Kennedy's wedding

Our cute niece Kennedy got married this weekend, so we took off for a short trip to Washington to be there for the festivities!  It was a fun, fast trip but so dang good to be with family and celebrate Kenny and Marty and their new life!  We LOVED every minute of being there and can't wait to see what life brings for them.  Love this happy new couple!

 

First day of school

I'm not sure how it happened, but school snuck up on me and the kids all started today!  We had a summer of fun, jammed packed to the brim with all sorts of things that we had to/wanted to do.  Now it's time to settle into our routine and get back to learning!  The kids are super excited (and so am I!) and weirdly we have kids at 4 different school this year.  Rease is a junior at Mountain Ridge High (mommy sob...), Rhen and Liev are together at Fort Herriman Middle, Keen is finishing off at Butterfield Canyon Elementary and Beck and Desh are starting new at Herriman Elementary in the spanish immersion (DLI).  There's a lot new for us and we're ready for it!  Bring on the brain power. 

 

Amazing Race

One of our favorite events of the year got postponed just by a few months until we got home.  It wasn't even a question of cancelling it, just deciding when would be the best time to do it now that we're back!  This weekend it finally arrived.  We had the biggest crowd yet and the most teams I've ever had to put together, but of course that just means more fun!  We had some weather in the beginning (a downpour just as we were about to send the teams out the door), a few teams that got lost (what's new?), and it ended in a not-so-close finish with Kelli Anderson's team winning (again!!) for the third time.  I'm not sure what that girl does, but she sure knows what to do to win!  

What a blast we had this year.  

 

This week

This week has been a busy summer week! The highlights:

I went on a birthday night out with two of my fav friends who have August birthdays - Stephanie and Melissa.  We spent the night eating, laughing, sitting in a salt cave and talking into the night!

The boys LOVE riding their bikes and have made trips to the gas station a multiple-times-a-week event

Night games with all the neighbor friends

Beautiful sunrises from our kitchen window

Cousin time

Talking to old friends (Liev and Angel over facetime)

And we met up with our dear friend Greg who we haven't seen since he visited us in PR!  

So many greats this week I had to document...

 

Keen's Birthday

We celebrated Keen's 11th birthday today and I can't hardly believe he's that old!  He shares a birthday with some pretty important people (Uncle Caleb, Melissa) so it's a day that he doesn't mind sharing.  Keen is sweet, passionate, fun, loud, careful and a boy through and through.  He loves to play football, eat a lot, and watch movies.  We love Mr. Keen and are so happy we got to celebrate his birth today!

11 year old stats:

Height: 5'3" - 99%

Weight: 108 lbs. 4 oz. - 89%

 

A new car

Well now that we’ve been home a month and a half and have had plenty of time to do our research on vehicles, we finally walked away with a new car today! We've gone back and forth between getting another big van and another truck or getting something like a suburban that fits all of us and can tow like a truck.  We've gone from one end to the other and in between it all and still didn't know what to do.  We test drove a couple of suburbans that we really liked but were just so dang expensive.  Finally we decided to test drive a little older suburban with a few more miles than we had originally hoped but it was much more doable on the price.  We took a drive down to a small dealership in American Fork to drive the suburban and a couple weird turns of events happened that made us realize that we were not meant to drive or own that suburban...First, the guy handed us the keys to test drive it and as we tried to start it realized that the battery was dead.  Bad sign right off.  He went to get another vehicle to jump it and after we got the suburban started, I jumped out of the drivers seat to go out and make sure we were good to go for a drive still.  As I closed the door to get out, the doors locked behind me and just like that, the keys were locked inside the suburban that we had just got running!  Worse, both sets of keys they had were linked together and so there was no other set to open up the car.  Um...so crazy.  So before we knew it, he handed us the keys to another vehicle for us to drive just so we didn't make the trip down and not be able to at least drive something.  I ended up being a Ford Expedition Max, which is the same size as a suburban.  I had never really looked at them at all, but when we drove it, we loved it!  It's comfy and roomy and has a few upgrades that we weren't really looking for, but are nice extras to have.  And best of all, the price was better and fit much more easily into our budget.  So the next day we drove back down and got it!  And just like that, the search is over!  We're so happy to not be spending time looking for cars anymore.  

The kids think it's great and lovingly named it Kingpin...

Welcome to the family Kingpin!