Annual Memorial Day Weekend Trip to San Antonio

For the third year in a row, we traveled to San Antonio for the Memorial Day weekend. We stayed with Scott and Nevla and had a great time. The best part for me was that for the third year in a row, my birthday has been during that weekend, so it's like a vacation trip to help me celebrate! It was a blast. It always seems to rain the times we travel down there, and this year was no exception, but it didn't keep us from having fun. We're big board game players anyway, so we would have been fine holed up in the house all weekend, but we did venture out and the rain subsided enough for us to do a few new fun things. Scott and Nevla had been telling us about this sanctuary on base called the Quadrangle where you can feed peacocks and deer. We finally made it there this trip. This is where I took all my pictures for the weekend. The peacocks were awesome.

Being on base, there were a couple amazing photo spots where the girls had to have pictures taken like by the tank and helicopter that were right outside the Quadrangle. 

I just loved the peacocks. There were so many just walking around and many of the male peacocks kept spreading their feathers trying to impress the females. We'd just wait until they turned toward us to take a picture. Sometimes they were not very cooperative, but it was entertaining. 

Aubrey and I couldn't ever quite get the right angle. Here's a picture with the peacocks behind. Aubrey was not very happy with this picture. Trying to take a selfie with the peacock behind you in the daylight when it's very hard to see the picture being taken was very hard. This was the best I could get with Tyler and Taryn too. 

My favorite were these white peacocks. They were roaming everywhere too, but it wasn't until we were about to leave that one of those peacocks finally fanned out its feathers. They were so pretty!

We had a ton of vegetables to feed the deer. They were very tame and came right up to you to eat the food out of your hands. There was one that was the most aggressive and would take food from you whether you wanted it to or not. That deer Nevla recognized from her previous visits because of it's funny-shaped teeth. She had already named it "Buck Tooth." It became the deer that all the kids talked about after we left.

There also was a pond with some huge koi fish. This was Taryn's favorite spot. She loved pointing out and following that huge multi-colored fish that you can see in her picture. Of course, the girls loved spending time with Chloe. We love when we get together with family!

We ate lunch for my birthday at a Mexican restaurant that was yummy. Luckily we were in the restaurant the one time the rain poured. The rest of the rain and storms happened while we were at home playing games or hanging out. Scott made me a cheesecake from scratch for my birthday cake. It was delicious! I love cheesecake and hadn't had any in a really long time. Yummy!

I opened up a few gifts which included new dishes, a wheat grinder, an Amazon gift card, and some new board games. It was a great birthday weekend, and we loved spending it with family.

We Joined the YMCA

I'm trying to stay caught up before school ends and I have to post about each of the girls' school years, so here's an update of April and May. Taryn and I have great fun while the girls are in school. We go to the park weekly, exercise classes where she gets to play with her friends, and a mom and me music class. Her best friend right now is Teagan and they love to play together. They are so excited when they see each other and when they are apart they ask about each other all day long. Here are a few pictures of them when they've been together lately.

The Kasallis family is our good friends and even though they have four boys and we have four girls, our kids get along great. Our two oldest, Abby and AJ, are almost a year apart in age but they are good friends. I embarrassed them and made them pose for a picture after church one Sunday because they unknowingly matched and it was too cute to not take a picture. 

The girls' school this year has done a lot of fund raisers through restaurants, so anytime they have one, we go for dinner and the school gets some money. A couple weeks ago, they had a fund raiser at Whataburger so we went and the girls got a picture with Whataguy. Aubrey was too nervous to get that close, but the other girls didn't mind. I thought it was a cute picture and even though it's school related I didn't know whose post to include it in, so I thought I'd include it here.

As for my post title, I also wanted to include some pictures of the girls after starting classes at the YMCA. We joined for the summer and the girls immediately picked out three classes they wanted to do. Abby decided on tumbling, cheer, and hip hop. Tessa and Aubrey both picked tumbling, gymnastics, and ballet. Taryn is doing a parent/child gymnastics class and ballet. They are all so cute and seem to enjoy them all. Here are a few pictures I took from their first week.

