To start the new year of 2022, we had our annual service project for the youth of the church on the Martin Luther King Jr holiday. I still have a calling in the stake YW, so I helped oversee the service project. We took all of the youth to the El Paso Fighting Hunger Food Bank and worked for a couple of hours sorting food, cleaning the warehouse, and delivering food to customers. We had over 150 youth from our stake attend which was an awesome turnout, but since the numbers were so large, it took them awhile to organize where they wanted the kids to work. The kids attempted to entertain themselves after they were split into groups while they waited for their assignments. Tessa had track practice so she wasn't able to attend, but Abby and Aubrey were both there. Abby and her group played "down by the river." Aubrey and her friends just visited, and they were not very helpful when I asked for a picture. At least Tyler got in the picture with her. The boys either covered their faces with their masks like Mattix did here, or hid from the camera completely. We worked for over two hours and the people from the food bank just kept telling us how appreciative they were for so much help. Everyone had a fun time hanging out with their friends, and it was great to do some service.
I had to take this picture of Taryn and Teagan as they were playing with my Voltron toy that I've had since I was a kid. My brothers and I used to play Voltron together and we each had our own animals when the Voltron was separated. Paul was the black lion that became the head, Scott got the yellow lion and I had the blue lion that each become the legs. And John got the two smaller lions, the red and green ones that become the arms. Taryn and Teagan have fun playing with it even though there are some broken and missing parts, but I had to have a picture to send my brothers.
Tyler was able to take the youth to the Juarez Mexico temple to do baptisms in January and I'm glad they got a picture. Aubrey and Abby went with the youth group (Tessa had track again) and I loved this picture that they got together. I love that our kids love going to the temple and that we have a temple so close to us. Even though it's sometime difficult to cross the border to get to and from Mexico, the temple is only 30 minutes away and we love being able to go there and do the work in the House of the Lord. Abby heard about this room of lights at the Fountains where she really wanted to go and check out. She finally made plans and ended up going twice in one day with two separate groups of friends. You pay to have access to the room for like 10 minutes and you can take as many pictures as you want. It's a small room full of mirrors and lights, and you stand on a box in the middle of the room and you get awesome pictures like this one. She was so excited to go and take some great pictures by herself and with her friends. This was the only one she sent me though. She was able to go with Gracie and Sarah, her friends from church. And then she went later the same day with Nat and Selma, her friends from volleyball.
Abby's club volleyball team started practicing at the end of last year, but their first official games did not start until the beginning of January. Abby plays with Sol Volleyball again on their 18s team. Her team this year is half seniors and half juniors with one sophomore. She started as one of three setters, but the exciting part was the three big hitters that were on her team this year. Seniors from New Mexico, all three girls are strong hitters and getting to see Abby set for them made for some really entertaining games to watch. Their first tournament of the season was a small one on the east side of town at the Rapid Fire Volleyball location. Even though Abby was one of three setters, she played a lot of the games and even played all around as the only setter during some of the sets.
The first out of town tournament was in Midland and it was the same weekend that I had a concert with the El Paso Winds. I was sad to miss her tournament, but Tyler was able to take her and he hadn't been to one of Abby's tournaments in a long time. He hadn't traveled with her in over a year as well, so it was a good trip for both of them. They had fun on the road trip and even sent me a picture from Fazoli's where they ate dinner in Midland. It's one of my favorite restaurants and we don't have one here in El Paso, so we always eat there when we go to Midland. I was jealous but glad that they got to eat there.
Abby sent me a few of the pictures she got from the weekend. Abby and Nat are probably the closest on the team, but Selma's pretty close to them too, so it didn't surprise me that these were the pictures that she sent. The girls ended up getting first place in the silver bracket in that tournament so they took some fun and silly pictures with their medals when the tournament was over.
