The Rest of Summer and the Beginning of School

These are the rest of the pictures I want to include from our summer before we start off the new school year. Here are the other happenings of our summer:

We coached volleyball at the YMCA again, and Tessa decided with a couple of her classmates to play. She really liked it and it was fun to watch her learn. She was with the 3rd and 4th graders, so we didn't coach her age level, but we cheered her on at every game. Another friend, Natalie, played too so there were four of them that knew each other that were on the same team.

Her greatest accomplishment was getting her serves over. She never shied away from the ball when it came toward her, so that's good; however, when she did bump the ball, most of the time her arms came flying apart because the ball would hit her so hard. She did get some returns over and she always had a smile on her face. She and Aubrey spent a month of the summer taking some free gymnastics classes as well, and she loved that so much, she decided not to continue with volleyball in hopes of starting up gymnastics again. 

Abby's age group (5th-7th grade) was the level we coached again. Here are our two summer teams. They played really well. Some of these girls we've been coaching for an entire year, and it was so awesome to see home much they've improved. We really have a fun time doing it.

Another happening this summer was the move of my parents to El Paso! They closed on their house in June, brought their belongings to unload, and pretty much left the next day to spend the rest of the summer with my brother, Scott and Nevla in San Antonio because they were about to have a baby. The kids liked hanging out on the back bumper of the moving truck as it sat in front of our house. 

My parent's new house is in a brand new neighborhood about 10 minutes away from us. Their neighborhood even has a park, so we spent some time their one evening. I took some pictures of the girls as they played. We really like visiting grandma and grandpa's house and love that it's so close now! 

Abby started out the summer by attending her first band camp. It was the very beginning of her learning the French horn, but after those first couple weeks, she decided she wanted to stick with it. It's been fun playing with her and teaching her the horn. She's picked it up really fast and is pretty awesome for only having played it for a couple months now. This was the only way she would let me take a picture of her on her last day of band camp. 

Over the 4th of July, we stayed in town this year. We went to the parade again and had a fun time watching the floats. Tyler even walked to a bagel store to get us breakfast. Tessa had just dropped some of her breakfast which is why she's not too happy in the picture. Also, because we were in town, I was able to play the 4th of July concert with the Wind Symphony again, so that was a lot of fun. Tyler brought the girls out to see me during a break so we could have dinner together, but they left before the actual concert started because the park gets crazy busy with people. It was still a good concert and I had lots of fun playing. 

A couple summer events that we participated in for free food included free slurpees at 7/11 on June 11th. I usually forget until it's too late, but someone mentioned it that morning, so we were able to go for an after lunch snack. The girls were super excited about it. Yummy! We also participated for the third year in a row in Dress Like a Cow day for free food at Chic-Fil-A. The girls loved their food and of course the ice cream. 

One of the best parts of our summer was when the Bakers drove through El Paso on their way home to Houston. They planned the stopover towards the beginning of the summer since they were planning to drive home from Idaho from their family vacation, so we counted down the days until they came. They got in right before dinner and had to leave early the next morning, but we had enough time to eat, play some games, and let the kids goof around a little bit. The Bakers were our closest friends in California while Tyler was in Optometry school.  We didn't have any kids yet, and they only had two kids at the time, Derek and Shayla, who are now teenagers. It's crazy to see how much both of our families have grown since then. I'm so happy that we've been able to stay in touch all these years. And we picked up the game playing as if no time had passed at all.

The kids all got along really well too. Junior is Tessa's age and they played games with all the older kids and hung out like they've been friends forever. Dax and Davin hung out with Aubrey and Taryn and watched movies. Shayla, who's a pretty good contortionist, let my girls jump all over her as they learned tricks that she does with her little brothers. My little gymnastic girls thought it was the best thing ever. We had so much fun visiting and hanging out with them.

My girls and the Kasallis boys spent a couple different weekends this summer trying out lemonade stands. One hot summer day, we even set up a tent for them to have some shade. We spread the word among our friends and they did pretty well that weekend as people stopped by. It was a good way to keep the kids entertained and outside this summer. 

We've been pretty good about feeding the missionaries in our ward this year and we made good friends with all of them. Elder Summerhays and Elder Mapes were in our ward through most of the summer and we fed them the week before Elder Summerhays was on his way home. We joked with him because we were traveling up to Utah for our family vacation the same time that he was flying home from his mission. We kept saying we'd show up at the airport to surprise him. We really enjoyed feeding the missionaries and having them bring their spirit and enthusiasm into our home. 

My kids love to steal my phone and take pictures and videos - especially Aubrey, so here's some of their pictures that were worth saving from this summer. 

Aubrey loved taking selfies too. Here's one of her last ones from the summer. We did a lot of swimming either at our house or at the Kasallis's house, so I took this picture of Taryn one day at the Kasallis's and I loved how it turned out.

A friend from church, Karina, made plans with Abby and her friend Claire to go to Western Playland which is a small amusement park in town some time before school started. Abby went there for her 5th grade field trip, but my other girls had never been, so we had one last summer hurrah. Here are the girls while we waited to meet up with Karina and her boyfriend Jared. 

We took this selfie while waiting in line for a roller coaster ride, but Karina corrected me by calling it an "us-ie" not a selfie. :) I watched the girls on most of the rides so I just took pictures as everyone was at the top of the boat ride. I was so excited that Tessa was over her fear of roller coasters. All three of my girls had so much fun on all of the rides. Tyler stayed home with Taryn since we mostly did bigger kid rides.

We took one last group picture as it was getting dark. The wind really picked up that night and shut down some of the rides early, but we got to ride almost everything we wanted to and everyone had a really fun time. 

