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!

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!! 

 

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 

Church summer fun

Our kids had some pretty rockin' adventures with our church youth group this summer! I only have a handful of photos since the kids were asked not to bring phones to any of these. So just photos here and there that parents were texted as proof of life, haha!

Above is Isaac leading the PaddleShip at the end of their whitewater rafting high adventure for the young men's group (they were in actual rafts for the whitewater part, this was just playing around afterwards). He went on a 3-day trip to New River Gorge National Park and had a blast!!

And he used some of the cash we sent with him to buy a sticker for our cartop carrier, which is our family tradition whenever we visit a new national park. I loved that he thought to do this!!!

The day after we got home from 2 weeks of camping, the girls headed out to girls' camp with the young women in our stake! This was Abigail's second year as a youth counselor. 

Color fight aftermath!

Youth conference--this was our year for trek!! Juliet made the aprons that both our girls wore. And more camping!! I was seriously SO worried about trek before they left (and did my usual annoying thing where I email everyone in charge, I'm sure they love hearing from me). But it was crazy hot, heat warnings up the wazoo, humidity was insane, etc. We loaded them up with cooling towels, liquid IV packets, battery-powered fans, Camelbaks...everything we could think of! The leaders made some pretty significant modifications the week of (I think they had a LOT of concerned parents reaching out) and so it turned out to be a really good experience. 

I was just about to publish this post and Abigail said WAIT!!!! I have more trek pictures!! So while I took Luke to his soccer practice I put Abigail in charge of sorting through the Google drive folder of photos. 



These are all brand-new to me but I love Juliet's hair in this one!



And I suddenly understand how Juliet came home with bajillion mosquito bites (she said she didn't spray her legs with bug spray bc they were covered by her skirt...)





One of Abigail's big takeaways from trek is that she did a lot of the work along with the guys in her "family" and the other girls did...not so much. So here is Abigail working away with the guys!



Soooo much mud. And if I recall correctly it was 90 the first day.




River crossing with Abigail having a serious power moment!!!

Juliet provided Abigail with a sunbonnet and Abigail was like nope I am going for the ninja sweatband look.



And apparently Juliet adopted it too, haha. 



They had such a fun time at trek and I'm so glad they were able to go!! They also convinced a friend in Idaho to fly out and go AND they convinced a friend who was visiting from Utah to sign up for trek just days in advance and go with our stake. They are very persuasive girls and honestly, why would you not go if those two cute fun girls were asking you to? ;-) 

Both our girls received their patriarchal blessings at different points throughout the summer. Patriarch Monn was one of the counselors in our stake in Lafayette (their ward was moved into our current stake a couple years ago) and it was really neat to reconnect with the Monns.  

Both blessings were so beautiful and SO specific to each individual girl--they literally could not have been more different and more unique to each of our daughters. 

Pics from the girls' high adventure to Mammoth Cave (they went on the cave tour and canoeing!) and more camping!!! Abigail and I counted up and they were camping for NINE WEEKENDS STRAIGHT this summer. 

And so much paddleboarding fun this summer!! Isaac and Emma made so many good memories together this year. 

I laughed out loud when I saw this pic of Juliet just floating down the river with her Gatorade...

And this is kind of out of place, but here is Juliet as the first recipient of our library's high school reading award. It's supposed to take 4 years...she did it in about six months.