Christmas Cheer in 2014

This past month has been full of Christmas Cheer! We've had a great time going to Christmas concerts, seeing Santa Clause, looking at gobs of lights, watching Christmas movies, singing lots of Christmas songs and much more!

We started the season by cutting down our very own Christmas tree.  We do this every year and we had a blast doing it again this year.

Evie has LOVED Christmas time this year and really caught on to most of what was going on.  She knows all the characters in the nativity and she also knows who Santa and Rudolph are.    So, she's covered from all sides, right!?

She also knows VERY well who the Grinch is.  It's become her favorite Christmas story and she loves watching the old cartoon.  We seriously watch it once a day (it's only 22 minutes-ish in length).  She has the songs memorized and sings them as she is going about her day or just riding in the car.

She met Santa this year and loved him.  After sitting on his lap, she continued to talk about Santa's lap throughout the month.

Evie has also loved looking at all the lights.  I don't know what we're going to do to entertain Evie as we drive around once the holiday is over.  She also loves Christmas trees.

Her favorite Christmas tunes this year are Feliz Navidad (she totally knows the song and will sing and dance through the entire song), Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Away In a Manger, and Silent Night.  She knows them all and sings them like a champ.

As for me and Beau . . . we've experienced Christmas through Evie's eyes this year.  It's been a delight and a ton of fun.  Christmas Eve and Day were a blast.  Evie loved opening her gifts and we loved playing with her.  Thank you to ALL of you who spoiled her.  She was DEFINITELY spoiled.

Here are a few pictures from our month-long stint of holiday activities.  We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!!

We went to a live Nativity with Beau's family.
This is a picture of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.
The baby cried while we were there and Evie was
extremely concerned.

Live Nativity - Just outside the barn where baby Jesus was.

We went to the Lower Lights Christmas Concert with Beau's Family too.
Evie doesn't love loud sounds, so sometimes concerts are tricky.

We took Evie to the VoiceMale Concert too. . . just the three of us.
We had a blast (and the sucker helped get us to the end).

We scheduled to go see a Christmas play and we went to see
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" with some friends.
Here we are with Lucy (also a friend of ours).

As luck would have it, Evie's great birth grandmother & grandfather
mailed Evie a gift that we opened the same day as the Charlie
Brown play and it was the story book as well as a Charlie Brown
doll.  Thus, Charlie went to the play with us too.  Thanks Polly & Gerry!

We had our traditional Christmas Eve Festivities with Beau's Family.
Here you can see Beau & Evie playing the chimes.

This year we also played Christmas Bingo with the girls. 

Christmas Morning was a blast.  Evie LOVED opening her stocking and gifts.
Here she is with two trains that showed up in her stocking (Thomas & Percy)
which also happen to fit on the new train track that Santa brought.
She hasn't really put them down since.  They even go with us in the car.

Evie helped mommy open my stocking too.  I got a pedicure gift
certificate here.  I'm a bit excited.  

And, Evie also helped daddy open his stocking and stole his
sucker right away.  

We then made a visit to my mom and dad's for our traditional
Christmas breakfast . . . . but, it ended up being lunch for us.  LOL.

Later that night we visited Beau's dad and stepmom.
The night ended with Beau reading Christmas stories to Evie while
Evie wore her new headlamp (also found in her stocking).
She loves that thing.

We seriously hope you all had a very merry Christmas!  We've had a beautiful and joyous month of fun and also of reflection of our Savior, who without Him, we cannot make it back to our Heavenly Father.  He is our example and friend.  We are forever indebted to Him and it is a blessing to reflect on His birth.  Merry Christmas to you all!

An Attitude of Gratitude

Our Thanksgiving holiday was a bit out-of-the-norm for us this year.  We started with a traditional Hunter family feast and gathering the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

As usual, the food was delicious, the company was delightful, and the feelings of a family-filled Thanksgiving were overflowing.

When the actual date of Thanksgiving rolled around, we ended up spending the day together . . . just the three of us.  Most of our family members were out-of-town or spending it with their in-laws, so we decided to capitalize on the opportunity to have a special day with just us three.  It turned out to be just that . . . special!

We started the day off with a movie at the movie theater.  We took Evie to see, "The Penguins of Madagascar."

It was a lot of fun and, thanks to some snacks and two suckers, Evie made it through the entire movie.  This was a first!

We then went home and let Evie have her afternoon nap.  I finished making dinner and then the three of us ate a traditional Thanksgiving dinner together.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, green salad, and homemade rolls.

Thank goodness for camera timers.  :)

We ended the evening with dessert over at Beau's dad's house.  Grandma Ellie had made some delicious pumpkin and coconut cream pie.

