May, Part 1 - Volleyball Champions, Mother's Day, Kinder Performance

We started off the month of May going to a Chihuahua's baseball game with the Kasallis family. Sam's baseball team had a fundraiser to sell baseball tickets and it was fun to go to the game together. Audrey took pictures with her good camera. They turned out so good. 

Also at the beginning of May, Tyler and I had to split up one night because everyone had activities on the same night. Abby was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society, so Tyler went to that and took pictures of Abby with her friends. The first picture is Abby with her BFF Braelinn and then after the ceremony Abby got a picture with some more of her friends. From left to right it's Andrea, Kendallyn, Alexis, Abby, and Braelinn.

While Tyler went to Abby's induction, I was with Tessa and Aubrey at the Activity Day's Mother/Daughter activity. They did a fairy garden tea party. We made fairy gardens, ate yummy food like butterfly-shaped sandwiches and strawberry ladybugs and star-shaped watermelon. We learned about gardening and flowers. It was a lot of fun. The girls had also made their flower headbands to wear at the activity. It was Tessa's last Mother/Daughter activity since she'll be in young women's by this time next year.

On May the 4th, the girls were encouraged to dress up as Star Wars characters. We looked up cool hairstyles and each of the girls thankfully picked a different character, so Tessa was Rey, Taryn was Leia, and Aubrey was Padme. We did the best we could with costumes considering it was the night before, but the girls were happy with how their looks turned out.

Tessa even dressed up multiple days in a row as Rey to help Mrs. Derrick, the counselor, with some of their Star Wars activities later in the month. She was wearing the costume again on this particular day which happened to be the last Fun Fit Friday where parents can go to PE class with their kids. I decided I should go to Tessa's since it was her final Fun Fit Friday of elementary school. She showed me how she does the monkey bars and I grabbed this picture of her with two of her friends, Bianca and Seki.

The first weekend in May was Abby's final tournament of the volleyball club season. We went to Albuquerque for the National Bid tournament. Our girls had decided they weren't going to try for the National Bid, so they just competed for the Regional championship. We drove out Friday after school and made it in time to go out to dinner with Emily and Allison's families. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and it was delicious. Our three younger girls loved having Riley to play with so I took a picture of them while we waited for our food. Then I took a picture of the three volleyball players who were there: Allison, Emily, and Abby.

Saturday morning we had time to get ready since our girls didn't play until the afternoon pool. Here's Abby and Emily all ready in the hotel, and here's a picture of the team as they started their first game.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I love getting action shots of Abby's serve. She played so well. They all did. They went undefeated in pool play.

I love this picture too of Emily, Abby, and Andrea. Emily was the team captain this season and this shows her fun, happy personality perfectly. We love these girls. Abby played middle blocker and was really getting her hits and blocks down. She tipped a few spikes and was on top of getting the balls in the air when they came right over the net near her.

Emily's mom caught this picture perfectly as the entire team jumped in the air after someone served an ace. They're all up in the air, so it's such an awesome picture.

On Sunday, the bracket games began. We ended up finding a church near our hotel so we could go to sacrament meeting. Afterwards, we went to the gym where the team was playing to support them since it was the final games of the season. While the girls waited to play, they did each other's eyebrows. I grabbed a picture of Selma doing Abby's eyebrows. They won their first game while we were at church, so we watched them play their final two games. They won both which made them the champions. The championship game was a close one and they ended up going to a third set. Luckily, Emily served a bunch in a row and they got ahead 7-0 so they were able to keep the lead and pull out the win.

The girls were so excited! They were cheering and jumping and screaming and crying. It was so fun to see them all so happy. We took a picture with the team that they played. They were a strong team from Albuquerque who said they hadn't played any competition like us before. They were all good sports and were happy to have the picture taken together.

Abby cheered from the sidelines with Coach Dawson since she didn't play because it was Sunday, but the girls loved having her there and were happy to see her there supporting them. Here's Abby with Andrea and Bella. And then with Sophie, Regina, and Alex.

And finally here's one with Allie, Abby, Emily, Selma, and Andrea. The medals were huge. They were like plates around their necks, but those girls played hard all season and totally earned and deserved them.

On Mother's Day, I took some pictures of the girls before church. I love taking them in front of my flowering bushes. It looks so springy. After church, we took some more pictures of the entire family.

