The end of school and beginning of Summer 2021!

I didn't realize how many little things happened in the past few weeks. Time for an update! 

First we had Cade's first of two outdoor, in-person concerts! It was so nice to finally hear them play for an live audience and hear just how awesome they sounded. Click here if you want to see the videos of their performance.

Next was Alex's piano recital! This is his third year with Libby Castillo as his piano teacher, and he has learned and grown as a musician so much. She has them take part in the Gold Cup Festival each year, and if they get superior in a category three years in a row, they earn an actual gold cup trophy. Alex earned a Gold cup in the solo and theory categories. Awesome job bud! The other trophy is for learning a total of 100 songs over the past three years. That's a lot of music!

 

That evening after the recital Cade had his second outdoor, in-person concert. This time it was for Jazz Band! All of the groups sounded great and there were a some good opportunities for photos. If you want to hear them you'll have to go to my Facebook page where I did a live video of the performance.

Cade and his good friend Carson

Cade with his directors Ms. Beasley and Mr. Berry. We will miss them as we move to another band program in another state!

End of the school year means end of the year awards! This was particularly bittersweet for Alex because he has enjoyed this DATA program and the friends he has made.

Alex with his teacher Mr. McKinney

Cade just thought this was a funny moment when Carson stretched out on his lap. So cute!

Dan kicked of his summer by doing a massive motorcycle trip. He left around midnight May 29th and returned home on June 6th. He did over 3,000 miles and earned his "iron butt" for doing over 1,000 of those miles in less than 24 hours. His trip took him out to Tennessee again for some Tail of the Dragon riding, and just all around beautiful scenic riding in the south. 

Here's our attempt at first and last day of school photos. Cade didn't really let me take a picture of his first day of virtual school, and this is him in the car on the way to his first day of in-person school. Either way, his first year of high school is done. We shall see what the rest of his high school career will look like!

Since our kids are always opposite in all things, Alex was happy to take a picture on his first day of virtual school, and then I forgot to take a picture on his first day in-person! One more year left in middle school for this guy!

Since we are moving soon we decided to end our extra-curricular activities at the end of May. It made for a hard last week of school saying all the goodbyes. Here's alex's last day of Power Park Ninja. I can't say enough good things about the sport and the coaches. They have been there 100% for my boys and Alex loved coming for classes twice a week and open gym on the weekends. We will miss it!

Alex and Parish!

Warped wall photo shoot!

On the cargo net!

Balance obstacles

Love this shot

Coach Parish surprised Alex and had a free day during class where they got to play whatever games they wanted, and then had popsicles and oreos at the end of class. So thoughtful!

Alex also had his last piano lesson that week and he wanted me to come in for his lesson so he didn't get too sad. I'm glad I did because I caught this fun moment of Ms. Castillo and Alex doing some improv on the pianos together! We will really miss her as well!

Enough sadness, right? Good thing we had a birthday party planned for alex to help lighten the mood. His birthday isn't until June 19th, but he will be camping and a lot of his friends were going to be out of town, so early party it is!!

Since alex is our budding baker, I thought it would be a special treat to have a professional cake done for his party. He picked the character of Mr. Saturn from his favorite video game and the flavors. He chose a chocolate cake with cookies and cream buttercream. It was... delicious!!!!

Alex really had a great time with his friends. We called it a hangout party where they watched a movie, played games, ate pizza and had cake and ice cream. Lots of laughter and loud noises!

This was the moment all of his friends decided to give him 13 hugs <3

Now with summer officially in swing, naturally I made an appointment for them to get their Covid vaccine!

And I had to snap this picture of Cade asleep next to the dog. He was looking at me like, help! I'll let these boys rest when I can because moving is inevitable and a lot of work.

Oh, and if you haven't already heard- we are not going to Japan, or El Paso. In a last minute surprise it looks as though we're headed to Tacoma, Washington! We are officially on assignment to JBLM in Washington and waiting for those all-magical orders before any dates can be set. C'mon Army! Let's get this thing going for real!