Summer Time 2016

I was reading through old blog posts and realized I have not written a thing since school got out.  It seemed overwhelming to catch up with everything that we've been doing but I thought I would highlight a few things together.  Sammie and Abby participated on a rec league swim team this summer.  It was such a fun a fulfilling experience for them.  Swimming is amazing!  They got so strong and improved on their swimming incredibly.  At the first swim meet they didn't really try that hard.  They didn't know what to expect.  Then they found out that there were ribbons awarded to those who placed in their heats at the meet.  This motivated them to swim harder at the next meet and they did so much better.  It was crazy how their times improved and they got lots of ribbons throughout the whole season.  Sammie's favorite stroke was the butterfly and Abby's was the freestyle.  I loved watching them swim.  I hope that we have time to do it again next year.

We had a fun movie night outside on the trampoline and we projected the movie onto the house.  On a cool night of course.  I can't even imagine attempting this now in the heat wave we are having.

Mostly I just loved the simple moments of June.  Since Joey was teaching 3 weeks of summer school, we didn't have any plans to leave town in June.  We spent lots of time playing and being home, swimming with friends, and helping Joey out.  

Olivia spent a few afternoons working for Joey by grading binders for his summer school class.  It's nice that he is so close to home that we can drop in on him.  Last summer we were helping him set all of this up.  I'm glad that we are not doing THAT again this summer.

June ended with a family trip to the Los Angeles Temple.  I was thinking about what a fun memory for my girls to have.  "Remember when we would go to the temple and stay in the apartments for the night?"  Sometimes it really does feel like a trek to the temple for us, but it makes it feel extra special.

We stayed Friday night and Olivia had baptisms with out ward on Saturday morning at 8am and then our ward had a family day at the temple and session times for the adults with baby sitters for the kids.

Afterwards, we headed to the beach for a couple of hours in Santa Monica and our good friends the Brown's joined us, even though they weren't beach ready.  They went home in a very wet and sandy car.