The Nalley Family: Good-Bye Summer!

Here are a few of the fun things we did this summer!

Brooklyn finished up a great soccer season and got a trophy!

Birthday Parties!

Petting zoo birthday...feeding a giant turtle

Super-hero party

Frozen-themed birthday

The girls got to meet Elsa and had a sing/dance along to all the songs from the Frozen soundtrack with Elsa!

Brooklyn had her first sleepover and LOVED it.

Yes, same shirt because it was also "Frozen" themed.

Swim party that started off with some "dot art" coloring sheets...

Check out Chan's super-curly hair from sleeping in braids the night before!

Chandler swimming with a chocolate covered cupcake face!

Random:

The girls stood on this "tree stump" every Sunday when we got to church and wanted their pictures taken. All their idea and look how sweet they are holding hands! Melt my heart.

Playdates!

Chandler had Ellery over for a playmate!

And the day was nice enough for them to have a picnic!

We had a playdate just with our kids at Chick-fil-A

And the girls were so sweet to take turns sharing their ice cream with G.

I had the privilege of keeping my niece and nephew for a few days (with TONS of help from my Mother-in-law) while their parents were moving into a new house.

The kids all had so much fun hanging out with their cousins!

Brooklyn had her friend Ava (from swim team) come and play one afternoon.

We took her to do one of our favorite things...

Snow cones at the Carwash!

I also had a fun playdate with my friend, Melanie, when she came in town for work.

She works for Tyson so we got to live the high life and use the Tyson suite at the Rangers game!!

And it was SWEET!! Gonna be hard to go back to the cheap seats after that!!

Our precious friend, Elise, spent lots of time at our house this summer and we loved it!

All of us!

Eddie and I had some friends come in town so we did the most random thing in the world!

Murder Mystery Dinner!!

(Disclaimer - I did not know he had his mouth on the fake gun until I looked at the picture and they had already moved on to the next table...eeeek!)

One of the girls at our table was "in" on the show, but we did not know it at the time...at least we weren't supposed to know it, but we are such keen detectives that we kind-of suspected it!

Playdate at the splash park with the Robinsons

Playdate at the bounce house with the Wyatt Women followed by a yummy lunch!

Swim date at the Glazes

B's best friend from school, Addison, got to come play one day!

And I had the privilege of keeping 2/3 of the Glaze girls one night.

We used that night to do our ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE that the girls all loved!!

G's playdate with Carolina!

When she wasn't hitting his face, she was busy kissing it to make it all better!

Swim Team

I mean, seriously? Have you ever seen a cuter little swimmer in your life?!?

This was our first year to try swim team and Brooklyn loved it.

For the first 6 weeks of summer, she went to early morning practices 3 times a week plus had 1 meet each week. That's a LOT of swimming!!

I was so impressed at her technique and determination! She gave it her all!

This summer was a particularly cool one, and with practices starting before the pool was open, many mornings the water was freezing and much of this pool was in the shade still at that early hour.

B has ZERO body fat to help warm her up, so lots of times she was blue and shivering, but she still wanted to get up and try again the next morning.

Although she didn't get many blue (or red) ribbons or qualify for sectionals, she couldn't have made us more proud! Lots of times, the thing that hurt her time is that she would be daydreaming and not starting with the whistle. She would hear everyone else jump in and then remember to jump in herself and would often start behind.

At the end of summer, they had an awards banquet where everyone got a trophy.

She was THRILLED when they called her name.

After all the trophies were given out, there were just a very few special awards given out...

and Brooklyn received one of these which is a VERY BIG DEAL!! All of her hardwork with cold, early morning swim practices had NOT gone unnoticed by her coaches. She received the award for most improved!!! Way to go, B!!

And here she is with her swim team friends and "relay race group."

Overall, this was a very positive experience for us and we can't wait to do it again next summer!!

While we were dolling Brooklyn up for her swim team banquet, we were also getting Chandler ready for her performance that concluded her week at camp!

I think these are actually Brooklyn's hands, but Chandler's looked exactly the same. We found the perfect occasion to sport these fancy nails the Buie's got for them!