man i am terrible at updating this blog. could it be i have way too many irons in the fire? likely. i think i've lost my center. i find myself running from task to task, but never really doing anything well. i think i need to re evaluate some things. i read on another blog this week:

select what you will neglect, so you don't neglect the things you select.

things that have happened since i posted last:

justin's birthday!
our 15th anniversary
emily in soccer
lizzie finishing her first semester at the lab
my first listing
my birthday
carly and parker's wedding
a family camping trip to escalante and calf creek falls
started a (another!) new job

see? these are the major events happening around me while i struggle to make it thru the day instead of enjoying them. time just flies by way to quickly to not stop and enjoy the little moments. oh and in the meantime, my dang house looks like a bomb went off. just a little aside. :)

Amber

i just wanted to give a shout out to my amazing sister, amber. she is remarkable. she has the best attitude of anyone i've ever met. she is spiritual, but not pushy about it. she is smart and gutsy. she is tender and loving, yet has a spunkiness that i adore. i admire her and look up to here, even though she's my little sister. she has taught me so much about mothering and husbanding. :) i love her fierceness and protective mama bear instincts. she is confident and brilliant. she has so many talents, but her best one is how she makes people feel when they're around her. she makes people feel important. i am lucky to have her as a sister. love ya sis!!

Snowmobiles

justin has been friends with mike bouck for about 137 years. we get together as families quite often, they have 3 kids too, a boy named justin and a girl named emily, (cuts down on the names we have to remember, hahah) and justin and mike make sure they snowmobile at least a couple times per year. mike is also a good buddy for 4-wheeling. guess that's why we get along so well with their family. hahah, they're just like us.

FHE

i love fhe. i love spending time together. our fhe's usually go like this:

opening song
opening prayer
one minute of scripture reading followed by
one minute of a lesson of some type


then some "simon says" which turns into "simon says: do a funky dance"



which turns into WWF family wrestling nite! hahah!!

Cam's Friends

Every day we end up with a gang of boys around here. Cam is great at making friends. They all come in, devour the cookies I make almost every day, and play. I love it. This is the note he left on the door one day. It says "just come in, i'm in the bathroom" HAHAHH! Cracked me up. Nice to have friends.

Preschool

Lizzie has been going to the Child Development Lab at USU these past few months. We have forgotten how fun it is. She comes home singing and rhyming. We love it. We carpool with the cutest girls. Kambree (lizzie calls her Kambree-ka-Bambree) and Holland, whose mom is blind. We have had great talks about people who are different and helping them out. I love listening to the chitter-chatter in the backseat as we drive up to school.

Catching Up

I'm not sure why I do this, but I tend to have a BUNCH of stuff happen, then post it ALL in a day or so. I clean house like this too. I wait until it's a horrid disaster, then freak out at everyone and have a mass cleaning spree. If I would just post things kinda as they happen, I'd be a lot better off. Same goes for my housekeeping skills (or lack of them, rather), things would be a lot easier if we just picked up for a few minutes every day. Sigh. Anyway....here is what's shakin at the Evans' house.

valentine's day

so my valentine's day decor consisted of:

1. the red wall in my great room

so on saturday i took the kids and we went to look for a few things. surprisingly, there's not much out there for the day of love as far as home decor. it's mostly cheesy things to buy for your loved one.

after lots of hunting, and a side trip to cache honda yamaha to check out the dirt bikes, we came home with a couple fun things. here's our entry way and the shelf in the great room.

winter

i just need to say that i am officially done with winter. just wanted to let everyone know.

shiny teeth

we all headed to the dentist this morn for our checkups. kids did great, nobody had any cavities, but i heard dr. s tell cameron "k dude, you HAVE to brush your teeth twice every day, ok? before you go to school, AND before you go to bed" to which cam replied "yeah i know, i usually just don't brush them at all." sheesh.

so with new toothbrushes in hand, we left the dentist's office. i started kiddin around with cam, telling him we'd have to resurrect the old sticker charts we used to use for potty training, chores, and the like. he goes "hey yeah!! let's go get some stickers!" hhahhah!

so we did. hey, whatever works right? here's our new stickers....stay tuned for our next checkup to see if they actually work! i think kids are so funny. a little motivation and positive reinforcement goes such a long way.

bedtime

bedtime is my favorite time of day. it used to be because by the end of the day, i was kinda ready for everyone to leave me alone, but now it's different. we do the normal "bedtime" stuff, brush teeth, read a story, say our prayers.

then i tuck in lizzie first, cuz she usually takes a couple times, tuck in emily, and head to cam's room. i tuck him into his blankets, and i always kiss him. i always say "nite dude, love you" and "see you in the morning".

then i sneak back to the girls' room. emily and i have a new little nighttime routine. i sit on her bed and brush her hair back across her pillows. we whisper about 2nd grade events, talk about the next day, whatever.

what is said is not important. what is important is that i really resisted this for a while.....she would ask me to lay by her.. and i'd think of ALL the things i had to get done before i got to go to bed. the dishes! the laundry! the list making for tomorrow! the bathrooms! pick up!!

