Elayna's 3rd Birthday

Elayna started her birthday at the LaSal Lodge, at our Evans Reunion. We didn't do presents, just the cake. We don't give cousins presents, normally, because it gets really expensive really fast. The kids get to celebrate their birthdays with their cousins by having a fun cake party and spending time playing together. 

Irma and Jerry gave Elayna lots of cute stuff. A doll with velcro clothes:

A cute outfit, picture frame, pen, notebook, white hat, gloves,

a Pink Princess dress, (cap sleeves were added later) with a matching doll dress, and a Glitter book and coin. Elayna loves it all. She really likes clothes and girly things.

Huge cupcakes and a beautiful girl at Bowman's.

Ryan, Katie, Annalisa, and I gave her this Princess doll set. The clothes are soft plastic and stretch onto the dolls. Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, and Sleeping Beauty. Each doll comes with 2 pairs of shoes that are about the size of a Tic Tac. Crazy.

We also gave her some Barbie dressy dresses.

My parents took her to lunch and gave her this darling pink with black and white polka dots dress. Elayna loves to wear it to church and on regular days too.

GG and Grandpa Joe gave Elayna a Littlest Pet Shop set, with a glowing ladybug and other animals and stuff. Lots of small pieces.

Elayna, we love you so much! We are so grateful you are in our family. We love your happy smile, your adorable laugh, and your enthusiasm for everything!  You are a sweet and caring girl, and Katie is your best friend. You have pretty much mastered pedaling the tricycle, you know all your uppercase letters, and all your colors. You walk around the house singing and talking to yourself. You like to play by yourself, and I'm sure your play world would be a wonderful place to visit. You come up with pretend names that I can't repeat or remember, like Shalinafusha. They sound like you just threw some random sounds together. You love to give hugs and everyone that sees your happy smile has to smile back, because it is so contagious.

Love you sweetie! (you usually respond with "I'm not sweetie, I'm Elayna!")

Evans Reunion-August 2011

We started the Reunion with a Girls Night Out. We ate at Zupas (a gourmet sandwich, soup, and salad place. I love their Tomato Basil Soup. Yummy.)  Then we did some shopping. This picture was taken outside of the Provo Towne Centre Mall in Provo, Utah. Aren't we a cute bunch?

My parents rented a lodge in LaSal, Utah for the Reunion this year. It is about 30 minutes away from Moab. We all met down there Friday night. We had dinner, then tried to get the kids to sleep so the parents could have some fun watching a movie. It didn't work too well. Most of the kids didn't want to fall asleep, cause it was a strange place and all. But some of us stayed up and watched Iron Man 2, I believe.
The lodge was so cool. It used to be a Boys Home or something, so it had 8-10 bedrooms downstairs, with at least 2 Queen beds in each room. One room had 2 bunkbeds, and a Queen bed, so 5 beds. The girls tried to sleep in that room together,  but sleep never came, so the parents separated them so everyone could sleep. The boys slept in another room that had 3 bunkbeds, 6 beds total. Then the couple's each had a room. There was one shower, in a bathroom by itself, then the rest of the bathrooms were together. Meaning, there were 2 rooms, with 2 toilets and 2 showers, and 2 sinks, each.
Then, upstairs, there were 2 more bathrooms, and a bedroom that Mom and Dad slept in. The kitchen was huge, with a huge fridge, and the dining room was spacious enough for all of us to eat together. There were 2 family rooms, one on each end of the house. Plus a game room and office upstairs. It was funny to watch the children when they came up the stairs or through the back door. They would start running (because kids always run) one direction, then half the time they would stop and turn around. It was big enough that I did that a couple of times myself.
We didn't make plans. We just hung out, talked, watched the kids play, and played on Dennis and Naomi's Kinect. (pretty fun. You don't use a remote or anything. It just senses your body, and moves the "person" on the tv as though they are you in real life.) The adults had fun playing a Track and Field game. You did hurdles, a sprint, a long jump, threw a spear, and threw a discus. It was hard work.

The kids loved playing in the yard of the Lodge.

