August happenings

 The Elder's Quorum hosted an activity with the giant hamster balls. Megan came to help inflate them because she knew the Merritt kids would be there. They all had fun trying the balls out. 

Megan upside down:

Ryan was jealous, so after I took Megan home we checked if there were many adults, and there weren't so I brought Ryan back to the church and he joined in the fun there. He figured out it takes about 7 rolls to get from one side of the gym to the other. He also managed to build a snowman... or he was inside the ball while others built a snowman on top of him.

Sister Bauer encouraged Ryan to prepare to do prelude music at church, and while he didn't think he was quite ready, after practicing for a while, he was ready to go and did a great job on the prelude music. 

Cross country season has started and is HOT. Ryan is leading his school, as the fastest runner in both the races so far. In the first race he came in 4th, and in the next race he came in 5th, but cut 30 seconds off his time, so he's making great progress towards his goal of a 6 minute mile. 

The Copper/Navy game was the first game (scrimmage) of the year. Rachel pulled out her senior pants for their debut at the pep assembly that morning.

I happened to get to attend the first part of the assembly, since I was there to award some ACT scholarships as part of my role as PTO president, so I got to see the band playing as the kids came in, and get the assembly kicked off in style. It was fun to see them.

The game that evening was delayed by lightning, but after starting a half hour late, it was fun for everyone.

Megan has been begging to go to a trampoline park all summer, and when that didn't happen, we had plans to go another day, but she hurt her ankle just before that, so we had to postpone. We finally made it to the trampoline park with Ryan and Megan, and they had so much fun.

They both got better at some flips, even on the least bouncy floor they have, and they had fun with that.

Rachel and Eden made paper dolls of themselves this summer and made their clothes, as well. Maybe Rachel used her paper doll to decide on this outfit that she wore to her job interview with the library. She finally heard back from them last week and she got the job! She starts in September. 

She applied for this job back in June, was invited to come test for it in July, the day before school started, then got a notification that her interview had to be postponed (though she hadn't heard anything about an interview). A few days later she got an email saying we're sorry, but you won't be moving forward in the job selection process, if you think you've received this in error, please reach out. She was bummed, but couldn't stop thinking about it for a few days, and finally decided maybe that was a prompting so she emailed and asked if that was an error, and it was! So she was invited to interview, and ended up getting hired, and will get to work at the library half way between our house and her school. Really a pretty ideal situation.

For Jacob's birthday, we left the kids at home and headed up to Mesa for an overnight getaway. With Rachel being nearly 18, and my parents just down the road, we figured they'd be fine, and they were. We hit PF Changs and the Mesa Temple since the Tucson Temple is closed for 2 weeks for cleaning right now. It was a nice night away.

It happened to be a busy weekend, and Annie had a thespian lock in that was supposed to be all night, but since she had marching band practice Saturday morning, she just stayed until midnight when grandpa picked her up. Band practice the next morning, and Grandma taking Ryan and Megan to a service project at the church putting together the new hymns in binders, meant that Jacob and I returned to an empty (but clean!) house, though the kids soon returned, as well. 

Saturday night was a regional music festival and dance. There was a carnival theme, including carnival games, and it turned out pretty awesome. There were 668 kids that came. It was huge! 

It was a great night, and if there was outdoor air conditioning it would have been perfect.

Mom's fun

Driving Annie home from school the first week of school I noticed an Argentine food truck with empanadas. Since Argentina is very similar to Uruguay I'd been really wanting to eat there, so when I took Annie out shopping for clothes we stopped by. It was as delicious as can be. Empanadas and alfajores. 

The following Monday there was no school, so I took the kids to Bookman's, and tried to take them to get empanadas for lunch, but apparently they open a little later on weekdays than they do on Saturdays, so we missed out. I'll need to take them some other time. 

My friend, Susqui, and her 50th birthday and invited friends over to celebrate with her. We were invited to dress 80s or 90s style if we wanted. Judy convinced me to join her in dressing 80s, so we did. It was a good time with friends.

