Easter Sunday 2013

Easter Sunday ended up being pretty low key.  We started out the day by checking to see if the Easter Bunny came.

Sure enough, there was a pretty little basket waiting for Evie.  We showed it to Evie and she went to town in discovering its contents.

She got a cute little Easter dress, a matching cardigan sweater, a darling bracelet, and treats (yogurt bites and baby yogurt . . . her favorites).  

We went to our church meetings, which is always a nice thing to do on Easter Sunday.  We're so grateful for what Jesus Christ did for all of us.  The glorious gift of the Atonement and the miracle of the Resurrection is hard to fully comprehend.  A tremendous amount of love fills my heart when I sit and ponder the actual events of Christ's life and then apply it to me personally.  If we allow Him, our lives can be made easier (or more bearable during difficult times).  

Beau and Evie took the time to go collect eggs from our chickens before we headed out to spend an Easter dinner with Beau's family (which was so nice!).  She gets soooo excited to carry the eggs herself.

We hope your Easter celebrations were as fun and meaningful as ours.  

Easter Egg Hunting Fun

I helped my Mom with the party this year.  One of my jobs
was to make a festive banner.

My Mom and Dad host an annual Easter Egg Hunt that is always held the Saturday before Easter.  They make it fun and unique and the kids (and adults) have a blast!

To make it fair, they give each grandchild their own color of egg to find.  Then, at the end of the hunt they are given a clue to find the "grand finale" egg.  That grand finale egg had 2 gold dollars in it!  Even Evie got one of those!

Here's my mom giving all the kids their hunt instructions.

Evie was such a good little egg finder (perhaps it's from her experience in finding real eggs at our house).  She LOVED picking those eggs up and then shaking them.  The candy inside helped to make great noise.

Her mom and dad had a lot of fun too with this little Easter Doll!

I love this photo!  Evie is SO excited to pick up that
egg (it was her first one), and Beau is equally excited.  So, so fun!

I love this picture too, because I love my Evie.
I made her shirt and matching hair bow.  Is she not
the cutest Easter baby ever?

After the hunt we ate yummy food, hung out with everyone, and played.  Little Evie absolutely loves my mom and dad's dog.  Here she is with the little white, fluffy dog.  Evie will just giggle and giggle when he's around.

We hope you all had a Happy Easter.  We're sure enjoying the celebrations!

Smart & Gifted?

So, I know I'm Evie's mom and I might be a little biased, but now I have pictures to prove my point.  My baby girl is smart and gifted for sure!

She's already crunching numbers, typing documents, and practicing the piano.  Case closed.  She is brilliant!

We've Got Eggs . . . And Chickens

One of the first things we wanted to add to our household after buying our new house was chickens!  And, we've done it, folks!  We have 6 chickens and between them all, they lay an average of 4 eggs a day.

Beau and I are both excited about the chickens, but Beau is REALLY excited about them.   When he gets home from work he'll grab Evie and they'll both go out and look for eggs.  Beau even lets Evie carry one into the house.  Farm fresh eggs are now a regular household item around here.

Beau's first collection.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We don't typically make a huge deal over St. Patrick's Day.  But, with a child in the house now, it can be a lot of fun!  My sister sent me and Evie a special little package to ensure that we wouldn't get pinched on the famous green day.

It was a SUPER cute idea so we used this as our "green" for the day.  Both Evie and I looked extra festive with our pretty fingernails and we got a bazillion compliments.  And, sure enough, we avoided any unnecessary pinches.  Thanks Traci!

St. Patty's Day was on Sunday this year and we had the opportunity to go to a farewell (a client of mine) and a homecoming.  My cousin Kevin just returned home from serving a mission in South Africa (cool, right!?), so we visited his ward to hear him speak and then had the chance to hang out with family for the afternoon.

My cousin's (Jamie's) girl, Eden loves to hold and feed Evie.
Here's Edie and Evie.  How cute!

My cousin Jamie is more like a sister to me.  We didn't really grow up together, but we clicked at a very young age, saw each other nearly every summer, and wrote letters back and forth our entire lives.  I love her dearly and am SO thrilled whenever she comes to visit.  We've had fun since she's been in town.