 

Amanda brought some water bottles that the little girls had fun playing with.

A wagon that they pulled around and played in.

 

Dennis found a salamander. They showed it to everyone that was awake, then put it in the sink for the rest of us to see. Elayna thought it was neat.

 

Then it was time to let the salamander go. All the kids were very interested in watching it "go home". The only disadvantage to the lodge, is this pond that is in the yard. It is a big pond, and we were nervous about the kids playing near it. They were instructed as soon as we got there, that none of them could get close to the pond. The older boys said they could swim, so it shouldn't apply to them, but the little children follow the big boys around a lot, so the younger ones are the ones we worried about. There was a wonderful covered porch that looked over the lake, so if any of the kids were outside, there was usually an adult watching them.

 

This was one of the living rooms. The young kids were playing Go Fish with Dad. Dad was so patient with them. The cards were letters, so he would tell them the letter, and say the sound, and what the picture associated with it was. They all were having a great time. I just noticed Mom has her cell phone out. There wasn't cell coverage, but she was checking her email to see if Mike and Kristine had delivered their baby yet. Jessica was born while we were at the lodge. Congrats to them, she is a beautiful little baby.

 

The office, where some of the girls colored and cut out stuff:

My beautiful Annalisa:

The kitchen. Each family takes a turn making a meal. We all try to help each other, but one family decides what we are eating, brings the supplies, and is in charge of fixing the meal.

 

This is under the porch. I didn't even realize they could go under there, until I saw this picture. Ugh, I don't know why they would WANT to go under there. Seems like it would be dark and scary to me.

 

This was a cute horse swing. It is made out of a tire, with some colored rope for decoration. Elayna LOVED this swing. All the kids did, I guess. But Elayna loves to swing. And swing, and swing. She rarely gets tired of it. You can see she isn't holding on with her legs or her arms here.

 

We had a wonderful time. We loved visiting with our families. We missed Mike and Kristine's family, but they were having a baby, so it was a pretty good excuse. Next year we are going to try and go to a Beach house in California for the reunion. Hurray!!

August 2011

Sweet smiles from Annalisa. She is about 3 1/2 months old here:

 

I had a reunion with some friends from High School.  Hillary, Heather, Melissa, Serina, and Hannah. We started at the end of July. On Saturday night we went to Park City and saw Idena Menzel. She was amazing. She played the green witch in Broadway's Wicked. She is also on Glee, as an opposing team conductor? I don't know, I've only seen one episode of Glee. She was really funny though, and her voice was so beautiful. We got sandwiches at Subway, then hiked up this huge hill to lay out our blankets on the grass. I don't think there was hardly anyone behind us. But it was fun. We ate our dinner while waiting for the show to start and just visited.

We spent Sunday with our individual families. Since some of the girls live far away, they needed to see their parents also.

On Monday we hiked to the Payson Grotto, changed clothes, fed the baby, went to dinner at Los Hermanos in Provo, then saw Thor, and came home to sleep.

On Tuesday the other girls (I know we are women now, but I don't think of us as being that old, I guess.) went shopping to the Outlets in Park City. I needed to spend some time with my girls (these girls are actually children), and I didn't really want to shop, so I stayed home.

Wednesday afternoon we tried to have a picnic at the Summit Ridge Santaquin water park, but it got all yucky, rainy, and windy, so we decided to not stay. Hillary and Henry (her adorable son) came to my house and we finished our food and visited. But our kids were tired, so Hillary went home and I put mine down for naps. Later that night we dressed up nice and drove to Salt Lake to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Hale Center Theater. It was really good. The stage was incredibly impressive. The theatre is round, so performing on that stage can be difficult. But this stage had lots of different levels that they could raise and lower. It turned in circles, dropped into the floor, and rose almost to the ceiling. It was so great. And the music and acting were wonderful as well.

That was July 30-August 3. Then August 4 we had a pool party at my parent's house. Mostly it was Lynette and my Mom's daughters, I think. Then that night was Ryan and I's 11th wedding anniversary. We had dinner and a nice night. We bought ourselves a Kinect (no remote needed-you control everything with just your body movements. It is really cool.) for our Anniversary. The next day, we drove to Moab area for the Evans Family Reunion. That is another post.


