Back to school 2023 and Juliet’s birthday!

Lucky Juliet, she got to start her first day of junior year on her 16th birthday! (Rough, right? We had her celebrations beforehand.) 

Jules and Isaac are together at the high school in 11th and 9th grade. 

Luke is flying solo in middle school in 7th grade. 

And Nathan rules at the elementary school as a 5th-grader! Matty is his faithful 1st-grade sidekick. Sidenote: this is the last year that Matthew will ever share a school with a sibling. Crazy. 

The week before school started was PACKED with all kinds of back to school walk-throughs, orientations, kickoffs, etc. 

And I think this is so sweet--Neil is part of the Turtle Dads (finally revived post-pandemic!) and on the first day of school they all showed up to help kids find their classrooms, get a high-five or fist-bump, etc. I just love the push for more inclusion of dads as well as moms. 

 Meanwhile Abigail has been working two jobs and packing up her stuff for college--we fly out a week from today!

Birthdays and concerts!

The end of April and the beginning of May is birthday season at our house, with 3 birthdays in just a couple of weeks!! Nathan turned 10...

And Luke turned 12!!

Abigail and Nathan decided to share their birthday lunch, which was fun to sneak them both out of school for some special time. 

Abigail's birthday dinner (a few days late). 

My parents flew out a few weeks before graduation so that they could stay with our kids while we went to Europe with Abigail, which also meant that they got to be here for Luke's last band concert of the year!!

And lucky Luke had a lot of people to carry all his locker stuff home so he didn't have to deal with it on the last day of school. 

 

Juliet is 15!!

Juliet is 15!!! And another opting in for BYU mint brownies (dang those things are good). Here's the IG post I wrote on her birthday: Happy happy 15th birthday Juliet!!! Jules has grown about six inches this year and towers over everyone except Neil. She is either the exploding-with-energy life of the party or squirreled away with a book shunning everyone else—no in between!! Jules is a passionate reader and last year she won both the high school’s award for most books checked out and the local library’s award for the first kid to complete their high school book challenge (it’s designed to take four years; she finished it in about six months after she signed herself up—I knew nothing about it until I got the call from the library!). Juliet loooooves hiking and dislikes sleeping in tents in equal measure; she can’t decide whether she wants to be a veterinarian, librarian, or fashion designer (she sews all kinds of goodies for her siblings!) and she is the kind of person that you 100% want to invite to either your New Year’s Eve party or your book club teatime because she’ll make either a resounding success!

A few favorite pics of Juliet from the year...

Glacier



Arches

Driving the boat 

Playing with Penny in the backyard

Hiking Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone

Grinnell Lake

Yellowstone

Such a cutie!!

And from her bday interview...

 Most recent dream: forgot to pack lunch for school

Current favorite book: Mortal Instruments series

Favorite thing to do after school: after I do homework…relax and read 

Favorite food: pot roast with a side of spaghetti and fries

Favorite hike: Swiftcurrent pass

Favorite treat: vanilla ice cream 

Favorite thing to do as a family: go hiking 

Favorite foods that other people whine about: asparagus & tomatoes 

Most excited for about being 15: starting drivers Ed 

Isaac is 13!!

Two days after we got home from Montana, it was Isaac's thirteenth birthday! Here's the IG post I wrote: Happy 13th birthday to our sweet Isaac, who has grown from the cutest little baby into this handsome teenager!! Baby Isaac and teenage Isaac have a lot in common: they’re both super sweet and affectionate and they’re both BRILLIANT. When Isaac was three he would spend hours every day working puzzles and assembling Lego sets (he could follow the instructions long before he started reading) and he’s just gotten more talented and intuitive as he gets older. He’s now really into building his own gadgets just from his own designs rather than instructions (like the clock he built last week with Lego Technic pieces that had different mechanisms to track the hour, minute, and second. No instructions, just his own knowledge of how it should work). He loves reading and always wants to discuss his favorite bits of his most recent book; his teachers consistently email us and tell us how much they love his thoughtful contributions in class (he’ll be in 10th grade math next year as an 8th grader and is a very talented pianist; he’s always happy to help out younger siblings with math or piano and will patiently sit down and work through a tricky bit with them). For his birthday meals today, he requested cinnamon biscuits for breakfast, Indian food for lunch, and tacos for dinner with lemon meringue pie to follow. We love having Isaac in our family and couldn’t ask for a better oldest son to set a phenomenal example for his younger brothers!



The girls were at camp that week, so it was just a boy house (and me!). 

Birthday lunch at Amber Indian!

And this incredibly specific birthday list, haha!

Isaac used a whole bunch of saved-up birthday money to buy the Land Rover Technic set of his dreams! It kept him busy for a few days, and then calculating all the input gear ratios kept him busy for a few more--he is definitely just like his dad!

Birthday lunch interview

Most recent dream: can't remember one

Favorite summer reading book: The Sword of Shannara

Favorite thing to do after school: Legos!!

Favorite food: tacos

Favorite dinner: tacos

Favorite treat: fudge

Favorite thing to do as a family: play board games

Favorite foods that other people whine about: black bean enchiladas 

 

End of the school year milestones

Oh man, so much happening at the end of the school year! I'm not even going to try to keep it in in order. Above: Luke, Abigail, and Isaac all competed in the state piano competition AND they all made it to the finals, woohoo! (Note: we did not actually *compete* in the finals because it was scheduled when we were out of town. Bummer, but it was amazing that they made it so far!)

Abigail competed on the school robotics team, which was a TON of time (she didn't get home until 7 pm every day during build season), made lots of new friends, and had a great experience! We loved watching her compete (especially Matthew, who was VERY into waving flags, yelling chants, and sporting badges). 

Abigail also went through a pretty rigorous interview process for her summer job, working full-time as a camp counselor for the local parks department! 

Luke had his fifth-grade promotion ceremony and was on the 6th grade!

These guys are the best of buddies. 

And Matty finished up three years of preschool!

He has been with the same teacher for all three years (she came back from maternity leave for the last day!) and Nathan had her before that and man I don't know what we are going to do without her this year!!

These three boys had an awesome spring soccer season! (And I may or may not have been hugely relieved when Juliet and Isaac decided not to run track in the spring...)

And we started hosting post-pandemic birthday parties again!!

And ran our first post-pandemic half-marathon!



And got to chaperone our first post-pandemic field trip! (This is our cute little neighbor who is in Nathan's grade and Matty was soooo happy to see him!)


And suddenly it was the last day of school...

And on to summer!