I did get updates from Tyler and from the parent group chat, so I had received this team picture of all the girls with their coach. The funny story is that they didn't have all of the right paperwork for Coach Jose, so he wasn't allowed to stay with the team on the bench. Nat's dad, Coach Martin, and the Sol Director, Rodney, had to stand in as the "coaches" on the bench, but Jose apparently sat on the other side with the parents and coached from there. So the parents were teasing him all weekend, but the girls knew what to do, so they played hard and played well together. Abby was the starting setter and ended up playing a lot of the games all around as the only setter. They were down to only two setters because one of the original three quit after the first tournament.
The next weekend the girls were back in town and played a two day tournament at 915 on the east side of town. I was able to go to this tournament. It was fun to watch them play now that they had settled into their positions and had gotten used to each other and playing together. Here's Abby serving and setting. Abby played so well and she has some amazing hitters, so they had some awesome plays. This was supposed to be a pretty big local tournament, but it ended up being mostly just 915 teams with a few other club teams mixed in there like us. We were playing Division 1 which is the oldest age teams, but because there weren't enough teams, they played a lot of 14, 15 and 16s teams. There was only one other 18s team like us and there was even a 13s team that was playing against them.
We won most of the games pretty easily, but there were a few pretty competitive matches. With some of the games being a little easier, they were able to try running some trickier plays, so the girls were having a lot of fun experimenting and basically just impressing everyone who watched them play because they just looked like they were on a higher level of play because they were so much older and more experienced. Here are some of the team while we waited to play. It's Nat, Selma, Abby, Sydney, Fern, and Neah.
Neah, #4, was the team captain and one of their strongest players. She photo bombed this first picture I was trying to take and it was making me and Neah's mom laugh so hard. Afterwards, we told her and Abby to get everyone to look for a picture. This was before they started one of their games. Neah was the right side hitter and she can jump so high and hit so hard, she already looks like a college player. They would run these awesome plays to allow her to hit from basically any position and I even saw other coaches and refs that were amazed and impressed by her abilities. A lot of the younger girls who played against us even came up after we beat them to talk to Neah and her twin sister, Dajah, because they wanted autographs or a chance to meet and talk to these girls that they totally looked up to. It was pretty cute.
Abby even took a picture of the little girls talking to the twins and captioned it "role models" because the twins were so sweet and nice to the younger volleyball players who looked up to them. Abby's team ended up winning the tournament and they were so happy they got the gold. They actually played for gold against a 14s team which was a really good team for their age, but they really didn't want to lose to them. I'm glad that we beat them. It was close at first, but then our girls got in the groove and they were just unstoppable. Here are a few pictures that were taken by a Prep 1 photographer. They post sports action shots on their Facebook page and someone tagged me on these photos so I was able to find them and save them. I love their great quality in the action shots.
We took pictures after the game with their medals. Here's Abby with Nat and Selma, a serious picture and a funny one.
Here's Abby with the twins, Dajah and Neah. They are both seniors this year and they are two of the big hitters from the team. Abby loves to set them because they can smash the ball. I love watching them play together. And here's one with the entire team and Coach Jose with their gold medals. From left to right, top row: Coach Jose, Kyndall, Angie, Neah, Dajah, and Fern. Bottom row: Sydney, Abby, Nat, Selma, and Eva.
Now I'll finish up with just a couple random pictures. Jessica Anderson and her son Reve flew into town for a weekend in January for Reve's 15th birthday. While they were here, we had to have a girls night out. It's our original "Ladies on the Hill" group reunited. We went out to eat at Julio's, a Mexican restaurant. I got an enchilada plate that was delicious. It was fun to catch up with Jessica and see how they've been doing since they moved to Idaho. We miss their family. Also, while Tyler and Abby were in Midland, I played with the El Paso Winds. We played "Remembrance" songs and it was a good concert. We played A Movement for Rosa which is one of my all time favorite concert band pieces. It has the best horn parts. It was fun to play again and Rachel took a picture of the horn section before our concert, so I was glad to have this picture. Tessa came to my concert that night to support me and her two band directors, Mr. Perez and Mr. Simon, who were also playing in the concert.
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