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!

Senior pics for Abigail

Way back in October my dear friend Melissa took Abigail's senior photos. Here are a few...

It was an insanely windy day! And bitterly cold. Abigail and Melissa were total troopers about it (and Melissa did a second session a few days later to get some non-windy photos). 

And to take us out, a photo that Melissa took telling me I would someday want to look back and remember that day--it was a hard one!! I was so incredibly sick with Covid, high fever, freezing cold and shaking the whole time, no sense of taste or smell, barely ambulatory, but I showed up. Which is basically how I've been functioning for most of this year--just trying to show up despite a lot of really huge hard things happening behind the scenes. 

 

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!!!!

 

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!!