End of the year activities and celebrations!

Finally!!! School is out! We have the longest school years in the history of school years, I swear. It's probably the same number of days as everyone else, but it just feels soooooo long. I told the kids that school starts up again 9 weeks from today. They weren't thrilled. Here's how everything has played out the last week with everything ending!

Soccer is officially over! If it were up to my kids, it would continue for much longer. They all loved it...to the point where I {almost} felt guilty about wishing for rain every Monday through Thursday evening from 6pm-8pm. Ivy loved running around with her friends and by the end of the season was even touching the ball once in awhile! Mya was on an all girls team and did very well. She loved her team and loved to score lots of goals! Max had a so-so team with a not so good coach, but still managed to make the most of the experience. He got way better and by the end was figuring out how to put himself in the best position possible. I wasn't at his last game because I was at Ivy's, but Chris told me that Max scored a goal and immediately told his teammate nice pass. He was pretty proud of him for that! Here are a few pictures and a video Chris got of Mya.

                                 (looks like Ivy has to go to the bathroom, but this is just her pose:)

Max finished up his first year of piano lessons last Thursday. He liked piano...didn't love it though. He's going to continue next year (because I'm making him) He got way better and I think it's just so good for him! He loved his teacher and the lessons, but just didn't care for practicing at home so much:) He got to pick out a song for his recital and he picked Lost Boy. It was a hard piece so his teacher cut it down and made it a little easier for him, but it was still pretty hard! He was practicing right up until the last minute and did really well. He stopped once, but managed to figure out where he was and kept on going. He almost had it memorized so sometimes he lost track of where he was on the music. We are really pleased with how well he did overall this year!

Last Sunday Mya had her awards banquet for gymnastics. We didn't quite make it home from the mountains in time, but I got a text from a friend saying Mya won a big award and there was still time to make it. So we jumped in the car and got down to the gym as quickly as we could. She won athlete of the year for the entire artistic gymnastics at the gym! They gave her a memory box and said some nice things about her.  She is very determined...won't stop practicing a skill until she gets it right. I don't know how much longer she'll continue with competitive gymnastics, but the experience has been unbelievable for her.

below is a video I took of the owner of the gym giving Mya her award. I didn't know what was happening so it's not the best quality, but if you want to listen, you can kind of get the idea. She basically says it was an award voted on by all of the women's coaches. She won because every time they looked over, she was working hard and doing skills over and over and over until she got them right. 

Max and Mya had field day at school last week that I helped with. I got to demonstrate the gunny sack races and a friend of mine walked by and took my picture:) It was a super fun day for the kids and I was glad I got to help out with it.

And finally...school is out for the summer! We hit the jackpot with teachers once again this year. Mr. Topping and Mrs. Dunford were fabulous. I told Max he should soak in every minute of getting to chew gum in class and wear a hat because I'm pretty sure that will be the last time he'll get to do that until college! Mya was genuinely sad to leave school because she knew she wouldn't have Mrs. Dunford next year:) She may be the sweetest person I've ever met. She has a no facebook friend policy with parents and we were counting down the minutes on the last day of school until I could friend request her:) We lucked out with schools when we came here for sure.