They've all learned so quickly. Tessa has even been asked to join the next level of gymnastics for June. After three weeks, she's already doing front walkovers by herself and almost doing a backbend by herself. Aubrey is doing cartwheels much better and all three girls know all the ballet feet positions.

Abby and Tessa learned a cheer that they performed at a YMCA fund raiser and this month Abby was the only one signed up for her hip hop class. It made her a little nervous, but we told her having one on one lessons is awesome. We'll see what they change or keep doing for the next month, but so far they are staying busy and enjoying it. We've entered the realm of after school activities so twice a week, we are running around town and having late dinners, but I'm hoping once school's out, it won't seem too hectic. Abby will also be playing volleyball at the Y once school is out. She has been waiting to do that for over a year, so she's really excited about that.

Tyler and I were hoping to get more use out of the YMCA classes, gym, and racquetball courts for ourselves, but so far the girls' classes have taken up all our time. Maybe this summer it will be a little better. I've had to come to the terms that this YMCA membership may just be more for the girls than for me and Tyler. But the more classes they have and the busier they are, the more we are getting our money's worth, so we're all happy. :)

Finally, for an early birthday present for me, Tony and Audrey Kasallis bought us all tickets to a dinner theater show at UTEP. We saw Mary Poppins and had a yummy dinner of chicken cordon bleu complete with dessert. The show was good, but a little long. We had a good laugh at the intermission because both boys thought it was over and they were shocked when we told them it was only half way through. We did know that getting our husbands to do something like a play would not be easy; but Audrey and I figured if we all went together, at least the boys would have each other to make it through the entire night and they did. They even said besides the length it wasn't that bad. It was a fun night out and our girls enjoyed having a babysitter, so it was a win-win for everyone.

Easter Celebrations and Tessa's Baptism

The first weekend of April this year was Conference weekend plus Easter Sunday plus when we scheduled Tessa's baptism, so it was one busy weekend for us. But even before that weekend, our ward had their annual Easter Egg hunt and auction fundraiser. I took pictures of the girls as they searched for their eggs.

The youth also do an auction and we ended up bidding on a few things this year. Tyler and I got new sunglasses which I seriously needed, so that was fun. We also bid on and won babysitting, car washes, and a volleyball lesson for Abby which she was super excited about. It was a fun morning with so many people there like usual, so we all had a great Saturday.

In preparation for Tessa's baptism, I made her a white dress. She picked out the pattern and helped me pick out the material. It turned out so cute and we had a little fashion show once it was complete so I could have some pictures in her dress for invitations and announcements. I had fun taking pictures and luckily Tessa didn't mind too much either. She did refuse to let me do anything with her hair though. Oh well, that's Tessa so I guess that's how she should be remembered from her baptism. Here are some of our favorites starting with a close up of our cute Tessa and one of the entire dress.

I always love Tessa's cute princess poses and she had the cutest gap-toothed smile. 

All of our pictures were taken around our house. I liked the different backdrops we could use including our rock wall, bushes, plants, and tree trunks. I had fun finding new places and poses to take the pictures. 

I tried to get some action shots too, but most of those were a bit too crazy-looking because she jumped and spun making her hair fly up a little and she was laughing too much, so her face was almost too blurry. This was our favorite of that bunch. I loved how it captured her natural smile and bounciness though. 

I believe I saved a picture from Abby's baptism photo shoot where Tessa got in one of the last photos, so when Aubrey came out near the end of this photo shoot, I didn't mind her getting in on this last one. Maybe in two years I'll have another one of Aubrey in a white dress and Taryn trying to join the photo. :) It just made me happy.

That first week in April we just prepared ourselves and our house for guests. Both grandparents showed up Thursday during the day. The girls couldn't wait for school to be over so that they could be home for when Grandmas and Grandpas showed up. Scott and Nevla and Chloe also came but got in really late Thursday night. My parents stayed in a hotel, but Tyler's parents and Scott and Nevla stayed with us. We had so much fun with everyone together. I fed them all dinner Thursday night and we just visited that first evening while the kids showed everything new to Grandma and Grandpa. 