We had a really bad windstorm that took off a lot of our shingles, and broke the limb off this tree. Thankfully, that was the worst that happened to us. Oh, and the power was out when Ryan was trying to buy us some shakes, but I'm grateful he got home safe. :)

Amanda, Mom, Dad, Sheri (Mom's friend) and I went and saw "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The Payson Community Theater was putting it on. It was fabulous! The singing and acting were amazing. The lead -Jekyll/Hyde- did a fantastic job. He switched back and forth between two incredibly different characters, and convincingly portraying them both. The only thing to even complain about was the fact that it was in a small room with no air conditioning. Oh wait, they did say they had AC. Is that what the little tiny window unit by the door was? It didn't help. 


My cute, funny Elayna:

Ryan asked Elayna in the middle of the night "How are you?"
Elayna-stretching and yawning, "Cute." -8-20-11

Katie started Kindergarten. That is another post also. I guess that about sums up August, as near as I can remember.

Katie's first day of Kindergarten

My cute little Katie, off to her first day of School: 

This is the entrance to the Kindergarten classes. They have a separate entrance than the rest of school, because there are afternoon classes also. I went to Santaquin School, and I remember this Kindergarten entrance and play area. It's fun to see how things have changed, and how things have stayed the same.I remember the brick wall, and the plants around the school, oddly enough. But the play equipment has changed. I'm sure it is much safer.

Ryan stayed home with Elayna and Annalisa while I took Katie to school. She was very excited. We put her backpack on her hook, found her spot at the desk, and she started doing work. I kissed her goodbye on her head, but she didn't even look up to say goodbye. :(

Then, when I went to go get her, Amanda was picking up Abby at the same time. Katie didn't say much, and she was dragging her feet and acting pretty exhausted. I figured it was partly because Abby was there, and she was listening to what Abby did in her class. But then in the car, Katie said she didn't like Kindergarten very much because they didn't get snacks or anything. I acted surprised, and she said it was okay, but she wished they had had something to eat.  I asked her what she did in class, and she couldn't remember. Plus she was mumbling the whole time. She seemed discouraged and upset. I was really worried about her, and actually getting upset with her because she was whiney and moaning about anything I said.
Then she got took 1 bite of the ham sandwich I made, and said, "wow. this is so yummy. will you make this again?" I guess she was starving because she ate an entire sandwich, plus some pretzels and half a bottle of water. As she was eating, she told me the plot of the story they read, but I guess she didn't get a turn to answer the question the teacher asked because she just shouted out the answer instead of raising her hand to answer. She told me about a little boy she had seen at the park the other day, and how he said twice that he remembered her. She said recess was fun, but they just had to stay in the little playground, and that wasn't as fun as the other big playground we walked by when we brought her to school. She said there was a girl that she sat by that was really neat, and she liked her.
I think it was hard because Abby, Chase (a cousin), one boy from our ward that is in her Sunday class, and  a girl whose Mom I used to run with are all in the other morning class. She didn't know anyone in her class. She will make friends quickly though. I think there were about 12 kids in her class, so that's a pretty good size. I plan on going to help every other Wednesday morning. Amanda said she'll watch Elayna and Annalisa. Then on the days Amanda goes to Junior and Abby's classes, I'll watch Gracie.

Tomorrow I will make sure she has more than a half glass of milk and 1/3 of a piece of toast. I think she must have been so excited that she couldn't eat, even though I told her to eat more. Ryan will take her to school each day, and Amanda and I will alternate weeks of picking up. It will be nice for Ryan and Katie to have some time together, plus it will help Ryan get to work more consistently. He is usually pretty good about getting there between 9 and 930, but this will get him there at 9 every day, I think.

It is fun to have Katie in school. It gives me an excuse to spend some alone time with Elayna in the morning, and then Katie and I get to spend time together doing homework and reading in the afternoon.  Annalisa and I spend lots of time together. :)