First week of fall sports

 

Last Saturday Juliet got up at the crack of dawn (4:45!!) for her first high-school cross-country meet! Yay Juliet!! She has been doing training runs with the team 6 days a week since the beginning of June, so it was awesome to see all that hard work start paying off (new PB on the NCAA championship course; she beat a whole bunch of seniors and a couple of the girls on varsity!). 



Jules with the other two freshman girls from her church seminary class (we combine with the other ward)




Powering up a hill mid-race next to her friend Anne; these girls have been running together for the last 4 years and it's been awesome to watch them both grow as runners!



A very very proud mom who most definitely was crying a little bit while cheering. 





Meanwhile back at home, Neil was heroically getting all the boys to their stuff! Isaac had XC practice at 8, then the three little boys all had games. I got back (Juliet's meet was 2 hours away) just in time for Nathan's game, hence the pictures of Nate but not Luke and only one of Matthew (at Nathan's game). Next week I'll be at the boys' games while Neil is at Juliet's meet, so expect a total reversal in picture numbers. ;-)



Cuties!! Love watching them all. 

2021-2022 school year begins!!

It's hard to believe we are entering our THIRD Covid-affected school year, yet here we are!!! After a long and hard fight to get the mask mandate, I'm really hopeful that we stay in school this year with a normal schedule (last year we were hybrid for grades 6-12). How is Abigail a junior & Jules a freshman? Already?! Seems like this was just yesterday.

Matthew will turn 5 in late September, so we opted for one final year of preschool with his beloved teachers. 



Luke's last year of elementary school!!

Isaac at the middle school all by himself until Luke joins him next year...

We had back-to-school orientations beginning August 2 and ending August 10. IT FELT LIKE SO MUCH. I shared Luke's feelings.

(No pictures of Abigail because she drove herself so she could meet up with friends; she took Juliet with her which I thought was so sweet, so by the time the first day rolled around Juliet felt pretty confident in navigating that gigantic school!!)

And then it was time for the back-to-school dinner...

Totally nailed the roast beef (which is always a roll of the dice; so much harder for me to get right than pot roast!).

Big shout-out to Luke who is ALWAYS such a fantastic kitchen helper (we made these rolls twice in the last couple of weeks and he's getting so good at them!!)

And my "don't forget anything" white board; I texted this photo to my friends saying "what am I forgetting?!" and then they thought of like 3 more things. It takes a village!!!! 

And to take us out, one totally unrelated photo of Luke eating dinner a couple nights ago (Thai-style fried fish sandwiches that were so good but pretty darn time-consuming to make) and I just loved his impish little expression, hah!

 

Last Saturday of summer beach day

 

As per tradition, we spend the last Saturday before school started at Lake Michigan with friends! (We were down two families this summer thanks to pandemic-era job transfers...so sad!!)



I love how tightly-knit these friendships have become. Sometimes I feel so sad that our kids are growing up so far from aunts and uncles and cousins, but as my friend reminded me last week, this is our family too. 

I snapped only a few photos because it was such a busy day, and I don't know if I got any of the teenagers! A few in the background here and there. 




Another fantastic summer-end day in the books and Juliet's FOURTEEN now!!