Aubrey's 1st Grade Year

Since I just posted about Taryn, I decided to go from youngest to oldest on our school posts, so here's a look back on Aubrey's year as a 1st grader. Here's her first day pictures - at home and at her new desk.

This picture was taken the morning of school picture day in the fall. I wanted to include it because Aubrey was always friends with the neighbor's cat, Scally; and she really wanted a picture holding him. I took this picture of Aubrey holding her family tree project that she created herself before she had to turn it in. It was on display in the 1st grade hallway for awhile, and now it hangs in our house.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are two holidays when the school allows extra activities; so in November, they have a Thanksgiving meal when parents can come and sit with their kids and have a Thanksgiving feast. I sat with Aubrey and her friend Gabby while they ate. The last day of school before Christmas break is another party day. I came to help with Aubrey's class party, and I grabbed this picture of Aubrey and her friends, Chloe, Savannah, and Gabby while they waited in line to get their lunches. Aubrey's class didn't have a room-mom this year, so I filled in when needed, which was usually just on their party days like this one. 

This picture is already included in a post this year, but it was from the day of spring school pictures, so I wanted it to be in this post as well. My beauty who still prefers dresses and headbands - such a cutie!

This first picture was already included in Aubrey's birthday post, but we did go eat lunch with her at school on her birthday, so I'm including here as well. It's always fun to eat lunch with the girls and see them interact with their classmates and get to visit with them in the middle of the day. However, I didn't get to do it very often because there was almost an hour between each of the girls' lunch times, so if we went to eat lunch with all three, we were there forever. So we kept the lunch visits to special occasions like birthdays and when grandparents were visiting. The second picture is from the Fine Arts Night in April. Everyone has an art picture on display and we found Aubrey's so we could get a picture - her hand is displaying which picture is hers.

The same night as Fine Arts Night, our church held a teacher appreciation night and Aubrey invited her teacher, Mrs. Moreira. We met her there, listened to some speakers and then each teacher was presented an award by his or her student. Aubrey had written things like "she's very nice and helps me learn math" about Mrs. Moreira and they read those student comments out loud. Then we had refreshments. It was a fun night.

At the end of April, the 1st grade class had their performance. They sang songs, some in English and some in Spanish. Each class wore a different color shirt. Aubrey's class wore dark green. Here she is with some of her classmates before they want on stage - Gabby, Savannah, Milan, and Leilah.

Aubrey's class is on the left and you can see her on the right of the third row in the close-up shot. Her favorite song was one of the Spanish ones where they sang about different musical instruments, and they used hand motions as they sang about each one. She really got into her singing and was very fun to watch.

The GT Fair was held the end of May. Aubrey enjoyed doing GT, or Enrichment, this year. She and some classmates worked on their environment project together. They were assigned rivers and ponds, so when we found their display, she pointed out every animal and item that they made to include in their environment. We found one of GT partners, Abby, there at the same time, so we took a picture of them together. 

The last day of school marked the final party day. I helped Mrs. Moreira by picking up flavored popcorn for their movie day. They were allowed to bring blankets and pillows so they could watch movies and eat popcorn during their party time. This kids loved the treat and it was fun to hang out with Aubrey's class during those last couple hours of her 1st grade year. Here are a couple pictures of her class. 

I'm a little sad that I didn't remember to take pictures of the girls as we left the house on their last day. I really like having the first and last day pictures of each year to compare. I did remember however to at least take a picture of each of the girls with their teacher on the last day, so at least I had something. We really like Mrs. Moreira. Tessa had her in first grade too. Aubrey loved her and we always got raving reviews about Aubrey from Mrs. Moreira. She always talked about how she could trust Aubrey to do special tasks and errands for her, and how she also used Aubrey a lot to help other students learn something because she had picked it up so quickly and was willing to try and help the other kids whenever she could. We're so proud of Aubrey and all that she has accomplished at school and what a sweet girl she is.

A Post About Taryn and Memorial Day 2016

I decided with all the pictures I'm accumulating of Taryn, she should have her own post since all the other girls will be having their annual school post coming up. So I'm starting with her as the school year comes to a close. Some of the pictures I've taken of Taryn were to post on Facebook or text to someone, but they're cute enough to keep here. Aunt Tiffany sent a text to me a couple weeks ago talking about her daughter Lucy who's Taryn's age, so we took this picture of Taryn waving so we could text back saying that Taryn was saying hi to Lucy. It was fun. We even got a picture in response of her kids waving back. The next picture I put on Facebook because it was so cute of Taryn sleeping with her headphones on. She gets to stay up later than the other girls because of naps and no school for her, so she'll sometimes watch shows on my iPad using the headphones so dad can watch his own shows on our tv. This is how I found her after getting ready for bed myself. She's so cute!

