Some fun stuff!

So here is some of the fun things we have been doing, like I promised I would post. Unfortunately I haven't taken a lot of pictures lately but I have a few.

Continuation of our crazy summer: after volleyball camp we came home and relaxed for a few days and then Mark and I dropped the kids off at Grandpa and Grandma Julie's house to spend the night (I heard they didn't sleep very well!) while Mark and I flew to AZ for his interview. While we were there it was 117 degrees at least! It was kind of funny too because our first experience of Glendale was when we pulled off the freeway to go to our hotel and were stopped at a stoplight. As we were waiting we saw these three punk-looking guys crossing on the crosswalk in front of us and Mark pointed out that the guys were packing (as in packing guns!). All three of them had these huge glock-looking guns on the belts! They weren't concealed or anything, just hanging out so everybody could see them! I'm like, "great, where the heck are we!" I thought Ogden was bad, but I have never seen anybody carrying around a gun in Ogden!

Here is a word of advice! Be nice to the people who are checking you in and they will give you a free room upgrade! We totally got into a way nicely remodeled room!

That night we enjoyed a night out in the town with a child free dinner and then went over to see my cousin who lives in Glendale. Then the next morning I dropped Mark off at his interview while I went shopping to the outlet malls all by myself! This is Mark in his nice new suit he bought for the interview! He looks so handsome!

I just meandered through the mall and looked at anything I wanted without having to hurry and get in and out of the store! It was so nice not to have a nagging husband and two crazy kids. After his interview I went and picked him up and he said he felt really good about how things went but he was nervous because he was the youngest one with the least amount of experience (most of the people were like 35!) but apparently they were impressed with him because he got in!

We are really excited to be moving into the final phase of his schooling and that we are going to be fairly close to home. Not in New York or Penn. We are at least a car ride away and we are now officially under six hours to the closest beach! I do think it is a waste that AZ is so hot without having a beach but there are some advantages to living somewhere warm, I get to where flip flops year round! I love flip flops. They also have better schools down there compared to Utah.

We are also sad to be leaving family behind. We have lived a half an hour away from my dad, two hours from Mark's parents and two and a half away from my mom and sister for 4 years! We will miss our grandmas terribly!

It's interesting because we always talked about AZ like we were already in to the program before we knew we were in. I just kept getting this feeling that I wasn't going to be seeing the beautiful mountains for very much longer and that my time in Utah was going to be ending soon. I have been living in Utah since I graduated from high school, which was in 2002, so seven years. I have grown to love it so much! I love, love, love the mountains and am going to miss them terribly. I just love Utah. I love the people, I love being around the church headquarters and around so many beautiful temples. I don't really love Ogden. I am not going to lie, it isn't my fave but I am truly going to miss it and will probably cry my eyes out when we leave, just like when we left Ephraim (yes, Jan, even after all of the crap I have talked about Ogden, I am going to miss it and living close to you guys and Becky and all of the fun Crooks).

Anyways, I will stop rambling and let you know what other fun stuff we have done in past few weeks. So after the Relay for Life I thought our planned trips were over but not so. It just so happened that Mark had the 24th off. So as tradition we headed down to the Noorlanders and went to the parade and then we went up Fairview canyon to have lunch and play in the lake. The kids got so dirty! We headed to the fams house and made smores and watched a few fireworks and had a lot of fun with the cousins.

This is probably one of the nicest dogs ever. It just let Jordann play with it and pet it!This is the incredibly dirty Jordann and the picture doesn't do it justice!The next Tuesday we went to the Oquirrh Mtn. temple dedication with the Nelson grandparents. We had fun showing the kids the temple and they were really excited to go to the temple.
The next week we did one of my most favorite things in the world. We went camping with some friends up at North Fork and then went BOATING in our friends boat. I love anything in the water. It was the first time Mark and I had ever wake boarded and it was really fun but then our friends introduced us to surfing off the back of the boat and it was so much fun! I loved it! You just stand on the back of a little surfboard and hold onto a rope and the boat pulls you. Or if you are really good, like our friend you can let go of the rope and just surf on the wave that the boat makes! She was so good that she took James and Katie on it too! They just hung onto her and she road the wave! They loved it! Me and Mark totally want a boat when we grow up! This is James reaching out and touching th wave while on the surf board!Anyways, this has been really long! But we have done so much fun stuff and our summer will soon be over because volleyball two-a-days start on Monday! Hopefully we have a good season!