Monday, June 17, 2019

Dos Festival de Verano

This second week of Summer has been so busy, it could easily be four separate blog posts, but I'm going to try to get everything on here to stay current. It is going to be a doozy.

June started school and has actually been enjoying her coding class. That is good. At least she doesn't dread going every morning. I've missed having her around, but we keep ourselves busy during the mornings and she joins back up with us at lunchtime.

I'm not sure where to begin for this week. Let's start with Spikeball. June and I joined a league.


They meet every Tuesday evening. This will hopefully give us some good practice so we can get better all around. It is not surprising to me that we were the ONLY girls there. And we lost every game. But, we weren't slaughtered. We got points on every match. True, they may have been being a bit lenient, but it was still a lot of fun. The only down side was that I messed up my back. It has been five months since the cortisone shot and I was so sad to see my get-out-of-pain-free card expire, but it wasn't too bad. It was only a day and a half of pain and then I was moving again. However, I was nervous enough that I found a sub for the tournament on Saturday. I didn't know how I would be feeling and I didn't want to do anything stupid.

Saturday arrived and I was pretty sad that I wouldn't be playing, but still thinking it was the best idea for my back. I had also signed up the girls to play. June wanted to. I didn't have a partner for her, so I just signed up Robyn with her. Robyn was the best sport to come along and spend her entire morning playing Spikeball. She likes to play for fun, but this tournament was a new level of crazy. Here is the playing field. There were probably about 20 nets on the field and this was a small tournament.


Here are the girls and Areli and Janille ready to play. Janille is my partner and I think we will play well together if we ever get a chance.


We were super novice coming into this tournament. There are plenty of rules that we didn't know until we started the league. There are rotation rules when you serve and you have to serve from behind the line. Luckily, they provided the line. Here you can see June mostly serving from behind the line. It takes a lot of practice to be consistent.


In a tournament, there can be any number of divisions. There always seems to be intermediate and advanced. But they might have co-ed, beginner, or women's. We signed up for Women's because it was free. I think they are trying to encourage women to come. Even so, only four women teams signed up and we brought two of them! The other ladies were quite good and very competitive. I didn't play them, but I heard plenty about them. It is sad when people get so competitive that it is no longer fun to play.


Our teams seemed to have a good time. My girls lost every game, but some were very close. Janille and Areli won a couple, but didn't win a set. And that is just fine. This was our first forage into the world of Spikeball. People are pretty serious. Almost everyone wears cleats. I'm not sure I will ever get that serious, but I hope to eventually win some games with Janille. At the end, I played a few games. My back was feeling pretty good, but it was probably best that I didn't play the whole tournament. But we are signed up for a couple more tournaments later this Summer. It was such a sunny day. It was nice that Janille brought a tent so the girls could rest in the shade between games. It was a fun exhausting morning.


This week has been Summerfest in our city. We have missed Summerfest for many years. Sometimes I just forget about it. Other times we have conflicts. (I think last year we were at Girls' Camp) And other times, I skip it on purpose. It is a loud, crowded, expensive event. Heavens, I just looked it up and it has been TEN years since we have been to Summerfest. Wow, time flies. Check out how little the kids were last time. This time around, I decided to skip the rides. I thought it would be fun to browse the booths and let the kids do some window shopping per se. Everyone is ready to go.


It seemed that everyone liked the same thing. We all wanted Henna. And it was relatively inexpensive. Only $5 for a smaller design. Daisy was first up. Then while we waited for sisters, we checked out the lipstick booth. Daisy got a bright coral color. I think it looks so cute on her.


Back at the booth, Robyn is getting her design done.


Four of us chose sea creatures. (June's dolphin not pictured here.) We had a theme going on our inner arms.


Claire was our Henna artist. She was amazing. Most of those designs she drew looking off a picture on our phones. I was very impressed. She really was great at her craft. We are totally doing this again next year.


Look how fun all these designs are. They obviously will be lighter when the Henna paste comes off. And they should last a couple weeks.


Daisy also went over to do face paint as well. She looked so cute. They really have come far in the face paint department.