I posted already about the model home that we viewed with my parents, but here's another picture of Taryn in the Minnie room. She loved playing with all the Minnie stuff and it was hard to get her to leave. It was seriously a dream room for a girl like her. Next, Taryn found a pair of our pink ear covers that we bought when the girls were afraid of loud noises like fireworks. She walked around the house for a long time with them on, and the fact that they matched her dress was too cute to pass up without taking a picture. We love this funny girl! 

Before school let out, Taryn was invited to a couple birthday parties for her friends. She had two within a week, both held at Chuck E. Cheese. I only took pictures at the first one which was for her friend Kierah's birthday. It was cute seeing all the 4- and 5-year-olds playing together and having the whole place to themselves without older siblings in the way. Taryn had fun riding riding the horse and playing all the games. I tried getting a picture of her with Kierah and Kaitlyn but Chuck E. had just come out so it was hard to get them all to look at me at the same time.

So I took a picture of all the birthday kids with Chuck E. too, which was still difficult since getting that many kids to stand still at the same time is no small feat. Her next party at Chuck E. Cheese was for Teagan. I guess I didn't take any pictures at that party, but it was just as much fun for all the kids to run around and play games together and eat pizza and birthday cake. Taryn had a blast. 

This last picture is of Taryn with her friends Keane and Ava whose moms play volleyball with me; so when we're at the church playing, the kids get together to play. I found them in the nursery like this, under the rug like it was a blanket. Too cute. I love the imagination of kids.

Also, I have some pictures to include from our trip to San Antonio for our annual Memorial Day weekend. We traveled down to visit Scott and Nevla and hang out with them all weekend. My parents came down with us this year too. They headed out before us since they had been at our house the week leading up to that weekend. We thought we'd catch up with them on the drive, but we ended up spending the morning getting a nail taken out of a tire in our van, so that put us way behind on our drive out of town. We were happy the maintenance light came on before the long drive so we could take care of it instead of being stranded in the middle of nowhere, but we didn't get to their house until after midnight that night. We played games, swam, and visited all weekend. We took Grandma and Grandpa to the Quadrangle where we had gone before to see the deer and peacocks. I took all my pictures from the weekend there. 

The kids enjoyed feeding the deer and following the peacocks around. The peacocks weren't showing their feathers this time, and the girls kept looking for lost peacock feathers on the ground, but there weren't any of those lying around, so the girls were sad. But they still enjoyed chasing them around and feeding them.

We fed the fish in the pond and even found some baby peacocks. They're in the second picture right in front of the second peacock. They were so cute. 

I took a picture of all the girls sitting in the shade. I had to crop out Abby because she's holding Hope, the foster baby that Scott and Nevla currently have. We're not allowed to include pictures of her online, but Abby was basically her babysitter all weekend because she loves her so much. I also love this picture because of the peacock that's photo-bombing in the background. We thought that was pretty awesome. 

On the day that we traveled home, Aubrey and I realized that we were wearing matching outfits, so I had a picture taken of us in our yellow and gray stripes. Scott and Nevla are expecting their second baby in July, so we talked about names (they don't know what they're having), and had a fun time visiting and playing games. We love having the girls play with Chloe and Hope and it's always sad to go. We plan on returning over Labor Day weekend for Chloe's baptism and the new baby's blessing. We're excited for all of their upcoming family events. 

Finally, I wanted to include a picture of each of the girls from a Sunday morning when we used my new curling iron to do their hair. They turned out so cute. Here they are.

Taryn didn't want her hair curled, but I took a picture of her at church that same day, so she can be included here. I love my beautiful girls. 

April and May 2016

I'm trying to catch up on posts before the annual end-of-school-year posts for each of the girls. The pictures in this post didn't have much in common besides the fact that they weren't school functions and they happened in April and May, so here it is:

It starts with the Spring Book Fair at school that I was in charge of again. The theme this time was Peace, Love, Books. It was fun and easy to decorate that theme. I was at the school all week again, but it went well and the students really enjoyed it.

I love having pictures of the girls when they're sleeping, especially together. Taryn was laying on Aubrey and I thought it was so cute. Aubrey didn't mind that I wanted a picture either. 

