Big Ed and Her Piglets: Isabelles blessing and Independence Day 2014

I haven't blogged in so long, but I will just start where we are now. Its been a fun and busy summer! We started off with Isabelles (newest addition to the family) baby blessing. Jon blessed her, it was very sweet. We had several friends join us at church and afterwards at our home. We also were blessed to have grandma and grandpa and several of our siblings in attendance. For dessert I wanted to try homemade icecreams. I made 3 different flavors-2 of which I had tried earlier this year (Santa got me an icecream freezer, so we have been enjoying making one of my most favorite treats of all time-chocolate icecream :). We made chocolate, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip. They were all delicious! The following week was Jays med school graduation (the reason we were able to have more family in town and why we waited until this particular weekend to bless Isabelle). It was really neat to see Jay graduate, I'm really proud of him :)
Becca was in town for all this-it was so fun to have her visit. Her oldest daughter and Aubrey are such cute friends. Aubrey is several years older than Grace, but they are just adorable little buddies. We had everyone over for pizza and swimming after graduation. It is always bittersweet when company leaves. I'm usually pretty worn out from late nights and entertaining, but thoroughly enjoyed visiting and being together. I also hate saying goodbye to people as well.

4 generations photo at Isabelle's blessing.

Jon, Myself and Isabelle

The kids and I made several plans for the summer-we had movies to see, swim days at our home and one on one time together-each child got to have an hour each week to spend with me working on a sewing project or making a treat. We didn't start that until halfway through June, but I really enjoyed it and so did the kids. We had a friend/neighborhood bbq and swim evening. It was really fun. Its been fun to have held several gatherings at our home and gotten to know so many good nieghbors that live around us. At that gathering we decided it would be fun to do a breakfast together sometime. We got right on it and decided we needed to do something super fun for the 4th of July. Its one of my favorite holidays and my parents had always done a huge party and we don't live close any more and its too hot in Mesa to do any celebrating outside for a good portion of the day. When we lived in Utah we would go to morning festivities in our town or nieghboring towns, which often included a race or parade or breakfast. In mesa, its so hot and there just aren't any city celebrations going on throughout the day. We decided to do our own thing. We invited several neighbors and friends to join us for a morning race, potluck breakfast and swim. The kids and I made kerchiefs and "goodie bags" for the racers. We thought for the temperatures and to make it so everyone could participate and to be funny, that a .5 k would be a good distance. The kids were amazing helpers in the preparation-i cut out the kerchiefs, Mariah ironed them, Aubrey sergered around them, I sewed on a blue star, Jonathan clipped all the threads, and helped hold the template I made for the center in place while I spray-painted. We got 36 kerchiefs put together in a few hours. Jon helped get everything decorated and in order the evening before. We had a haboob roll in that evening though which made everything a dirty mess and blew down some decorations, but it brought with it some overcasting clouds and a small amount of rain which was beautiful after having had such hot weather for so long it was still hot, but it made it more bearable-i would say it was even a bit pleasant and with the fun we had, it was a very nice morning! We had 42 of us all together. The race was super fun and everyone brought delicious breakfast foods to share. We had put 1000 pennies in the pool for the kids to gather. Our cute little elderly neighbor thought that was really fun and was enjoying watching the children and went home and got another 400ish pennies. I think everyone had a fun morning. We then went on to Tuscon and spent the afternoon and evening with the Merrills, Murdocks, and James and Emily and their family. It was even a beautiful day (which is unusual in the summer in AZ) because of the monsoon the previous evening and a little more rain that came down that morning, cooling things off a bit. Tuscon was super nice and I just enjoyed sitting outside, watching the kids play, visiting with family, and enjoying the beautiful fresh air.