Showing posts with label luke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label luke. Show all posts

Monday, May 22, 2023

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!! 







 

Friday, May 12, 2023

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. 




 

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Luke is 11!!



And Lukesly is 11! Here's the IG post I wrote on his birthday: Happy E L E V E N to Luke!!! For people outside our family, Luke is the quiet one; to us, he is the funniest one who gets along with everyone in our family and is super chill. Luke’s mind is SO creative and he just thinks in a totally different way from anyone I’ve ever met; we were talking the other night about how if Luke became a mountain-top trainer of ninja penguin engineers, we’d all be like “ah of course, that’s so Luke.” He’s totally brilliant (just got bumped another math class so he’s working 2 years ahead of grade level), loooooves reading and is an expert at quietly slipping away with a great book, is a champion soccer player and convinced his two best buddies to join his team this year so he’s in total heaven, is such an adventurous and fun eater (I don’t think we’ve found the food yet that Luke won’t try), and is super cuddly and always sits by me in church so he can lie in my lap and get a head massage or backscratch. He spends a lot of his free time outside working on an elaborate pulley system for the treehouse, LOVES gardening, and is a huge fan of any kind of physical outdoor activity. He is so charming and fun and we are so happy he’s in our family!



And as always, he chose sushi for his birthday lunch--have you ever seen a more satisfied little smile? 



Luke had a water party & pizza palooza for his birthday--the boys had an AWESOME time!! He had four of his buddies over + Isaac. (Nathan and Matthew were occasionally allowed to participate.)




We sent everyone home with giant water guns, just what their parents wanted, I'm sure. Haha!



As always, Luke was SO specific about what he wanted for his birthday party treat--I don't know where he comes up with these (remember the Starburst volcano cake that took out one of his teeth?!) but this time he wanted a giant chocolate chip cookie made out of Rice Krispie treats and Hershey Kisses. Et voila. 



They had SO much fun trying to launch water balloons into the treehouse!




And Luke's bday lunch interview: 

Most recent dream: creepy colored pencils playing baseball. They weren’t playing baseball but I knew somehow they were playing baseball. 

Current favorite book: Skyward

Favorite thing to do after school: treehouse maneuvers 

Favorite food: sushi

Favorite dinner: Thanksgiving 

Favorite treat: mint brownies

Favorite thing to do as a family: hiking or biking 

Favorite foods that other people whine about: mushrooms, tomatoes, raw fish, pistachios or walnuts (any nuts) 


 



Wednesday, December 01, 2021

Fall little things and big things





Lots and lots going on this fall! Above: a bike ride Neil and I took a couple weeks ago when the leaves were really at their peak.



Some pics of Abigail getting ready for homecoming--she looked (and looks!) so beautiful! No pics with her date by her request, since they broke up a couple weeks ago. 



While Abigail was at homecoming, we hosted a big party for Juliet's friends at our house (which then expanded to Isaac's friends too). It was a fun night--lots of bonfire time and backyard night games. Of course, the only pics I got were Luke setting up...



...and Isaac cleaning up (burning the last of the firewood. It's a thing). 


I'm not even going to try to keep these in order since the process of transferring photos from my phone jumbles everything! 

Launching rockets with the Activity Days kids (Neil was in charge of this one and it was so fun!). 


One of our friends turned 60 and designed his own party, which was seriously SO fun! He invited whole families instead of just couples and we had a 5k color run, sumo wrestling, tons of backyard games and yummy food, and wound up with everyone throwing pies at him. A very unique party and one that we all really enjoyed (we have some extremely competitive adults when it comes to duck duck goose and Dizzy Izzy). 



This is the time of year when I have to limit myself to only taking one picture per run because it's just SO gorgeous. One Friday the weather was particularly gorgeous so I ran a half-marathon after I dropped Matty off at preschool and the clouds were so good while I was waiting at the roundabout that I had to take an extra photo!



And then my other allotted photo. I made myself wait 8 miles to get this one because I knew it would be so good! I totally plan my routes this time of year based on leaves. 



Case in point: 



Then I make everyone go back with me on Sunday walks. 




Oh gosh I just love fall running.



This is the time of year when I always get a home improvement itch! This year it was our exterior siding...



PS notice the moss on the sunroom roof? In a classic case of project creep, we just signed the paperwork today for a new roof. Sometimes I get started on a project and I'm like WELL THIS WHOLE PLACE IS JUST FALLING APART ISN'T IT?! Kind of like when you start cleaning something and realize how gross everything is and how you thought your house was clean but you're actually living in squalor with hand smudges on your walls and dusty baseboards. (Note: my walls are smudged and my baseboards are dusty.) 



We paused to take our kids to the ward trunk or treat and then looked at the forecast when we got home and were like, oh dang, we better finish the last 45 minutes worth of painting. 



I'm realizing I uploaded the photos that still have ladder marks in them, so please rest assured that we did go back and paint those spots. ;-) And we have bedraggled fake spiderwebs everywhere since it was the day before Halloween when I took these. 


Love this color!! The wood siding is Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore (same color as our kitchen island) and the stone is Avorio White limewash by Romabio. We added the raised beds last year and I limewashed the stone the year before that. Next year's project is converting the sunroom--hopefully!



Another quick little project--stripping out all the caulk in our main floor shower and hanging new doors. Relatively easy update and it makes such a difference! (I took a photo of the process but apparently nothing of the finished version...)


Lots of morning tea around here (Matthew is partial to Trader Joe's harvest blend and I love Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice) and this is my favorite cup yet. 


The little boys and I waited for four hours for their first round of Covid vaccines--we got them the day after they were approved!! Such a relief. 




Cute Matty in some of cousin Caleb's clothes that they passed on to us!! Such a fun box to open. 




Juliet had her end of season banquet for cross-country!





And started getting in some good cross-training days...


Lukey working on our Halloween week calendar






Cheering on some cute friends in the school musical (Isaac was home with a fever, poor kid, so Nathan happily took his ticket). 



Lots and lots of walks with Matty. 



And hitting the playground with friends every time we had good weather and could squeeze in an hour! 



Matty's hair is a whole thing right now. Sometimes he rubs it up in his hands to make it super crazy...



...and then sometimes he asks for us to style it "like that mean boy in Harry Potter" (Draco Malfoy). He is currently really into the Draco hairstyle and wants his hair like this for every Sunday. 



Not sure why I took this but it is a pretty typical thing--I usually try to fit in some strength work in the mornings while Matty is home because he is really into the various Peloton instructors (if I do a class with Andy, you know that Matthew picked the class that day). Matthew will often do the class with me or just sit here and comment things like "Mom, you're getting pretty strong, but you're supposed to be going faster." 


"Hey Mom, do I look like a really cool guy?" 



And to take us out, here is Neil rocking a fever and "helping" to put away groceries. I came in from the car to find this and started laughing so hard as I realized that if Neil were to ever get drunk, he would probably do exactly this. Haha! Kind of sad though because this is the one that took us all down the week of Thanksgiving and you can see that I was SET on butter for that butterific holiday. (Good sale, gotta stock up.) 








 

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