last summer, so when she heard he would be coaching the 18s team and they asked if she wanted to move up with them, it was the main reason she said yes. Here are the girls with Coach before starting their first tournament.

Abby was their starting setter and she played really well. I loved being able to watch her play in person again. She led the team and had awesome sets and serves as they went on to place second in their pool for the morning. It was a one day tournament, so Abby was happy to be able to play the bracket round with the team in the afternoon. It makes for a long day, but when they do the brackets on Sundays, Abby never gets to play with her team for those final games. Since they were in the gold bracket for this tournament, they played against the toughest teams in the afternoon. They lost their first match of the bracket play to the team that ended up winning the entire thing, and then they lost their second match which had them end up 4th place overall in the tournament, which we thought was an awesome way to start out their club season.

Their second tournament in January was the Midland tournament. We usually all go together to these tournaments, but with the pandemic, most tournaments are only allowing one guest per player, so Abby and I ended up going to the tournament alone. We left school and work early and headed out Friday night for the 5 hour drive to Midland. We took this picture as we got on the road. I thought Abby would take some turns driving, but she never did. That’s ok though. It was a great time for us to really talk and catch up on all of our school and work drama. I love being able to sit and visit with Abby. She says I’m one of her best friends, and I must say she’s one of my best friends too. I love being able to talk to her about friends, boys, school, church, life, the future, anything!

We got into Midland late Friday night, and we headed straight to Fazoli’s, our favorite fast food Italian restaurant. They don’t have many locations anymore, so whenever we go to Midland, it’s a must on our to-do list. Abby’s team was assigned an afternoon pool so we didn’t have anything to do when we woke up Saturday morning. Even after sleeping in, we still had hours to wait until we had to be at the arena. We took a lot of mirror selfies, watched movies on tv, and watched Taryn’s basketball game. We even went to the arena early to watch her old team finish out their games of the morning pool. We were so excited when it was finally time for Abby to play. Here’s the team as they talked with Coach Jose before their first match.

 

One of the teams in their pool was the same team they played the previous tournament that won the entire thing, so we knew it was going to be a tough day of matches. They ended up only winning a couple sets, but they had so many awesome plays. I was able to video a lot of their plays and I recorded a lot of Abby’s amazing sets to Zoey who’s their middle hitter. She had some awesome kills off of Abby’s sets. They really played well together and Abby looked so good. Her serves finished off their first game to win their second set. I was able to FaceTime her other games so that my parents got to see her play one game, and Tyler and his parents (who had made it into town) were able to watch her last game of the night.

We stayed into the evening to play all of their games, and I was able to take this picture of the beautiful sunset as I ran between the two gyms where games were being held. I saw the younger Sol team play which had most girls from our team that Tyler and I used to coach before the girls started playing on the club team. I was so proud of them and happy that I got to see them all play and to see that they were all still playing together. Abby and I stayed in our hotel one more night and woke up at 5:30am so we could be on the road before 6:00am so we could get back to El Paso before our church started that morning. That was the day Tyler was called into the bishopric, so we didn’t want to miss it, and that time before and after church were the only hours that we were able to be with Tyler’s parents while they were in town. I’m so proud of Abby and all of her hard work that she puts into playing volleyball, but also her decision that she’s made to not play on Sunday, so that we can still leave that day every week for church, family, and the Savior. She’s a great example to me and to her teammates and coaches. I’m so very proud of her!