The Activity Day girls at church always have a spring activity for the Moms. This year it was a Lemonade Party (instead of Tea Party), and we were supposed to wear our Sunday best with pearls and everything. We took a few pictures before we left for the church. The girls wanted a silly picture too, and I always laugh at Tessa's face. That's how she wanted it for the silly picture. 

While at the activity, we ate dinner, played bingo, did a game to see how well we knew each other, and made head fasteners, which are apparently all the rage in Europe. The bigger and gaudier, the better! Here's the girls and I with our creations. I love this picture of us! My girls invited Audrey because she only has boys and wouldn't get the chance to go to an Activity Days Mother/Daughter activity, so I thought that was very sweet of them to think of her. She tagged along with us and we got our picture taken all together. Audrey actually partnered with Abby during the how well do you know each other game, and they did better than me and Tessa! We hang out with the Kasallis's a lot, so it didn't surprise me, but everyone else thought it was pretty funny that they did as well as they did.

During the months of April and May, Tyler and I coached Abby's YMCA volleyball team again. This season, we had enough players to make two teams, so they practiced together, but played separately. Each team had exactly six players. Abby's team was the jaguars and they played really well together. The Panthers also played really well. Our final game of the season, we played each other and everyone was there for the picture. Whenever our two teams played each other, I coached Abby's team, while Tyler coached the Panthers because he's pretty hard on Abby and realized it was better that he not coach the team Abby was on. We promised the girls pizza at the last game if they worked really hard on doing three hits and actually trying to spike the ball, and they did! It was so fun to see how much they all improved; and to see how much fun they had.

Probably the biggest news of these two months is that my parents decided to move to El Paso! We're so excited for them to come. They came to visit us off and on during April and May, and each time they were here, we took some time to look at homes for sale. We went with the girls to some model homes and Taryn obviously loved this Minnie Mouse room. It was complete with a Minnie head recessed from the wall with lights and everything. It was pretty cool. It was a model home and on the far east of El Paso, but the girls couldn't understand why Grandma and Grandpa wouldn't choose the "Minnie house."

I finally got a picture of Tessa in her peddle car that she got for her birthday. She loves to start at the top of our street and ride all the way down because it's on a slant and she can get going pretty fast. They still have a lot of fun riding bikes, scooters, etc around the neighborhood with all the neighbor kids. We love living on a no outlet street. On May 4th (Star Wars Day), the girls had to wear Star Wars shirts to school. Unfortunately, we didn't own any Star Wars shirts, so the night before we had to run to Wal-Mart so they could each find one. They were all very excited for their new shirts and to show them off at school. "May the 4th be with you!"

May 8th was Mother's Day and my parents were still visiting with us, so they were here when Tyler did his annual huge Mother's Day meal. He worked with Tony Kasallis on the meal and we ate together. It was a 5-course Italian feast, and it was delicious. I was so happy that I thought to take a picture with just me and my mom on Mother's Day. While I was hanging out on the couch,(since I'm not allowed in the kitchen), I got the the girls to take a selfie with me. 

After the meal, Abby and I played a duet that we had been practicing. I played the French horn and Abby played her bass. We played I am a Child of God and I transposed my part so we could play together. It was fun. While we waited for dessert, I took this selfie of me and Aubrey. It turned out so cute, that I had to take pictures of me with each of my girls. The beauties who made me a mother. 

I wanted to finish out this post with my birthday festivities. My parents were out visiting again the week of my birthday because I was running one more book fair at the school. It was a lot smaller book fair, with no decorating, so no pictures; but my parents came out to stay with Taryn so I didn't have to haul her around or find babysitters for her while I was at the school. So the main part of my birthday I spent at the school, but that night we did get to go out to eat together as a family. I picked a Mexican restaurant called Delicias that has these awesome painted chairs. The girls were excited to pick which chair they sat in.

We also spent my birthday evening filling up our recently refinished pool. Tyler and I had been working on our pool for a couple weeks. We emptied it, cleaned out the winter gunk, and since it was empty decided to repaint it, and replace the drain cover and light. The paint was dry and the pool ready to be refilled on my birthday. The girls thought it was so fun to play in the water as it filled, like their very own huge bathtub or slip and slide. 

I watched from my new bench that Tyler refinished for one of my birthday presents. I didn't get any other pictures of my gifts, but I also got two more of my blog books published, framed pictures of each of the girls that I put up on the wall, a curling iron and wand set, and a plane ticket to go with Tyler to his conference in San Diego in a couple of weeks! It was a great birthday and I love my family!