Temple with my Family

With Mom, Ashleigh and Andrew Brown in town we could not pass up the opportunity to go to the Temple to do inititories. Mom and I went and did a session the previous day which was awesome and it was even more awesome to go back to do more Temple work with more of my family. After us girls were done we went up to look in the Celestial room. Ashleigh has not been in this Temple yet so I gave her a somewhat tour. We even got to peek into the Bride's room which is so beautiful! They wanted to see the Baptismal font so we went to the waiting room past the Temple desk and sat and waited for the guys to come out. so they could go also.  I kept checking out the front to see if they somehow snuck past us but never saw them. We were sitting and waiting for about half an hour when Kefford poked his head around the front partition and motioned to us. It seems they got done before us and had been waiting in the front waiting room. Too funny! Once we got our group back together we went down to see the font and then out to walk on the Temple grounds and take a couple of pictures. It really was a great night!

Emily and her family arrived late Friday night with Breana in tow. I wanted to take my Mom and sisters to my friends boutique, Hattie and Grace, which is an online boutique she runs out of her house. The great thing about her being local is I can go to her house and try on the pieces rather then just ordering them and hoping they fit. The last time I was there she had some really cute stuff and I knew my family would love them so I took them to her house Saturday night. Lindsey has all of her clothing in an upstairs bedroom and she just let us go on up, shut the door, and have fun trying things on and modeling for each other. We had such a great time and laughed so much that night, it was really great fun. We all ended up getting some cute dresses and wore them to church the next day. We took a picture of us in our new Hattie and Grace clothes and I think we look pretty great!

Tie Dye Parties!

This year we got white shirts for our Lutes family beach shirts with the plan to tie dye them. Kefford and I brought our shirts back from California and I asked my friend Beth who is an expert at tie dying if we could come to her house and have her help us out. We went Monday night for FHE and after showing us some patterns and techniques we picked our colors and got to work. It was a lot of fun and pretty relaxing, it made me want to tie dye more things! We all enjoyed doing it and the shirts turned out pretty cool.

My Mom flew into town the next day for Kenedy's graduation and that night was Rylee's last choir concert. Kefford got some pictures of her during her first song and I feel bad that that was all the picture taking we did. I cannot believe we missed out on taking a picture with my Mom and our entire family. She did a really good job and her concert was the best one yet since it only lasted 30 minutes!

Ashleigh and Andrew Brown drove into town the next day with Heather arriving on Friday. They brought their white shirts and I took them over to Beth's for some more tie dying fun. We are definitely going to have the best shirts on the beach this year!

Senior Walk

After Rylee's concert as we were leaving Principal Doni Davis stopped us to ask Kenedy if she was coming to the school on Friday for the Senior walk. I was a little confused and asked her what she was talking about and Doni said they are having the Meridian High Seniors come to the school in their cap and gowns to walk through the halls with the kids lined up to watch. I have seen pictures and videos of places doing this and always thought it was so cool and wished they did something like it for our kids. I was so excited and asked if I could come and watch which Doni of course said yes to. So Friday morning Ashleigh and Andrew Brown, Mom and I went to Chaparral Elementary to wait for the Senior Walk. I was so excited.

We got to the school pretty early because I was paranoid about missing it and we sat in the car and visited for a little bit. We saw Rylee coming in from Recess and I rolled down the window and called out her name so we could wave to her. She was super embarrassed and tried to ignore us but then she kept peeking out of her classroom to see if we were still there, it was pretty funny.

Kenedy sent me a text letting me know she was on her way to the school so we went inside and sat in the hallway to wait. Mr Thornburg, Rylee's teacher, saw us so he sent Rylee out to come and see us. Again with the embarrassment from her. She said a quick hi and then scuttled back to her classroom.

The graduates finally arrived and the teachers had their kids line the hallway. The music started playing the the Seniors started to walk in. The elementary kids cheered and clapped and high fives the Seniors as they came walking through, it was pretty cute. The Seniors came in kind of clumpy and it was hard to take good pictures and video because some of them were hard to see, I told Doni that next year they needed to come in one at a time and spaced more apart. Other then that it was pretty great!

Once they were done the kids went back to class and we found Kenedy, she wanted to get a picture with Rylee and then go to her third grade classroom to see them. 

Rylee reluctantly came out to pose for a picture and she did smile which was good of her.