We took some with the Kasallis family too and had to have a serious and a funny picture. These are the pictures I posted on Facebook because we always do Mother's Day together and we love the Kasallis family. We even call ourselves the Kasibbons because we do so much together. We love these guys!

Tyler and Tony made a fancy dinner like they always do on Mother's Day. This was the dessert Tyler made that I requested since Audrey and I both love lemon treats. It's a lemon pudding trifle and it was delicious.

Abby and Taryn had another night of overlapping activities. Abby's band and orchestra banquet was the same night as Taryn's kindergarten performance. I curled their hair and grabbed a picture before Abby was off. They look so cute together and I love this picture because you can see how much they look alike. We always say how much of a mini-me Taryn is since she looks just like how Abby looked at her age.

After dropping Abby off at her banquet, the rest of us headed to Lundy for Taryn's performance. They did a great job. It was so cute to hear them sing all of their songs. I took some of these pictures with Taryn's classmates before the program started. I even found Mrs. Hardwick so she could be in the second picture.

Here's the entire Kindergarten. Taryn's class is the light green. There were only 13 kids in her class and we loved it. Taryn even got a solo part during one song. I didn't get any pictures of it, but they sang a Spanish song about the alphabet, especially the vowels, so she had a U sign on her stomach, but got to turn around and show the picture of a donkey that was on her back that was a part of the song. And she did her part with such confidence; it was so cute. We are so proud of her!

Here were a few closeups that I took during the performance. I thought the first picture was so cute as she made a funny face with the boy next to her. She said she didn't know who he was, but the picture turned out adorable. She had a great Kindergarten year!

Finally, in May we started using our pool. It was warm enough outside that the girls didn't mind the cold water temperature and started swimming on the weekends. They had their friends over one Saturday and they wanted pictures of them jumping in, so these were the best ones of the ones I took. The first picture is of Taryn and her friend Presley. The second picture has Rianne, Aubrey Taryn, and Presley. They had fun and with all the swimming, I feeling like our summer has officially begun!

April 2018 - A Temple Sealing, Fine Arts, Volleyball

April 1st was Easter Sunday. We were home watching General Conference, but we did spend some time letting the girls open Easter baskets and dye eggs. I thought it was funny because I had no red dye after using it all on some red velvet recipes, so the color choices to dye eggs was pretty limited. The girls didn't seem to mind and were happy with the activity. We had deviled eggs with our Easter ham meal that we ate with the Kasallis's and ended the day with an Easter egg hunt outside. During that hunt, we even found an actual bird's nest with two tiny eggs in it that the kids spent the next couple weeks watching until two baby birds were born. It was a great way to usher in Spring.

That first weekend in April, I was able to fly to Dallas by myself which I haven't done since before I had kids. Scott and Nevla had scheduled their temple date to have Haley sealed to them. With all of Abby's volleyball tournaments, we didn't think we'd all be able to drive this time, so Tyler bought me a flight so I could go and be with them and represent our family. I was excited to fly and be there, but the weather happened to be bad in the Dallas area that weekend, and my flight was delayed. And then when we finally got to fly, the landing was very bumpy. I felt pretty sick the rest of that night and realized how much less stressful driving is than flying. I stayed with my parents in a hotel and we met up with everyone at the Dallas temple on Saturday. Here's a picture of our family after the ceremony with Scott and Nevla and family all in white.

Here are a few pictures of their family and of the kids. I love these people! It was so great to hang out with them all weekend. The kids all did so well even in the cold weather. I was able to help get the babies ready in the temple by dressing them in their white clothes and doing hair. 

I was responsible for getting Daniel into his white tux and it was so fun, and different, dressing up a little baby boy. He looked so handsome when he was all the way dressed. I took another picture of us together that night when we all got together for Haley's and Daniel's baby blessings.

We ate out at a pizza buffet for dinner and I got to hang out with Chloe there. We took pictures to send my girls and Chloe and Abby had an emoji war while we were ate dinner. The funny thing was, the weekend of the sealing happened to be a weekend when Abby's tournament was on Sunday, so she didn't even play that weekend. The sad thing is that we never know until the Wednesday of the same week, so there was no way to change our plans and have everyone drive to Dallas. So Tyler and the girls filled their weekend with chores and entertainment which I'll go into more detail in a second. I also took some selfies with Haley after her baby blessing and she was giving the best smiles!

