Summer just flew by!

I haven't posted in forever-but that's pretty normal for me.  So much has happened in the past few months!  Jay's wedding was incredible!  I loved going to Portland, Oregon.  I met some siblings there early and we hung out together for a few days-it was so so so much fun!  Emily, James and I coordinated our plane tickets to land within a couple of hours of each other, then we rented a car and shared a hotel room.  I have never gone a trip like that before and it was such a blast!  I want to do it again only next time with Jon as well.  Portland was breathtaking and I just couldn't get over how beautiful and green it was!  We hiked Multnomah falls, went to canon beach, ran around the river in the city, and lots more!  It was just a delightful and fun trip!  Jay's wedding was beautiful!  I just started crying when I saw him come into the sealing room of the temple.  Finally my awesome little bro was getting married to an awesome woman!  It was just a beautiful day!  Emily and I were on the same flight on the way home so that was really fun too!  It was hard to come back to my desert home!
School was over (I had left on the second to last day of school) and our first summer in Arizona began!  We planned to go to Utah for the month of July so we just had to get through June for starters.  We actually had quite a fun month!  Every Wednesday we went to a neighbors pool to swim for a couple of hours and a few times we went to lunch with friends afterwards.  The library had a fun summer reading program and so we went to the library and did quite a bit of reading and each of the kids earned a free new book.  We went the Mesquite Aquatic swim center every Friday as soon as Jon got home from work.  We would grab a pizza on our way down and eat in the car then enjoy the swim park for a couple of hours until it closed.  It really was a fun June!
July came and our plans to go to Utah for the 4th got changed because of Jon's work.  So we stayed in Arizona and we actually had our coldest 4th of July ever!!  There was a huge rainstorm and it wasn't super cold, but it wasn't hot either!  We went down to Tuscon and had a really nice day with Jon's sister, Kathy and her family and my brother, James and his family.  We played games, ate good food, and enjoyed good company!  We had an adventure driving out to Jon's other sister's home to swim in her pool.  The rain had flooded out many of the roads and we even slid in one of the washes as we tried to drive through it!  It was pretty crazy! 
I left with the kids for Utah 2 days later to make it in time for Jay's wedding open house at my parents.  It was beautiful!  Becca (my sister) had decorated it amazingly and my parents had worked hard to make their already beautiful yard even more beautiful!  It was really fun to be apart of it all and to be with so much of my family!
We spent the month of July in Utah and enjoyed the beautiful weather, the green grass, the beautiful mountains, grandmas swimming pool, irrigation, and good company!   Jon flew out to join us for the last week of July and beginning of August-in time for our neice, Mariel, to get married.  It was a beautiful wedding in the Draper Temple and then they had a very nice luncheon and reception up Provo canyon.  It was so nice to see Jon's siblings and family and be a part of Mariel's beautiful day.
We returned home to Arizona 2 days before school started (we start early here).  It was craziness getting ready and back into a routine, but it was good to be home!