This past semester Kenedy took an Education Assistant class, which had her in a third grade classroom at Chaparral assisting every other day. She wanted to stop in to get a picture with her class and it was pretty cute hearing them call out her name so excited to see her when she walked in. She got a lot of hugs and congratulations from her third graders.

Piano Recital

We got to watch Avynlea and Rylee perform in their end of the year piano recital. They both did such a great job and I am so proud of how much they have improved. This was Avynlea's last piano recital as she has now officially aged out of the level that Kathy teaches. I am a little sad that she is done with lessons but am really happy with how much she has learned and how hard she has practiced. I am pretty sure she is the only one of my kids to have never complained about taking piano. 

Such pretty girls!

Seminary Graduation

Seminary Graduation was the week before Graduation which was nice. Because in February our subdivision was put in a new Ward and Stake Kenedy had her Seminary Graduation with our new Stake, Meridian West. At first Kenedy was really sad about that and wanted to Graduate with our old stake. When I told her I could make arrangements so that she could do it with the Linder Stake she decided to stick with our new, she has a lot of friends in this Stake and it worked out well. 

The Graduates walked in to the Chapel according to Ward and sat in the front of the Chapel. They had some really great speakers, one of them being McKoy Bartlett, Kenedy's best friend. He is a really good speaker and so composed and has a maturity about him. As I was listening to him speak I felt like I was listening to a Bishop or Stake President and even sent Kenedy a text saying "Future Bishop right there". Kelsey, another of Kenedy's friends spoke and she did amazing! She is a convert of about a year and a half and after she was Baptized decided to take Seminary while making up the years she missed. She completed four years of Seminary in a year and that is impressive. Her talk was about 15 minutes long and it was completely memorized. I couldn't believe how well she did without any notes, seriously so amazing!

After the ceremony we went to the gym for pictures and ice cream cones. 

                     Ashlynn and Kenedy                                               Kenedy and Brother Sell (one of her                    seminary teachers)

Oak Creek Ward Graduates

Samuel Kropf, Kenedy and Shanae Ririe

Some seminary Graduation outtakes...

This and That

I bought some key lime pie and orange cream flavored licorice for us all to try. When I gave Kefford his he mentioned that they never have black licorice in the Twizzler brand. I told him that we did see the black licorice and the next time we were at the store I snapped a picture with Avynlea holding a package for proof.

Playing around with some of Instagrams filters.

Rylee had safe patrol after school and so I had to go pick her up that week instead of her taking the bus home. She was on ball duty that week and I got to the school in time to see her carrying out her duties. I rolled down the window and took her picture and yelled out "Hey Ball Girl!". She was not amused but she sure looked cute!

Kenedy sent me a picture of some photo editing she did and it made me laugh a lot.

End of Year Choir Concerts

Both Kenedy and Avynlea had their end of year choir concerts the same week. First was Kenedy's, I knew her group was going last so since the concert started at 7 we didn't get there until about 7:45. When we walked in and found our seats I discovered that they were barely getting done with the first group and that we had a long wait ahead of us. This concert was the longest most painful concert of our lives. It was over 2 and a half hours long and a lot of the numbers did not sound very good. It was not fun at all. Once it was done we found Kenedy so that we could take a picture and then we high tailed it out of there not getting home until about 10:00. 

Ave and Rylee were impressed with Quinns guitar playing skills and wanted to have a picture of them with him while he was rocking out.

This was her Pops concert and they were told to dress in their favorite decade. Kenedy chose to wear her Dad's Lettermans jacket and so she went as the 90's.

Avynleas concert was the next night and her concert was another Pops concert with Avy's group singing music from "Hairspray". Avynlea found a 60's looking dress on Amazon she loved and asked if I would get her for her. It was a good price and a dress she swore she would wear again so I ordered her the extra Large because she was looking under children clothing. When the dress arrived I realized Avynlea did not find this dress under children's like we assumed because it was an XL in Womens. I had to send it back and ordered the same dress in a small. When the new one arrived it was a closer fit but I still had to take it in a little bit in the waist, neckline and sleeves. 

Before the concert I did Avynlea's hair in a fabulous 60's Beehive and she looked so cute in her dress with her hair done by me and her makeup done by Kenedy. Avy was unsure about how big the poof was in her hair but I assured her it was perfect and even showed her pictures of the hair from the movie "hairspray"

Avy did a great job singing and looked so cute up on stage. 

Her Grandma Alison came which was fun.

And we got a family picture at the end of the concert which was only an hour long.

When we got home Kenedy wanted to do a mini photo shoot with Avynlea in the front yard.