The weekend before school started, we also celebrated this guy's birthday. Tyler turned 39 on August 21st. This was the only picture I took and doesn't he look so excited? :) We made him a chocolate cake and probably watched a movie to celebrate, but we're happy to have him in our lives. Happy Birthday Tyler! 

Audrey and I are visiting teaching companions and we visit one of our neighbors, Evelyn. We made a lunch visit to celebrate Evelyn's birthday, so we took a picture after having lunch. It was so fun to visit and have a girls lunch out!

One day, we walked around the mall and used our final punches for a free train ride. Grandma and Grandpa Black were with us, so the girls were excited to show them the super exciting train ride. It's like a tiny circle that they go around 10 times, but the girls still love riding on it. Taryn was waving to me while I tried taking a picture, but the moving train made it blurry every time. It was a fun way for the girls to end their summer. 

Right before school started, the girls were able to go up to the school to meet their teachers. We stopped by the superhero-themed backdrop to grab a picture on our way out. Superheros is the PTA theme at the elementary school this year. We also had to get a picture by our tile that we painted last year. It was installed during the summer. We painted the one with the paw print on the letters of BYU. Each girl used her thumbprint to make the toe prints of the paw. We were very happy with how it turned out and we love seeing it in the school. 

We were not allowed to walk the kids to their classes on the first day of school this year, so I used the time during meet-the-teacher night to check out Aubrey's classroom and get a picture of her with her new teacher, Mrs. Bass. Aubrey's very excited to be in 2nd grade.

I didn't get any other pictures of  Tessa's or Abby's classrooms, but we did take our mandatory first day pictures before leaving the house. Abby started at Hornedo Middle School this year, 6th grade. I can't believe she's so grown up! 

Tessa is excited to be in 4th grade and has three teachers this year. She has a homeroom teacher, Mrs. Hingst; however she's only in that class for about 10 minutes. She spends the morning with Mr. Belknap in GT class and her afternoon with Mrs. Adkins for Math and Science. She love GT and loves her teachers. You can see her excitement for school in these pictures from the first day, which I love. 

Good luck to all the girls in another successful school year!

Part 2 - Grandma Willes's 90th Birthday Party

After the full week with Tyler's family, we spent the weekend with my family as they started flying in for my grandma's party. Friday morning, we spent some time at my Grandma's house as she told us all stories of some of the things she's been doing that we were going to spotlight at her party that night. John and Mckaye were there, as well as Paul and his family. Grandma is very good about writing down her life stories, so she shared some of them with us and showed us things she had made like her own jewelry box, some pottery bowls, and her own pens.

I took a some pictures of my kids with their great-grandmother because I love having these kinds of pictures. Abby wanted her own picture with Grandma because she kept telling her friends how short her great-grandma was and that she was taller than her. So here's the proof. Grandma Willes is always known as Tiny Grandma.

Once I started the picture taking, we basically had to have a whole photo session so everyone could get pictures with Grandma. Here's our four-generation picture with my kids, me, my dad, and my grandma.

After lunch, we went with Paul and family to the Bean Museum on the BYU campus. They've updated it a ton since the last time our family had visited, so it was fun to see everything new. I took this first picture at the front entry display, but the animals were too big to be in the picture too. I told the kids that at least we got the giraffe bums in the picture. :) 

I told the girls I'd take their individual picture with whatever animal they chose, but it started with Tessa's stare down with this guy which Taryn looked on. Aubrey picked to have her picture taken with the peacocks.

Tessa wanted her official picture by the swans, and Abby loves elephants.

After we finished at the museum, we walked around campus for a bit. We stopped by a waterfall that starts a stream that follows a walkway. Tyler got the kids to have a stick race by dropping sticks on one side of the sidewalk and seeing which one came out the other side first. I think I remember Tyler saying that his stick won.

Tessa did a school project last year about BYU and during her research, she learned about an art piece made from string and light creating a rainbow. We looked it up and found the real thing in the Museum of Art. It was pretty cool. We took one picture from underneath and one from farther away so you can see the rainbow more clearly.

We ended up at the park where the birthday party was going to be held a little early, so that we could help set up. Some of my cousins' kids and some of my Aunt's kids and my kids were having a blast playing together. Aubrey was so excited to tell the other girls that they were her second cousins. Here are some pictures at the beginning of the party and near the end as the sun was going down.

There were paper tablecloths on the picnic tables for the kids to color while we waited to eat. And they had a timeline of Grandma's life that took up two tables. I wish I had taken a picture of all of it, but I only grabbed this closeup of these pictures because it's of my dad with his parents. I love that it shows his curly blond hair and blue eyes, which is where Tessa gets her hair and eye color from. I thought it was so cute!

Here's the table display of all the things my grandma created herself. There was also a table of all the life stories and journal binders that she did, plus a backdrop of tons of pictures with grandma and all her family. I loved the signs they had created too. It really was a fun time celebrating the life of one awesome lady and her 90 years of life so far.

The next morning before people started heading home, we stopped by grandma's house one more time for lunch and to say goodbyes. Some of the group had gone zip-lining that morning because that's what my grandma wanted to do for her 90th birthday. So we got to hear about their adventures as we ate lunch. We also took one big family picture. All we were missing was Scott and his family and Matt and Taylor.

Here were the siblings that were there that afternoon, so it's Grandma with my dad and two of my dad's sisters, Chris and Linda.

We left to drive back home that day. We stayed in a hotel in Farmington, and we got there with time to swim that night. I decided I didn't need to get wet, so I just watched and took this picture of the family while they swam in the pool. They said it was warm water and they liked the waterfall.

We love our family and all the memories we get to make together. It was so fun being able to see both sides of our extended family in one trip. Families are forever!