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Davin and Rowan had a great year at school but they were excited for summer to finally arrive. Hooray for the last day of school!  Davin loved to bring balls to school this year. He brought his football and basketball nearly every day.  Rowan's class won a contest and he got to tie-die his shirt. Looks awesome! Ms. Russell and Rowan. I think Rowan had a crush. Mrs. Schellhorn and Davin. He loved second grade and his awesome teachers! 

Summer always seems to steal away a few friends to new locations and this one was particularly rough. We were happy sad to see our friends the Prices move back to Utah. Happy in that we are excited for their new adventure and because they will be in Utah which is a place that we visit frequently and sad in that we are selfish and want them to live by us always. We met the Price family when they moved into our Winston-Salem ward in 2007. Janine was pregnant with Cora and I was pregnant with Rowan; our common misery coupled with helping each other cope with having native Texan spouses made us instant and lifelong friends. The Rees and Price families circa Nov 2008 at Reynolda Gardens in Winston-Salem, NC We spent our last weekend together in NC hanging out at our house. Brian is from San Antonio originally so naturally he wanted to cheer for the Spurs to beat the Heat and we were only happy to oblige watching a game at our house. We enjoyed building a fire in the backyard, roasting...

School let out really late this year but we decided to start summer anyway. We love going to the YMCA pools in our area. The boys have been working hard to earn colored necklaces which indicate their swimming level. Rowan earned the green band which is the highest level! Pretty amazing for a boy who can't hear in the pool. 

I feel like a bad parent! I looked into a number of swimming suits for Ellie and found some great rash guard tops that would have been great for Ellie's fair skin but I couldn't resist the pink suit with ruffles, matching hat, and terrycloth cover-up. It's her first suit and it had to be cute! :) I'm pretty religious about applying sunscreen so hopefully she'll be okay. Could you resist this suit?  The suit has been a good investment from at least one perspective: Ellie loves the water and loves to swim with her brothers. It's a good thing because the boys love to swim too and we are at the pool a lot. We still have an above ground pool that I keep on the back patio which the boys and Ellie love to use as well. Ellie's first jump in to the pool was in our little pool and we had a great time playing together. 

Davin graciously aged another year and entered the realm of "nine." He informed me that at nine he was almost a teenager. We told him that he couldn't be a teenager until he was at least thirteen. It's a matter of having "teen" in the number rather than having a double digit. Still, he is getting dangerously close to those teenage years so we will enjoy having him at nine for as much as is humanly possible. On his actual birthday we went to dinner at one of Davin's favorites: Chuy's. This Austin favorite recently moved in down the street and we were excited to see it arrive. They gave him an enormous tres leches cake that looked amazing! After dinner he had several gifts to open and the contents definitely indicated that he was turning nine. Video games and sport shirts have replaced the train sets and toy cars. Rowan and Ellie did their best to help with the gifts.  Davin wanted to have a basketball party this year. We had th...