First week of summer

The day after graduation, we packed up and headed out for our traditional end-of-school camping trip with friends. There were Sasquatch sightings, outdoor movies, early morning trail runs, lots of hammock time, delicious food, and just some much-needed relaxation! 

So thankful for our friends who are like family. 

We also went geode hunting and found SO many!!

Then the next weekend we had Abigail's graduation openhouse! I grabbed a couple pics before people started arriving and then forgot about pictures for the rest of the night. 

And we had our last soccer games!

Luke's "after winning the tournament" pose

Then the next week was super crazy. Juliet went to girl's camp and was a YCL. 

The boys went to stake YM's camp and then on a paddleboarding camping trip (Neil got to go on that one too!). So thankful for all the cool stuff my kids get to do thanks to awesome adults in their lives. 

Not pictured: robotics camp for Isaac and Luke and soccer camp for Matthew. And we have packed so many pool days, park dates, and popsicles in these first few weeks of summer! 

 

Graduation

Feels like the second picture was just yesterday. 

I took this pic on the last day of school--Juliet wasn't home yet (I think she was biking home or riding with a friend, can't remember). What's crazy to me in this photo is how close Luke and Isaac are to Abigail's height--I think they will both be taller than her when she comes home for Christmas. 

Traditional last day photo in front of the peonies. If I think about how this is the last last day photo I will have with all six of my kids, I will lose it, so let's move on. 

My parents flew in from Utah to be there and I was so grateful that they came!! 

Our girl up on the Jumbotron--there are SO many graduates and I think this is a great idea. I think there were 1500-1700 in her graduating class. Not sure, but it took 1.5 hours to read all the names. 

Abigail graduated with a stellar academic record--National Merit Finalist, Academic Honors, and Technical Honors. She took 10 AP classes (still waiting for this year's scores but she got 5's on all her tests last year) and did a bunch of classes that double-counted with our high school and one of the local colleges. She had multiple full-tuition scholarships to several universities, and decided to attend BYU this fall. We are so proud of her and we will miss her SO much!!!!

 

Summer Reading 2023

Without further ado, this year's lists, since my kids have been asking for these for weeks!

I went back this year and had the kids read some books that I was surprised to realize they hadn't read; I also felt like this had been a really heavy school year for everyone so I didn't pick really any "challenging" books for anyone and just kind of focused on what I thought would be fun for each kid.

Abigail, just graduated from high school (and wasn't sure that she wanted a summer reading list):
1) Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey)
2) Jubal Sackett (Louis L'Amour)
3) Island of Ghosts (Gillian Bradshaw)
4) Ruins of Ambrai (Melanie Rawn)
5) The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
6) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7) How the Heather Looks (Joan Bodger)
8) Daughter of the Forest (Juliet Marillier) 
9) A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (Holly Jackson)

Juliet, just finished 10th grade:
1) Ruins of Ambrai (Melanie Rawn)
2) Monsoon Diary (Shoba Narayan)
3) Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
4) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) 
5) Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery)
6) Tarzan of the Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
7) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Mark Twain)
8) Have His Carcase (Dorothy L. Sayers) 
9) Jubal Sackett (Louis L'Amour)
10) Troubled Waters (Sharon Shinn)

Isaac, just finished 8th grade:
1) Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through the National Parks
2) Beauty & Rose Daughter (Robin McKinley)
3) Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher) 
4) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Mark Twain)
5) Tarzan of the Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
6) The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
7) Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
8) Jubal Sackett (Louis L'Amour)
9) Ruins of Ambrai (Melanie Rawn)
10) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Luke, just finished 6th grade:
1) Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes)
2) Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
3) The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (Maria von Trapp)
4) And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
5) The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley)
6) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
7) Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
8) House of Many Ways (Diana Wynne Jones)
9) Watership Down  (Richard Adams)
10) Belles on Their Toes (Frank B. Gilbreth, Ernestine Gilbreth)

Nathan, just finished 4th grade:
1) The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
2) Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell)
3) Peter Pan (JM Barrie)
4) Vodnik (Bryce Moore)
5) Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
6) Calamity (Brandon Sanderson)
7) The Copper Gauntlet (Holly Black)
8) Charmed Life (Dianna Wynne Jones)
9) Cheaper By the Dozen (Frank B. Gilbreth, Ernestine Gilbreth)
10) The Lives of Christopher Chant (Dianna Wynne Jones)

Matthew, just finished kindergarten:
1) First four Magic Treehouse books
2) Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone 
and as many other books as he wants--for our new little readers we just encourage tons of reading for fun!

Summer Reading 2022

Summer Reading 2021

Summer Reading 2020

Summer Reading 2019

Summer Reading 2018

Summer Reading 2017

Summer Reading 2016

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Prom and soccer

A lot of big stuff happened in April!!



Like Abigail turning 18!! (This was maybe my favorite celebration ever, we invited all of her friends in the stake back to our house after "Mormon Prom" and everyone sang to her and devoured a Costco sheet cake). 

Abigail chose her dress based on one that she could easily swing-dance in and be twirled around someone's head (she wore bike shorts underneath); Juliet chose hers based on one she could redesign endlessly with big swathes of fabric (I think she told me she can make 80 different configurations?). 

Kids in our ward taking photos at our house before the dance. (It was really cold!)

Love this outtake of Juliet:

We also had the Pinewood Derby the day after I flew home from Utah! On the same day as Abigail's birthday and a couple days before prom--it was a very busy week.

Matthew, Luke, and Juliet really had fun soccer seasons this spring--Jules hasn't played for a few years but her friends talked her into playing on their rec team and she had a blast. Luke's team won the tournament, woohoo!! And Matty scored a LOT of goals so fortunately I am no longer paying him $1 per goal. 

Juliet's team had a hard loss to a really good team and their coach (our good friend Aaron) gave them the best post-game pep talk that also ended with some advice for prom night, because we had like 90 minutes to get home from the game, clean up, and get kids out the door for prom!

They had such a fun night!!