The Stone Family

My aunt, Dana and her family was in town and wanted to visit Temple Square. Rick had to study, of course, so I decided I'd drive up separately and take the kids on a little adventure. We all walked around the main temple grounds area, including going up the really tall church office building (yikes! it was scary) and then went and had lunch at the Lion House. We also toured the Beehive Home. We walked by the fountains and at that point everyone was going to go see the movie in the Legacy Theater. Doing that with kids didn't sound too easy so we took off to the children's museum for the second part of the day, since we were up in SLC anyway, and hung out for a while before heading back to Mapleton. I think the kids had a fun day and it was great to visit temple square with them.

Going to the top of this building almost made
me pee my pants, haha. Even thought there was
super tall, thick, glass, it was still terrifying.

A good chunk of July (a long with many, many months leading up to July) was spent researching residency programs, because applications opened up July 15! After doing tons of research on programs that also had good costs of living, were family-friendly, had good schools, etc... we came up with a list of places we applied to:

The List

Las Cruces, NM

Kennewick, WA

Weatherford, TX

Cottonwood, AZ

Fort Worth, TX

Lawrenceville, GA

Rome, GA

Bowling Green, KY

Somerset, KY

Sierra Vista, AZ

Searcy, AR

Jonesboro, AR (St Bernards)

Mesa, AZ

Pueblo, CO

Palm Springs, CA

Tulsa, OK

Chillicothe, OH

Des Moines, IA

Mason City, IA

Fayetteville, NC

So that was the list. We applied, and waited for interviews to start coming in.

In the mean time, we filled our July full of fun activities with the kids to keep us busy while Rick studied, studied, and studied some more for boards. Here are some pictures from July:

"Cow Appreciation Day" at Chick-fil-a.
Dress up like a cow and get free food!

Cousins! Brenna, Ava, Hadley.

Rick and Kimbri on a bike ride together :)

Wesley & Garrett (who zonked out and
was probably making Wesley's arm numb).

I took the kids to see Katie's ballet
performance at BYU. She was visiting
for a ballet camp and Kimbri really has been
into ballet lately and loved it!

Garrett earned a prize form the prize box
and was super excited about it.

Cosette & Brenna

Hiking the Grotto in Payson, UT
with the Stone's.

Kimbri is a corn on the cob addict, haha.

4th of July sparklers and fireworks!

Garrett wasn't too sure about the fireworks
and kept hiding his face.

I think these must've come from
Olivia because I don't have
Snapchat... but the kids love
when Olivia lets them play with it!

This picture cracks me up!

My loves.

Brenna with Great Grandma & Grandpa Haycock

Uncle Matt, Great Grandma & Grandpa with Brenna

Rick surprised me with tickets to go to Stadium of Fire for my birthday. Tim McGraw was the entertainment for the night and it was awesome! It was so great. We picked up Zupas on our way there and then ate it in the parking lot before heading in to the stadium.