We had so much fun over the 4th. I saw my mom for the first time since her chemo/radiation treatments for thyroid cancer. How wonderful it was just to sit a laugh with her. Dad and I had fun just listening to her play with the children and laugh. She has such a great love for life and never holds back with her laugh. We took the family to the Tubac fireworks show just south of us. It was short and sweet. John and Phil had a chance to get some fun pictures. We had a great weekend with friends and family playing baseball at the park, watching movies and playing with new toys. John took the kids back to Albuquerque with my parents to work on Dad's patio, but instead everyone is sick! I guess he'll be spending a little more time up there than expected...

So I pretty much abandoned my blog after Arkansas- being home was just too overwhelming! So now, over six months later, I've finally got enough guilt that I'm going to try to start again. My little family went up to Utah for the McNeill Family Reunion recently and seized the opportunity to visit family we haven't seen in almost 6 years! My mother's parents live in Idaho and are pretty hard to visit. We got to see spend the day with them on Monday and it was a blast. Our trip home included several stops; John's cousin Thomas welcomed us to his beautiful victorian home in Logan, we visited the Capitol and Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and then the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in southern Utah (we skipped Bryce Canyon because it was packed full!)

We were gone for a week and it was just awesome. I really miss spending that much time with my babies and John took the opportunity to get some time behind the camera. He focused mostly on the artsy pictures, so I don't have too wide of a variety of people pictures, so enjoy!

This was the night we arrived in Manti; Uncle Ian took care of the cousins' need for marshmallows.