Kayla's Wedding

In June we headed to Texas for Kayla's wedding at the Dallas Temple!  We love Josh and are excited for him to join our family!  

They are just the most adorable couple

 Josh and Kayla with all of their nieces and nephews from both sides of their families!

Black sisters and Mom

Bridesmaids and Groomsmen 

 Sisters!

 The Black Family

 Cutting the cake.  Josh handmade their wedding topper to look just like them.

 Matthew and Kensley dancing.  Once they turned on the music Kensley didn't want to stop dancing.

 Leaving the reception!

It was such a fun event for all of us to get together for!

Half Marathon

After months of training, I ran my first half marathon last month!  It was a lot of work and trying to train with Matthew being so busy with rotations and traveling but I did it and am so happy about it.  I also couldn't have done it without the support of my dad and my sister Kayla-both of which are runners and went on runs with me and totally gave me the support and motivation I needed!
I did the American Fork Canyon Half Marathon and it was great.  Mostly because the first half was entirely down hill in the canyon.  I ran the fastest I ever had and finished with at time of 1 hour 43 minutes.

Matthew and the kids woke up early to come see me at the finish line but I was a little faster than either of us expected and they missed me by a minute!  But I'm glad they were supportive anyway.

Matthew's Graduation

At the end of May we traveled down to Arizona for Matthew to graduate! Woohoo!  4 years of medical school are behind us! I am so proud of Matthew and all of his hard work to get to this point.  Matthew is officially a DPM which stands for Doctor of Podiatric Medicine. It was so fun to get together with friends that we haven't seen in a year.  Both my parents and Matthew's parents were able to come to the graduation ceremony too. It was so nice to have them there to support us.  It was a nice trip to close to our great time in Arizona.

Med school friends getting together at the splash pad

Our wonderful apartment complex pool!

The little girls sneeking in some mouthfuls of watermelon.

San Lagos friends!

All of Matthew's classmates who are also podiatry graduates. Matthew is in the top right corner.

Getting dressed up for Matthew's podiatry banquet.

Graduation!  

Officially a doctor now!

So now we start our 3 year residency in Salt Lake City.  We just moved to a little town-home and are doing great adjusting to our new routine of things.  Time to go unpack more boxes...

Meeting Baby James

The kids and I decided to drive up to Idaho and visit new baby James.  Matthew has had the night shift at the hospital all month and usually the kids will accidentally wake him up during the day while he is sleeping so it was a great win-win for all of us.  
We are all in love with sweet baby James! He is still so tiny! He is about 6 weeks old. Kensley was especially smitten. She constantly wanted to hold him and rub his head. :)

It was great for Jenna's kids to have a distraction from their mom being occupied by a new baby.  The cousins had soo much fun together.

All the cousins hanging out together!

These girls share a love of reading!

 Dancing to the Frozen soundtrack

 Playing at the park

Reading books together

 Talking to Mimi (my mom) on facetime

On Saturday Cole took Cade and Austin on a hike.  I love the pictures they took!  

On Sunday we took a walk around the Rexburg, ID temple.  It was such a beautiful day and so windy.  We nearly got blown away.  It actually scared Kensley so I had to take her back to the car.  But we got some cute pictures of the kids.

 Crazy pose

Girls in their matching skirts

 Boys!

 Twin picture with the beautiful temple

 Holding baby James

It was such a fun trip!  Living only 4 hours away from each other is so perfect!  Many more trips to come.

Easter 2014

My grandparents always throw a great Easter party for all the grand kids and great-grand kids. They have put on an Easter party every year since I was in college. This year wasn't any different.  We had a kid egg hunt and an adult egg hunt both of which were super intense!  Then we have a great dinner and time to visit and catch up. I'm sad we didn't get a picture of everyone.   Somehow Kayla managed to get into one of my pictures :)

Kayla photo-bombing

Easter egg hunt at the grandparents

Easter morning: finding their Easter baskets.  The smallest things can excite them!

 Easter Sunday pictures

 I made Kensley and Rylee matching Easter skirts this year.  Too bad they weren't together to wear them.

Pretty low key weekend, just enjoyed our time together. 

Sisters!

One thing that I love about living in Utah right now is being so close to most of my sisters.  My youngest sister Alyssa is in high school in TX but Ciera and Kayla are both attending BYU and Jenna is living 4 hours away in Idaho.  I have been loving our sister get togethers! Here are a few of the things we have been doing together:

My sister Ciera is in a band called Book on Tape Worm.  They are amazing and have their first CD out.   They have also been on tour and have another tour in a few weeks.  Ciera plays the cello in the band and is a rockstar. I was finally able to go to one of her concerts.  It was so fun to see her play live!

Jenna, up in Idaho has been having a rough pregnancy. This is #3 and she is 37 weeks along = very miserable.  So Ciera, Kayla and I decided to secretly drive up to Idaho and show up at her baby shower!  It was a total surprise, she was shocked!  It worked so perfectly. She literally couldn't take in the fact that we were all there right at that moment!  It was a great weekend hanging out together and to help her out for the weekend. All three of us are taking credit since she went into labor 2 days after we left!  Little baby James is so very adorable and I can't wait to meet him.

 At Jenna's cute superhero themed baby shower

Kayla is involved in two different dance group at BYU.  She is in the Ballroom Dance Company and the Kinect Dance Company.  Kensley and I were able to go see her perform with the Kinect group at BYU.  Since the performance is geared towards kids, Kensley got to go up and help with one of the numbers.  Kensley was thrilled!  She is sooo into dancing right now and I don't mind a bit.

Kayla is getting married in June!  Ciera and I planned her bridal shower and it was a hit! It was so fun to see all of Kayla's friends come and party with her.

Planning committee: Kayla's roommate Heather, Ciera and me

So many girls!   Kayla has seriously so many friends. This was taken after some had already left.

 The decorations:

Needless to say, I am so glad we will be staying in Utah for Matthew's 3 year medical residency so that we can have more sister get togethers.