John flew to Dallas too and Paul drove down for the day, so it was fun visiting with my brothers. We took this selfie together after we had been standing around talking for while; and I thought it was pretty cool that our parents ended up unintentionally in the picture too in the background. Too funny! It had been a long time since it was just the four of us and it was fun to visit and catch up, and to just be together.

As for Tyler's entertainment, he decided with the free Saturday that he and Abby would build a chicken coop together since we've been talking about getting chickens for awhile. Abby was going to use the project as one of her personal progress projects and it would be something fun for them to do together. So Tyler and the girls spent the entire morning cleaning up the backyard and getting it ready to house chickens. They then had a birthday party to go to Las Cruces, so the coop didn't get started, but they did stop at a Tractor Supply Company in Las Cruces and purchased four baby chicks, which they brought home and set up a makeshift house for them in my living room. Abby sent a picture to me of the chicks while I was driving home from Dallas. They're so tiny and fluffy and they have to stay indoors for a couple weeks which was why they bought the chickens before the coop was built. Each girl got to pick out and name a chick. Abby picked the yellow one and named her Nugget. Tessa and Taryn picked black ones with a few white marks and named them Thunder and Oreo. Aubrey picked another black one with a black beak and named hers Amber. We've been watching them grow and they're not so tiny anymore. Tyler's about half way finished with the chicken coop and they'll eventually make their home in our backyard. Needless to say Tyler the girls did fine without me at home for the weekend.

Abby's volleyball continued the following weekend. Here's a great picture another parent took of Abby with three of her teammates: Allison, Emily, and Andrea. They love playing and are usually the ones at practice even on their days off. They also became the Fab 4 team that played in the Stars League and still beat teams of 6 with their team of 4.

The second weekend of April, the division that Abby's team usually plays in was going to be on Sunday again. One of Abby's teammates was gone for the weekend, so without Abby on Sunday too, they would have been down two players. So their coach decided to play up a division which happened to be Division 1 which is mostly teams of 17 and 18 year olds. Abby's 13 year old team is technically division 4. They usually play division 3 against 14 and 15 year old teams just to challenge them. This particular weekend, there weren't enough division 2 teams, so since they didn't want to play division 3 on Sunday, that left division 1. The fun thing was the girls got to see some really amazing volleyball players. And because they knew they'd probably lose every game, they were able to just have fun and not stress too much about winning. Here's a picture of the girls getting ready for their first game. They played a little too scared at the beginning and got beat by a team that they probably could have done better against had they not been so intimidated. But by their second game, they were playing hard and having fun.

As parents, our only goal was for the girls to at least score 10 points in each set, which they did. They even ended up with scores like 18 and 17 a couple of times. They really held their own and had fun playing against some really great teams. It was a fun experience and the girls left there feeling like it was a lot of fun and they have a lot to look forward to if they keep playing. It was great.

After that tournament, some of the girls on the team got together to watch a new volleyball movie called The Miracle Season. We ate dinner with Abby at the mall and then left her with the team and some other parents to watch the movie. They took this picture of the girls after the movie. They said it was a good movie and they really liked it. It was a great team bonding weekend.

The month of April also always includes Fine Arts Night at the elementary school. I didn't get any pictures except for this one of Tessa. The 5th graders were able to decorate signs that were placed along the entrance hall in the school. Tessa found the one that she and two of her classmates made together so I could get a picture of her with it. The girls usually also get to display some kind of artwork, but the school's art teacher was out of town and they weren't able to display anything this year. We just spent the evening in the craft rooms where the kids got to make things like maracas, dream catchers, foil art, clay sculptures, and more. They had a lot of fun and I love that they do special nights to celebrate music and art. To add on to that, here's a picture of Tessa with Grandpa at one of their first drum lessons. Tessa has decided that she will do band at Hornedo next year, so Grandpa has started lessons with her so she'll be ahead of the game before school even starts. She's having fun learning the drums and working on a new instrument.

I help Taryn's class in the computer lab about once a month. With the end of school quickly approaching, I decided I needed to take a picture to remember Taryn and her kindergarten class. Here she is in line with some of her classmates. In this picture it's Isabella, Taryn, Gabby, Mason, Aubrey, Cassidy, and Bryn. They are such a cute class and they all get along so well.

