Family Reunions

We left Arizona the third week of May and drove to St. George in time for the Payne family reunion. It was so nice to be with family and to catch up with everyone's lives. It was a relief to be done with the moving and on the road. We had a blast playing games, freezing in the uncommonly cold weather, eating, even having a family dance.

We then spent the next week in Orem with the whole family and then the next weekend had the Bishop family reunion in Orem. Most things were similar in both reunions which made it nice. One special part of that reunion was that we did a temple to temple run/walk- from the Provo Temple to the Provo City Center Temple. Then we went swimming and had a family dinner.

Dance Recital, Graduation, & Leaving Arizona

My Lyla loves to dance. She never gets sick of it and makes up dances to every song she hears. Her dance recital was at a crazy time right after graduation and a few days before we moved, but we loved watching her dance. The timing was perfect so that Nana, Papa, and Grandma all attended, along with Josh and his family who came for a surprise visit! We loved all the company in our home. 

Graduation!! We enjoyed our time at school, the schedule was busy at times but Paul also had frequent and long breaks which we loved!! Then he had 7 weeks off before starting his job. We're really missing all the time we were able to spend with him. Paul worked so hard and did really well at school.

Cute little graduate supporters!!

As always, it was hard to say goodbye to our good friends in Gilbert. There were three different families who lived in the house next door to us and we became very close to all three even though the longest we had with any of them was 8 months. Annie & Kenny Mcaferty moved in sometime in February and we loved getting to know them!! Their 2 1/2 yr old Maggie seemed like part of our family! She would come over multiple times a day and just walk upstairs to try on princess costumes. Lyla loved having a smaller version of herself around to boss around. Before we even met, we both joined the YMCA down the street and loved going swimming together almost daily before we moved.

I've almost tried to be anti-social in the last few places we've moved because I know how much it hurts to get close to people and then have to leave them which I seem to do over and over, but these and other ladies reached out in so much kindness and I quickly felt very close to them. Again, I knew each of them for less than a year but am so grateful for the impact they have had on my life and all I learned from them. I hope to stay in touch and watch their darling children grow from a distance. 

 We loved our corporate move- they came and did all of the packing and loading- Paul had to stop me from doing anything cuz that was weird for me. It was still pretty stressful cleaning making sure we had all of our things separated for the 4 weeks before we would have our belongings unloaded- somehow we didn't forget any of the important things.