While we are talking about Summerfest, let's continue to the parade. I tend to avoid the parade because of the extreme craziness involved. But Ivory is doing Color Guard and that means she is going to be in several parades this Summer. So, we are going to embrace the crazy and have fun. We had a piano recital the same evening, so Robyn, Daisy, and I went to that and then left early to get to the parade. (Don't worry, recital stuff will be included in here as well.) It turns out we probably could have stayed for the whole recital. The parade started at seven, but it took them awhile to make it out to our end. Here is our spot. Robyn took a panorama and some selfies. Proof we made it. And Tyler even brought Nova. I was worried she would freak out, but she was actually very well behaved.




Like any parade, there were cool floats and lots of people in costume. I was actually surprised at the lack of horses. I think there were only 2 or 3 in the whole parade. (We are definitely not in Idaho.)


This was the best float in my opinion. I love the 2 headed dragon.


The avenger group was a favorite too. We didn't get a good picture, but see if you can spot Ironman, Thanos, the Hulk, Deadpool, Dr. Strange, Vision, and Hella in this picture. They all walked to the other side right when they passed us, so we missed a good photo op.


When we were traveling to the recital, we spotted some people in the truck in front of us. We figure they were parade goers. Sure enough, they were in the Hale Center Theater Group. Such fun costumes.



I'm always impressed with the gymnasts who do rotation after rotation on the bars. Must be hard on a moving vehicle.


Hey, finally it is Ivory. She is on the right side. Hard to see her in the picture, but you can probably catch her in the video. I think she had a lot of fun doing the parade.



The traffic was ridiculous getting home, but it was worth it. I'm just sorry that June missed it. (She had to work.)

Let's go back in time to the recital now. Daisy and Robyn each performed a piece. Richard is pretty good about scheduling a recital now and then and it is usually at a retirement home. This place was very nice. The girls looked lovely.


Daisy played Come Follow Me. She was not thrilled with her performance, but I thought she did great and it was memorized. No music for her.



Robyn played Rewrite the Stars which is definitely a tricky piece. She has a few missed notes, but I can't really judge. I couldn't play five bars of that song.



It was a very nice recital, although we left early. I'm glad I could record the pieces since we were missing most of the family. That is just how it goes on a busy Saturday.

Still with me? There's plenty more to come. We have our weekly items. This week we watched Flash Gordon. It is an older movie, but the kids love it. It is a bit cheesy, but it has plenty of action and some great lines. We were supposed to make S'mores for our treat, but we didn't have an evening free with everyone at home. So I picked up Kolaches one morning and we called it good. Plus, I like Kolaches so much more than S'mores.

Our art theme this week Hot vs. Cold. We had so many amazing entries. Check out the talent in this family:

First up - JUNE. She did a hot and cold bird duo and a zebra with warm and cool stripes.



Next - PEARL. She made these very cute hot and cold cartoons. I think ice cubes and the sun talk often about who is cooler, ya know.



Now ROBYN. Four entries from this girl. First a campfire scene with kids eating popsicles. A couple different versions of HOT Elsa and don't forget the little matchstick girl looking in a window.





DAISY made a funny cartoon and a 3D art piece of a fire in a blizzard. Very cool. (Or hot?)



There was one entry from IVORY, but it was quite a unique one. She made a candle of ice. Kind of cool, literally. The flame didn't last very long, but the idea was awesome.


I did a fun project with melted crayons. I had never tried it before but it went mostly as expected.


Check out the detail. I'm super proud of my one dot of white crayon that is the marshmallow.


We also had our first group project. The three youngest girls did a skit together. It was called Hot vs. Cold (go figure) and they did a great job. Check it out.


These girls are so cute and I loved their little costumes.





Face paint was compliments of June. Who doesn't need a little face paint in their life?


Shall we check out the winners of the awards this week? Everyone did a great job.





BEST FIT was the ice candle. It had melted by the time we gave out awards.

What a fantastic week. I haven't even gotten to Father's Day. But I think we have enough for one post. Can we Cazier's keep up with this schedule? Your guess is as good as mine...

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