 We had a stake Relief Society activity, and Judy, Molly and I carpooled. At it, we did a paint by number where we each got a 3x3" paper to paint with dots using a Q-tip. They assembled all the pieces and it turned out really amazing. It was a great object lesson about how each of us has a different role to play and even though we are all different, when we come together in Christ, we can do amazing things. They donated the finished product to the chapel on Davis Monthan Air Force Base.

Back to School

 Ryan and Megan started 8th and 6th grade at Desert Sky! Go Cougars!

Rachel and Annie started 12th grade and 9th grade a few days later. Go Bobcats! 

At the Cienega open house the band played stand tunes for their first school performance of the year.

Since we didn't have Stake YW camp this year, we had a stake YW pool party to celebrate the end of the summer. Probably almost half of the girls who showed up were from our ward, so Rachel and Annie had a good time. 

July and August is tarantula season, as they are more active during monsoon season. Our neighbor was trying to get rid of a tarantula that was on his porch, and swept him out to the street. Megan loves tarantulas and saved it to bring to our back yard to eat bugs in our garden. She loved having it there, but unfortunately the launch into the street must have been too much for him and the next morning we woke up to find him dead. Megan was sad that having a pet of her own lasted such a short time. 

"Prayer time!" Rachel and Annie usually have prayer with me before they leave for seminary at 6:10am, then we have prayer with the other kids and Dad about 7:15 when they're ready to leave. On Fridays, however, there is no seminary, and no zero hour, so Rachel and Annie get to pray with us. When they roll out of bed straight into prayer we sometimes have an interesting sight. 

Band Camp

 Rachel's last band camp and Annie's first band camp! It was hot, sweaty, and sunny. They worked hard outside on marching all morning, then inside on music all afternoon. As band booster president this year, I spent a good part of the week at school helping (also because I'm the PTO president and it was registration week), so Ryan and Megan had a lot of unsupervised time at home. I did make sure to head home mid day every day to have lunch with them and take Megan to synchro. Grandma and Grandpa happened to be in Seattle that week, and we really missed them and their help with rides that week. 

At the end of the week there was the end of band camp performance when all the kids got decked out in their uniforms and showed off all the music they had mastered this week. 

High brass:

Clarinets:

Sisters!

Rachel got the opening solo of the show and got to show that off! It's going to be a fun season to see her shine! 

The following week, band boosters provided lunch for the teachers their last day before school started. It sure is good to have lots of people willing to help out. Last year it was just me and Kiki that were available to help that day, so having so many people was wonderful. 

Last week of fun

We crammed some fun and some relaxation into the first week of July. Rachel finished work the week before, so had a week of downtime, Annie had finished her Health class, and didn't have any camp that week (one of 2 weeks all summer without a camp for her), and while Ryan and Megan had their regular swim team, because of the 4th of July that was only 3 days, and Megan only did synchro 2 days because she skipped for her friend birthday party. All that to say, we had an actual free day where we could do something fun together. We got Grandma to come with us to Peter Piper Pizza and besides some pizza, the kids played at the arcade for a while and Megan rode the roller coaster for some fun.

They got a good amount of tickets, pooled them all, and got a few pieces of candy for prizes. 

Rachel actually hosted some friends at our house for once. As an introvert she doesn't always relish having lots of people over, so this was literally the first time since probably 5th grade that she's invited more than one friend over to hang out. The freshie 4 came to paint Senior Pants. These 4 bonded freshman year when they all played trumpet together. Bella has since moved on to drumline, but Olivia and Paxton are still her trumpet buddies. The girls actually got together first and called Paxton to try and convince him to join them, and the second day they got together, they somehow managed to cajole him to come over for long enough to paint his pants (which Bella bought and washed in the tub for him). 

They got all their handprints on their pants, and finished their artwork, though Paxton didn't stick around for the photo op.

This pretty much wrapped up the last week of freedom. The following week Ryan and Megan had their regular swim schedule, and the older girls had band camp, everyone got their chromebooks and registration taken care of, getting ready to head back to school.