I love it when the three of us get quality time together like this.  It is always special to me.  Today was a unique Thanksgiving and one we'll remember forever.

We have so much to be thankful for!  God, Christ, Family, Birth Moms, Birth Families, and adoption are at the top of our lists this year.  Our hearts are touched by those we love and those who love us.  We are incredibly thankful for you all!

Evie at 2 1/2

Evie is officially 2 1/2 years old now.  We are having a lot of fun with her.  She is super busy and super fun.

Here's what she's up to!

• She started saying, "I Love You!" when giving hugs.  
• Loves Thomas the Train.
• Still loves babies.
• Loves playing with her horse stuffed animals more.
• She has become more timid at trying adventurous things.  She's learned there are sometimes unfavorable consequences to such craziness.  :)
• She is pretty clingy to mommy and daddy right now and loves to snuggle and cuddle more than usual.  We're not complaining one bit!
• She has become more imaginative in her play.
• She knows her shapes and colors VERY well.  She will now talk in colors . . . saying, something like, "Mom!  Look at that red truck."  It's pretty handy because if I'm not sure what she wants or what she is talking about, I'll just ask her to tell me what color it is and the mystery is usually solved.
• She knows all her ABC's by site and she even knows their individual sounds.  You can ask her what a "P" says, and she'll tell you.
• She can sing LOTS of songs.  She is a singer and, as from birth, has always loved music.  She rarely sits quiet.  She's usually always talking or singing.
• She loves to dance!  We have dance parties all of the time.  It's a great way to work out some of her energy, bring a smile to her face if she is sad, or just play around.  
• Her favorite movie right now is, "The Little Mermaid."  She also loves, "The Lion King."  "Despicable Me" is probably her third favorite.  She also loves watching anything with trains, particularly, "Thomas the Train."
• She LOVES going out to the barn with her daddy!  She cannot get enough play out there and begs to go out there constantly.  She loves the chickens, our dog Codee, the horses, and her mini horse Margie.
• She also loves to look at "Big Bucks" with her dad.  
• She still loves swimming.  We try to go once a week.
• She LOVES to play with toys.  She also loves to tell us (or friends/cousins) how to play with the toys.  She'll hand us toys (or hats or princess dresses) and then instruct us as to what to be doing with the items.  She's a good little leader.  
• She is a talker!  She talks incredibly well for someone her age and she really loves to talk and tell us things.  I hope that never stops.  Never!
• She says her prayers like a champ.  With help, she can say prayers from start to finish.  It's so sweet.  
• She is a strong-willed, and independent girlie.  We find these traits to be extremely positive.  Yes, it can get frustrating sometimes, but as her parents, we hope to channel these traits to her advantage.  We love that she has the drive and motivation to get things done at such an early age.  She is a go-getter.
• Her favorite game is "Hide and Seek."  Mom or dad hides and then Evie loves to find.  We whistle so she can find us and when she does find us, her giggle and the look on her face are priceless!  She also hides and "whistles" for us to find her.  Of course, the best hiding spot is the one where we just came from . . . but, we pretend like we don't know where she is and she gets the biggest kick out of us trying to find her.  It's a lot of fun!
• She still loves to be chased.  "I'm going to get you, Evie!" is also a favorite game.
• She is athletic.  She's agile, flexible, and quite coordinated.
• She loves and adores all animals!

We're feeding the ducks here.  Evie LOVED it!

I'm sure there is so much more I could write, but these are the things that come the quickest to my mind.  She is full of light, energy, and love.  We love her to pieces.

A Cute, Little Bumblebee

We had a fun Halloween yesterday!  We visited grandparents, went trick-or-treating, and had TONS of fun following our buzzing, cute bumblebee around wherever she went.  She is a busy, buzzy bee!  We may have ended the evening with a small sugar-indosed meltdown.  But, if that's the worst of our Halloween . . . well, we made out pretty darn well!  We truly had a blast with our little Evie girl this year!  She's totally getting into holidays and it's SO much fun.

Suckers are her absolute favorite!

And . . . here's the cutest bumblebee I'm sure you will ever see in your life!

Five Little Punkins

Happy Halloween!

Our little Evie is getting into the Halloween spirit this year.  It's so fun.  We thought we would leave you some Halloween cheer today.  She can do the whole thing from start to finish without help, but in this case got a little camera shy and I had to encourage her a tiny bit in one spot.  Overall, I'm thrilled she did as well as she did for the camera.  :)

She talks SO cute and she talks A LOT!  She is a little jibber jabber.  And . . . Just in case you need a toddler interpretation of her recitation of "Five Little Pumpkins," here it is.  :)

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.