Jamie & Me

We hope you all had a fun St. Patrick's Day like we did!  Hopefully you wore green so you didn't get pinched!

Fun at the Living Planet Aquarium

Beau had put in a long week at work and when Friday came, he was able to hang with me and Evie for the afternoon.  We tried to think of something that Evie would love and, since she loves animals, we thought going to the Living Planet Aquarium was a great idea!

We started out by looking at a lot of fish.  As predicted, she found it very fascinating.  She kept doing her "oooooh" face while she said that too.  Super cute!

Daddy and his baby girl looking at the fish.

They  have more than just fish there!  There where snakes and several other reptiles (glad they were in cages behind glass!), spiders, frogs, and lots of sea creatures (like jelly fish, sea horses, sharks, turtles, sting rays, etc.).

They currently have two special exhibits.  One is otters, and the other is penguins.  By far, Evie's favorite was the Otter exhibit.  I'm sure it's because they moved so much and were so active.  They would swim, run down the waterfall, and move all around their little habitat.  They were fun to watch.

By the time we got to the Penguins, Evie was kind of done.  We had already been in there for over an hour and she was running out of steam (and dinner time was at hand).  So, we went quickly through that exhibit.

It was way fun showing Evie all the fun creatures.  I mostly love the fact that we were all together as a little family and had the chance to spend this extra time together.

I love my Evie Doll!

Evie at 10 Months

10 Months?  Seriously?  It's crazy how fast time goes with a little one around.  I'm sure you didn't doubt the fact that she is still a delight and keeping us smiling every day!  We love this little doll face.

She's become even busier in the last month.  It almost seems like she's doing all the same things she was doing a month ago, but with more accuracy and more agility.  She's a smart cookie and it doesn't take her long to figure stuff out.

One of her favorite play areas.  I designed it for her.
She loves pulling out those DVD's several times a day.

What she's doing now:

• She started eating baby foods with meats in them.  She loves them.  
• She is getting stronger and faster at pulling herself up on stuff.  She can even let go for a second and stand without falling.  Walking is coming soon.
• This improvement in mobility has allowed her to get into everything (as you can see by the picture above).  So fun!
• She can whistle.  Serious!  
• She caught her first, real cold.  We had only been in our house one week when it hit.  I think all the craziness in moving, the new germs of a different house, and the big change may have contributed to it.  It was NOT fun.  It was so hard/sad to watch her struggle through it.  We did all we could to get her better quickly and snuggled her lots!  It lasted about one week and then she was back to her normal, happy self.  Whew!
• Remember those 5 teeth she was getting at the first of this month (end of 9 months)?  Well, most of them have made their full appearance.  Although, one of them is breaking through right now and she's not loving it.  
• All this teething has led to some teeth grinding (bruxism).  While this is completely normal for babies (it helps alleviate some of the teething pain and it's part of how they explore their new teeth), it is hard for me to endure (although I do).  It's like nails on the chalkboard for me.  
• She continues to be more and more social.  She loves other little people and seriously squeals in delight when she sees them.  
• When there aren't other little people to play with, she plays with her babies.  That little Cabbage Patch Doll is still her favorite and best friend.  I'll go pick her up from her naps and she'll be talking and laughing with that little baby.  So cute!

We had the fun opportunity to babysit Chance & Jamie's puppy for a couple of days.  We thought Evie would absolutely LOVE that sweet, little thing.  Turns out, she loved the bigger dogs more because they moved around and played a little bit more.  But, she did dedicate some love and attention to the puppy and we snapped some cute pictures.  

Beau took Evie to his priesthood meeting at church yesterday (we usually trade off every-ther-Sunday).  He sat by a nice man and, of course, Evie was spreading the sunshine like she usually does.  She was flashing smiles and grins and throwing in infectious laughs.  That man turned to Beau and said, "She's going to change the world."  I don't know how serious he was, but I seriously  think she just might!  She's one special little girl and we've known that from before she was born (and that sense of how special she is continues to grow and grow).  There's no doubt she has a special purpose for being here.  In fact, I think she's already starting to "change the world" just by spreading sunshine and cheer wherever she goes!  This face is gonna make a difference.