McKenna Family

We could not be more proud of this boy.   He made the decision a very long time ago that he wanted to serve a full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  This is a two year commitment where these young boys and girls leave their homes, families, friends, and everything to know to serve the Lord.   It is entirely volunteer and also self-paid.  It is a hard thing for these young people not to see their families for two years and oh so hard on the mommies too....but they leave as boys and come back as men.  We are so excited for this opportunity for him and for the changes that will occur in his life as a result as well as the lives of those he teaches. He submitted his papers and then we waited.....and waited....and waited.  For some reason, his call took a little longer than the norm and it was a little excruciating.  But it finally came and I texted him that it here.   He came home after school before heading to work fo...

Easter is such a special holiday and this year I really wanted the focus to be on Christ.  The LDS church has been doing such amazing things with their website and putting out videos that are uplifting and family oriented.  They had several Easter videos on their website and we tried to watch as many as we could in that week leading up to Easter.  We read passages from the Bible about the last days of Christ's life and for me Easter this year had a much more special feeling.  As crazy as technology can make me sometimes with monitoring kids, etc., I am also so grateful for the resources we have to help teach our kids.  These videos bring in the spirit into our home with a touching message that brings our hearts closer to Christ.  Here are a few pics from Easter Sunday.  Pictures are always painful at our house but we managed to get a few that were worthy of sharing.

Arizona must be one of our favorite places because every chance we get, we head there.   My sister's family also went to Arizona for spring break and we were able to plan it so we overlapped a few days.  Vacations are always more fun with the cousins right??  We planned lots of fun activities and had a great time.  Here are a few highlights....Right off the plane, we hit the ground running.  Grandma and Gina had gone ahead to San Tan Flats to save seats and they sent Grandpa and Matt to pick us up.  It's funny we never knew about this little gem of a place while we lived there.  Grandma and Grandpa discovered it awhile back and so glad they did.  It's basically like camping but they prepare all the food for you and its super yummy and there's live entertainment.  Each table has it's own little fire pit to roast marshmallows, etc.  Really fun stuff... The next day we visited another little great place....the Basha pool.  This is seri...