The first one said, "Oh my it's getting late!"

The second one said, "There are witches in the air."

The third one said, "Good Folk Beware."

The fourth one said, "We'll run and run."

The fifth one said, "Let's have some fun."

"Wooooooo!" went the wind . . . 

and OUT went the light . . . 

and the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Punkins - Lots of Punkins

Happy Autumn to you all!  Evie and I have been visiting Pumpkin Patches and adoring pumpkins all month long.  Evie LOVES the "punkins" and has now even started to appreciate the "scary punkins" which WE all know as Jack-O-Lanterns.   We're having all sorts of fun together this fall.

Never Stop Dancing . . . Ever!

We recently went to a wedding and there was dancing.  Lots of dancing!  They hired a DJ and the DJ played songs for . . . who knows how long because we left while the music was still playing (10pm-ish).

Evie seriously hardly stopped moving all night long.  She came to me at one point and said she was tired and was ready to go home, so I changed her into her PJ's and slippers.  However, when we were TRULY going to walk away from the party she second guessed herself and went back for two more songs.

Oh, she's fun.  She is SO much fun!

Here's a small taste of our evening.  She's got moves, people.  She's got moves.  (And, in case you didn't know . . . she also knows her colors.  You'll see in the video.  She LOVED watching the lights change colors and at one point during her dancing she stopped to name the colors as they changed.)

Colbie Callait is Pretty AND Nice

We met Colbie Callait.  Beau's brother was working during her concert and got us all the hook-ups!  Beau and I have been big fans of her since her beginning, so we were thrilled to go see her in concert.  We were even more thrilled at the chance to meet her.  She's SUPER nice . . . and of course, beautiful.  Evie called her Princess Colbie.  :)

We went to the concert with other members of Beau's family.  The weather was gorgeous for an outdoor concert and we all had tons of fun!

Evie has VERY good and sensitive ears, so it took her several songs to adjust to the noise level.  Meanwhile, she just plugged her ears until she could adjust.  And, towards the end when she started getting tired she would ask, "All done?" after every song.  It was so cute.  We did leave the concert a few songs early at her request, but had a blast! 

And, if you have 3 minutes, you should watch this music video!  Colbie sang this song at the concert and ran the video in the background.  This helps to show how "beautiful" she is and I LOVE the message of the song.  I hope my children can grow up knowing that they are beautiful on their own and that they don't need everyone else (or everything else) around them to validate that!  I hope as a mother, I can help to instill this self worth.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aWvSYkiP24

Daddy-Daughter Campout

Evie has a fun daddy!  He wanted to "take" Evie on a campout.  So, he set up the tent in our backyard and took our little Evie Doll camping last night.

Oh, she was excited!  She hurried to get on her jammies and she grabbed her pillow and carried it all by herself to the tent.  Jumping in that tent was SO much fun!

Beau had a headlamp and she LOVED that thing!  She was very fascinated with it and how it would turn off and on and even change colors.  Once she settled down with that, Beau read her lots of bedtime stories.

To my amazement . . . she lasted ALL night long out there.  I thought for sure they would stumble in the house at the wee hours of the morning, but they didn't.  Once she settled down and fell asleep, she slept right through the night.  Beau . . . he is another story.  LOL.

These two have a special relationship.  I love them both and am so grateful that Evie has a daddy that loves and cherishes her more than words can ever describe.  

Hobble Creek Half Marathon

I ran me another half marathon this year.  I usually only do one in the summer.  BUT . . . my fit brother is a go-getter and wanted me to run another with him (and he's trying to get me to do more!).  I was cool with the idea as I needed something to keep me motivated throughout the rest of the summer since my other half marathon was in June.  I wish I could say that I just keep running 6-10 miles all the time, but I need a half marathon to keep me up on my miles like that.  LOL!

Here I am with my brother loading waiting for the bus.  They said the last bus left at 5:45am.  We got there at 5:30am to catch that last bus.  Oh, no worries . . . the bus didn't even show up until 6:30.  What the heck?  We were definitely bugged.  I mean, part of us liked the fact that we weren't up the canyon freezing for an hour, but the anxiety this created was not awesome.  Plus, I really would have loved that extra hour of sleep!  When we got on the bus one of the race volunteers jumped on and said, "If the race has already started once we get you there . . . "  and then proceeded with further instructions.  Huh?  They're the ones getting us there late, so how is it fair to start the race without us?  I was not impressed.

Well, we got there about 10 minutes before the race started.  It gave us just enough time to use the port-potties, drop our bags in the trailer, and get our music going in our ears.  It was kind of stressful.