Another school post I want to include is this picture of Abby with her BFF, Braelinn. They have joined a school club at Hornedo called the Compassion club. They meet once a week and discuss things they can do to show kindness and compassion to those around them. One activity they did was drawing on the school's sidewalks with chalk. Abby and Braelinn wrote the word compassion really big and their picture was taken and included on the compassion club's Facebook page. We all thought it was a great picture and I was able to save it and use it here. I'm so proud of my girls and all that they do to set good examples at their schools and among their peers.

And back to volleyball, but before it's Abby's team, we had to include a picture of Aubrey's volleyball team. They finished out their league season this month. They only won one set the entire season, but the improvement of every player was obvious. They were getting serves over and having long volleys by the end of the season and they said they had fun. We also kept reminding our girls that they are 3rd and 4th graders playing mostly teams made up of 5th and 6th graders and who have been playing together for at least a year or more, so they should be proud of how well they played and how much they've learned. It was fun for me and Tyler to coach again too. The new season has started and some of the girls have stayed to play again on our team, and we've also added Tessa who's decided to play again. We love volleyball.

With only two in-town tournaments left of the season, Abby and her team really picked it up and played even better than they had all year. Back to division 3, the girls were going undefeated in pool play and this particular weekend, they finally made it to the championship game in the gold bracket. Abby still plays middle hitter and loves it. I love how well she plays and watching her get better and better every week is so fun.

They ended up playing against the Stars 12 team for the semi-finals and our team ended up losing the first set barely, like 25-23. Luckily the girls played hard and ended up winning the 2nd and 3rd sets to make it into the championship game. The girls were so excited because they were finally going to get a medal in the gold bracket. They kept up the momentum and fought hard, but ended up losing in the 3rd set of that championship game. They were even down at one point 8-14 in that 3rd set and came back to make it a close game. But they lost 13-15. It was so close!

The girls still had so much fun and really got to see how all of their hard work and teamwork paid off by getting 2nd place in the tournament. It was so fun to cheer along with the other parents. We took a lot of pictures after they were awarded their medals. The girls even had to have some silly pictures. They really have so much fun together.

Coach Denise took this selfie that turned out really cute even though a few faces got cut off. The girls really earned that medal and had fun playing to get it.

Another Fine Arts moment of the month was when Abby's jazz band performed at their contest. Abby is one of two French horns in their school's top jazz band. They play trombone parts and sit in the middle next to the trombones so it's hard to see her when they perform. But they played really well and ended up with Sweepstakes at the contest, all ones. We are so proud of her and all the talents that she has. Her band director, Mrs. Allen, has decided to have a more traditional jazz band next year, so they won't have any French horns. So this was probably her one and only jazz contest that she'll play in. She had fun learning the music and is happy to tell me that she's better at jazz than me because she can pick up the jazz rhythms faster.

I was able to attend one of Abby's Beehive activities this month and I had a great time getting to know the girls better. They did a skills night where they each shared and taught a skill with the other girls. Some did dance, some did sports, and one even did French while another did cooking. It was so fun to see the girls excel and talk so excitedly about something they're good at. Some of those girls are really shy and hearing them talk about their passions and talents so confidently was really fun to see. I love our youth programs at the church and watching these girls grow into confident, strong, independent young women.

The last weekend in April was Abby's final in-town tournament. Their hot streak of playing hard continued and they went undefeated in pool play again earning their place in the gold bracket.

Luckily, the siblings don't mind hanging out and playing together while their older sisters are playing volleyball. This weekend the girls somehow ended up with clown noses and popcorn to keep them entertained. It was too cute of a picture to pass up.

Here's a final picture I took of the team as they started their final game for the championship again. After getting silver the last week, the girls were really shooting for gold and they continued playing hard. They ended up winning the first set, but then losing the second one. They were tied multiple times in the 3rd set, but ended up losing 14-16 in the end. It was such a great game. They played so hard and had some amazing volleys, hits, and saves. We were sad to not see them get gold, but they were definitely deserving of a medal and they had fun playing.

They even had a fun surprise when Coach Denise came back right before their final game. She had left because she had to work at her other job, but when she got there and her manager saw how sad she was, Denise was able to tell her manager that she had just left her team right before their final game of the season and it was the championship game. Her manager let her leave, so she raced back to the courts and surprised the girls right before they started warming up for the game. It was such a fun surprise. Here's the full team with both coaches, Coach Dawson and Coach Denise. It was a great way to end the regular season and to keep the spirits up for their final out of town tournament the following weekend in Albuquerque for the Regional Championships.