Jake & Elise

In early February, Andy and I were thinking about a trip to Illinois for over the 4th of July. We started looking at tickets to fly and *almost* considered driving. And then Andy found the jackpot, tickets for our entire family, roundtrip, in early May. The catch is that we'd have to drive to Phoenix and be picked up at O'hare. But that really didn't seem too bad, considering we were just considering driving the whole 26 hours. And so we booked them!

Enter Elise and Jake's engagement. They were considering Mother's Day for their wedding which would be great! We would be there then! However, we were able to extend our trip to accommodate being in Illinois over 2 weekends and the date they decided to go with, May 16.

Our AirBnB for the bachelorette

It was a delight to be able to see as many people as we could over those 10 days. I was able to be present for Elise's bachelorette weekend, her personal shower, a girls night and more. Andy was able to be with some former coworkers, visited MRI for a morning, got dentist and eye appointments taken care of and even a little fishing in! The kids were able to have some sleepovers with friends, Malaya got to go to American Girl in Chicago with Ashley and Mila for a day. We got to meet our new niece, Violet June and spend an afternoon with Grandma Betty. Jeff and Marilyn McClure had a fun afternoon of fishing and eating up at their ranch with our friends and family. It was a rainy afternoon but we had fun nonetheless!

Saturday before the wedding we were supposed to take pictures. However the skies opened up and sprinkled the morning of so we weren't able to take pictures in the original location. We moved the family pictures indoors and the bridal party got pictures taken at the grooms parents house. They have a really cool old red barn, so I'm excited to see how those turned out!

It was a wonderful time to be able to reconnect back home with those we could and to see our baby sis get hitched!

Thank You Lord Jesus for this time we had, to spend with our family, to see our kids reunite with their friends and for the ability to travel for special occasions!