Looking at the positive . . . the run was gorgeous.  Hobble Creek Canyon is the canyon that I grew up in, so there was a joy in being able to run it.  I was also happy that I could still run all 13.1 miles without extensive training.  I mean . . . two months prior I had put in lots of training for the American Fork Half, so the month before this one I kind of geared back up with some long runs, but nothing crazy.

That being said my 10th and 11th mile were kind of killers.  I was running out of steam and I told Tyler that he was going to have to push/drag me to the end.  And, that he did!  I did get some renewed energy for the 12th mile and then he helped to push me that last 1/2 mile to the finish.  He amped up the speed and said, "Come on!  We need to beat the 2-hour mark."  It was a tough half mile, but we did it!  Our time was 1 hour, 59 minutes.  Hooray!

I absolutely LOVE having my brother to run these races with!  It's a blast.  I love having someone to encourage and I love having someone who can encourage me when I need it.

I also had a client who ran the race.  I trained her for it and she killed it!  It was fun to carpool and ride the bus with her.  She's awesome and . . . now she's kind of addicted to the half marathons too.

So, in summary this was the worst organized and least generous (swag bags were lame, the food at the end was as measly as any 5K I've run, the shirt wasn't great, etc.) half marathon I've every participated it.  However, the race route was beautiful.   And, all-in-all . . . I'm just grateful that I am healthy enough to participate in these events.  It makes me happy to feel so good!

An Adventure in Lake Powell

Oh man!   We've had a fun and meaningful week.

This little trip got planned when we were lovingly invited to Evie's birth mom's wedding celebration.  We felt so grateful to have been invited and soon found out it was scheduled to be at Lake Powell.  So, Beau asked for the time off work and when the weekend of the anticipated wedding celebration came, we packed up the car and headed down to be with Evie's birth family.

We were excited, but a little nervous.  We had met Evie's birth mom's immediate family and her grandma, but that's all.  This would be the first time that we would meet the extended birth family and we weren't exactly sure how it was going to go.  To our delight, it went better than we could have ever dreamed.  We met aunts, uncles, great aunts, a great uncle, a great grandmother, cousins, and more!  Every single one of them made us feel loved beyond words.  They have a tremendous amount of love for our little Evie and it makes me and Beau so happy to see our baby girl loved by so many!  And, they were not just gracious and kind towards Evie, but also to me and to Beau.  They love all three of us to pieces and we felt their extreme love and kindness more than we would have ever imagined!  It was such an amazing experience and we were SO grateful that we were invited to the celebration and that we took the time to go.  You guys!  Open adoption can be SO amazing!  There is so much love to go around and this experience was such a blessing in our lives.  A big THANK YOU to Evie's birth family for making us ALL feel so loved.  We appreciate and love you beyond words!

Here we are at the marina as we waited for the festivities to begin.
Evie's birth mom married a military man, so they had flags out as
part of the decoration.  It was really pretty.

As luck would have it, my family planned to come down to Lake Powell the following day to play on the lake.  So, we decided to stay a few extra days to soak in some Lake Powell fun.  

Since the next day was Sunday, we decided to lay low and wait for my family to show up.  While we waited, we took a little Sunday drive to visit one of my dear friends.  She lives just over an hour from the marina, and she was so nice to have us over to her home for Sunday dinner.  We've been friends for almost 20 years.  She is SUPER awesome and a treasured friend of mine.  I'm so happy that we've stayed close.  And, as life would have it, we both have adopted children.

Amy & Me.  Love her!

The next two days were filled with fun on the lake.  We water skied, went on tube rides, enjoyed the boat, played in the water, and soaked in plenty of sun.  We even ran into Evie's birth family on the lake (what are the odds!?)! I LOVE Lake Powell and it looks like our little Evie doll does too.  Her favorite things to do were to simply ride in the boat, hold the flag up for the skiers, swim in the water, and ride on the tube.  Here are some pictures of our adventures.  

Evie's Birth Grandmother and Birth Great Grandmother.
Love these two!

Beau is one hot water skier!

Beau & Evie.

My Mom & Dad.

My brother's family.  They were tons of fun to play with
while we were at the lake!

Beau, Evie, Me.  Evie loved riding on the tube and we loved riding with her!

Evie LOVED watching us
water ski.

Me out on the water.
Water skiing in Lake Powell is my favorite!

Me and my Evie Doll.

We're taking a break on the beach.  Evie needed a little nap.
I still love it when she falls asleep in my arms. 

Beau LOVED having water fights with the kids.
They all loved it too!

So much fun to be had!  We're so happy we had this little vacation.  It was not only a blast, but it was also so very special!  YAY for vacation, YAY for friends, YAY for families, and YAY for open adoption!