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.