One Last Train Ride

Before we move we are trying to do all our favorite AZ things.  One of those things is going to the Scottsdale Train Park.  We met up with a bunch of friends who we won't see for a long time.  It's soo sad to be saying goodbye.  Our kids had a blast at the park and the moms had some good chats.

On the train

Waiting for the carousel 

Cooling off at the little indoor train museum

Kensley's first carousel ride.  She loved sitting on the horse for the first half of the ride but then got scared and wanted to be held.

 6 of the 11 kids we had there!  We didn't even attempt at a group picture.

 Boys! 

Sure going to miss these girls.  Good thing I will see some of them this upcoming year in Utah as they also have traveling husbands for 4th year. 

Family Camping Trip

A couple weeks ago we decided to try out camping as a family!  We are kind of rookie campers and so decided to only go for one night. We invited our friends, the Bass family to come along with us.  We drove a couple hours away to Payson, AZ and loved the campground we stayed at.  It was beautiful and had close bathrooms.
The men got the tents set up while Aubrey and I went exploring with the kids. Our boys found a tiny pond and preceded to throw rocks and pine cones into it for practically the whole trip!  They were entertained with just that!

Kensley decided to start walking full time on this trip

 3 out of the 4 kids watching as the men start the fire. Kensley was probably off walking somewhere

 Our tent! Kensley loved going in, out, in out.

While we were all getting dinner ready we hear Austin from inside the tent say "I'm ready for bed!"  We come inside and he had found his pillow, blanket and the lantern and set it all up. Very cute! I had to get a picture. If you ask him what was his favorite part of camping he will say sleeping!

Hanging out by the campfire while dinner was cooking.  Jared made us some awesome tin foil dinners. They really were so yummy.

 The tall pines at our campsite as the sun was going down.

Of course S'mores were made...

When it was time for bed we read books by the campfire and then tucked them in. For the most part they went to bed pretty good!  We were worried about that.  It was also freezing at night!  It got down to about 40ish at night. We borrowed a tent heater and left it on all night because it was so cold.  I was so worried my kids were cold that I got up a few different times in the night just to make sure they were warm and that the heater did start a fire in our tent.

Our morning started at about 5:30 with kids getting up.  We started another fire and got some breakfast going.  We mostly hung out by the fire trying to warm up. We underestimate how much firewood we would need so we were burning anything just to keep up our fire!  The kids played more and then we took them on a nature walk while the guys packed things up.

 One last group shot minus Aubrey who was taking the picture.

It was a fun, little trip and I would totally do it again!

Plans

As of Monday, Matthew is now considered a 4th year medical student.  Woohoo! I am so proud of him and all the hard work he has done to get here.  The end is in sight! He will be graduating in exactly one year from now. He has just started a month long rotation at a hospital in Phoenix and it has already been pretty intense with long hours. However this is the only AZ rotation for this whole next year. Months ago, we applied for all of our 4th year rotations and the ones we got accepted to are scattered across the nation. This means we are sadly moving!  We have loved our time here in AZ, the many friendship we have made, and watching our kids grow up here.  I am not ready to leave it all behind! But my choices are to either stay here by myself for the entire next year or go move-in with family.
At the end of the month I will be moving to Utah to live with Matthew's parents and Matthew will go to the east coast to start his abroad rotations.  It's going to be a rough summer with Matthew being away for the first 3 months straight.  He will be in Rhode Island, Virginia and Indiana. Then he will join us for a few months in Utah.  Then more craziness and travel, etc... I am very excited though to be spending a lot of time with family this coming year.  Sometimes I get overwhelmed at the thought of being basically homeless and traveling this whole next year but then sometimes I feel like this will be a fun adventure.  Medical schools definitely don't take into account family life when they set up rotation schedules! Our days have been spent purging, packing and trying to do as many fun AZ things as we can.

I can't make a post without pictures of my kids right?   These were taken today.  

Kensley is a full on walker now! At 15 months she has now preferred to walk rather than crawl.  

 Austin is really into building with his legos. He played with these all day today and made something for everyone in the family to play with.