The girls practiced their musical number for the baptism since Grandpa Black played the piano for them. And Abby practiced the other songs because she was the chorister. She had been looking forward to doing that ever since her baptism. She thought it'd be fun to be the chorister at Tessa's baptism and since Tessa was fine with it, Abby did it and did a great job. Tessa's baptism was Friday evening, April 3rd, at 5:00pm. We spent the morning shopping and hanging out.We got to the church with barely enough time to take some pictures before we needed to start. We took some of the girls with Chloe and because I forgot to get one with our family when Abby got baptized I wanted to make sure I got one this time.

However, in doing that I forgot to get one of just Tessa with me and Tyler, so these'll have to do.

And here's our Tessa ready to be baptized. We're so proud of her and her decision to follow Jesus Christ and to be baptized a member of His church. My defining moment of the evening was right as Tessa went down the steps to join Tyler in the water. I had cried off and on through the talks and songs, but in that moment that Tessa walked down in the water, Tyler looked up at me and as our eyes met, I knew we were thinking the same thing - how happy we were and proud of Tessa we were and how we were in it together with our beautiful family and the children we had made and our love for each other. It was a sweet, special moment. And Tessa was so happy when she came out of the water. The first thing she told me as we went into the restroom to dry off and change was, "I want to do that again" with a big smile on her face. We then had a great discussion about going to the temple when she's older and doing baptisms for other people once she turns 12 so she can do it again then. It was a wonderful experience and I loved it!

After the baptism which finished beautifully, we took a few more pictures. Here is Tessa with her grandparents.

And then one with all the family who came to support Tessa. We had such a great time.

We ended up changing clothes at home and then going out for dinner. The Kasallis family joined us, so that was fun for our family to meet our closest friends. We were worried about finding a place that would take such a large group on a Friday evening, but since it was the Friday before Easter, many people were not eating meat, so our desire to get BBQ (Tessa's favorite) was perfect because when we called Famous Dave's they said it was surprisingly slow and they could take our group of 17 no problem. As we waited for everyone to park, this was the one picture I took at the restaurant. The girls wanted to dance on the rocks.

Saturday and Sunday we stayed home to watch conference on tv, play games, and do our Easter festivities like dye eggs and have an egg hunt. Tyler and his dad also finished making a turtle table which was the main present Tessa asked for, for her birthday. We went and picked out the tortoise that weekend too. Tessa already knew that she wanted to name him Buddy. We had been searching for the right tortoise for a couple weeks now. The funny story is we thought we had found one at Pet Barn when we saw the cutest little round tortoise there a couple months ago. I think that was one of the first things that got Tessa so excited about wanting to own one. Then when Tyler went back to possibly put one on hold for this particular weekend, the workers told him they could put it on hold, but wanted to know if Tyler knew this particular tortoise was a Sulcata tortoise and did he know that they get to be 100 pounds! Tyler came home from there and decided we needed to do a bit more research. It was pretty funny. So we found a more kid-friendly tortoise at Petsmart that only gets to be about 8 inches in diameter full grown. It's a Greek tortoise and Tessa loves it. We all love it actually and the table Tyler and his dad made is awesome and has the perfect viewing window to watch as Buddy roams around and eats his food. It's been a blast, although with our fish, guinea pig, and now tortoise, sometimes I really feel like I live in a zoo! Tessa says she wants to be a vet when she grows up so I guess it's all good practice for her. 

We had an egg hunt in our front and back yard for all the kids. They loved finding their eggs and seeing what candy they were filled with. They also loved that some of the eggs had money in them, which is Tyler's family's tradition.

 

I took one last picture of these cute girls before putting my phone away to play games and watch conference. I love taking pictures of Tessa and Chloe because they are so similar in looks and build. We were so happy that Chloe came for Tessa's baptism and they all had so much fun with their cousin, staying up late every night and finding fun things to do together all weekend. We were so happy that both sets of grandparents came too. We also got nice messages from other family members who had been thinking about Tessa during her special time. We have such a wonderful family. We love them all!