and then one night i IGNORED the little voice that said "you have stuff to do!!" and i sat on her bed. and i brushed her hair. and we talked about nothing important. and guess what? it was precious. it was calming. it was priceless. it was wonderful. now i look forward to it every night. i love her so much. how lucky am i?

lizzie and the camera

to combat boredom while waiting for me at dance, lizzie took out the camera. these are the shots she took. always amazes me how things look from her perspective. ok, the garbage one is kinda gross, but check out the windows in the bullen center where we dance! not bad for a novice photographer who's knee high. :)

hot springs

ok how long has it been since you went to crystal hot springs?? for me, i'd say about.....um...since i was in high school probably! we went over on monday when the kids were out of school. once you get past the initial "yuck" factor (of the locker rooms, the green water, and the old guys in small suits....) it's actually pretty nice. kids had a ball, and the warm water felt great in the cool outside air. the kids even braved the slide, which had a splashdown pool at about -45 degrees. :) a definite recommend. plus the whole fam gets in for only 12 bucks if you go for family nite! bargain!

kyle

we had little kyle over for a few hours on monday. we loved having him here! such a cute boy. liz really liked having someone to play with, she was sad when we laid him down for a nap and kept "checking" on him. :) probably why he didn't sleep long.....

goodbye kitties

so our cat had kittens. ugg. turned out ok though, i put them on ksl and within a day they were adopted out. we even had someone drive up from OGDEN for a free cat. go figure. kids had fun with them, but i'm happy to have them out of my garage.

mr bushman

emily has been blessed with the greatest 2nd grade teacher in the entire world. his name is mr. bushman and we love him. so creative and attentive. an actor before he was a teacher, he has an amazing ability to entertain these kids while teaching them. amazing. we had parent/teacher conferences this past week. both cameron (who has my old piano teacher, mr. gilbert) and emily are doing fantastic this year. i think it's entirely due to these great teachers.

little project

i love little house projects. you know, those ones that can be completed in a weekend, or a few days. last weekend justin had the great idea to replace the worn and dirty carpet in our hallway with some laminate we had leftover in the garage. bonus for short little projects that are FREE! so we pulled up the carpet (yucky), swept up a small mountain worth of dirt and replaced it with the extra laminate. cam got out his tools and we all crammed into the three foot space to "help". we had exactly enough (tithing blessing) to do what we wanted. it took us just a few days this week. here's how it turned out. it's so much better! it's such a high traffic area, coming out of the garage or heading downstairs. sorry the pics are blurry.....was a high action day.

2010

right this minute these are the things goin on in our life:

cam is 10. he loves being outside. he's a natural at anything with wheels, and some things without. takes after his dad

emily is 8. newly baptized. lots of playing with friends. constantly does hand stands. has the neatest hair.

lizzie is 3. starting preschool at the lab next week. has a lisp. loves baby dolls. is a new sunbeam.

i am starting real estate school! i want to run a half marathon this summer. love teaching irish dance.

we live in a great neighborhood, lots of fun new people have moved in.

we love our ward. we did not like 8:30 church and are happy to have moved to 11, where we have a CHANCE at getting there on time!

lizzie

the "kids", as lizzzie calls cameron and emily, always have their pics done at at school, but lizzie hasn't had any taken for a while, so we went over to jcpenney and had them snap a few this afternoon.

today

today i will attempt to:

fix an appraisal problem at work
work out
make a delectable salad for teacher appreciation day
scrub the bathrooms
talk lizzie into getting dressed :)

babies

emily loved horses. lizzie loves babies. for christmas all the girls (my mom, all my sisters, and emily) got american girl dolls. they are beautiful. lizzie plays with them on a regular basis, happily dressing and redressing them, talking to them and playing. she's sitting on the couch right now pretending she's santa, and asking the "kids" what they want for christmas. :)

Resolutions

i love this list from one of my favorite people Sister Marjorie Pay Hinckley who said this:

I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.

I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.

I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk's lawn.

I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children.

I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.

I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.

I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.

amen, sister. amen.

a brand new year

i enjoy writing about how i feel, the things that are going on. however, sometimes i feel the things i write on our big family blog will sound cluttery to others. however, in starting this blog, i have these thoughts. will anyone read it? will anyone care? but then i think, yeah, i'll care and i'll read it and i'll enjoy the journaling that goes on. and so, whether anyone reads it or not, it will serve it's purpose.

as with any new year, i've got some goals. yay me! i never know whether to really put it all out there and REALLY put down what i'd like to accomplish, or just to write down some easy stuff, so i'll be assured of victory.

i think my goals this year are a mix. they are:

make calls and send cards for birthdays.
have a family get-together once a month with extended family.
save money, specifically for a trip to disneyland we hope to take.
create a family "change" jar (more on this one later).
be full tithe payers, pay a regular monthly fast offering.
read the book of mormon as a family.
complete p90x, the whole program.
3 loans per month.
pay off credit card, pay off the yukon
visiting teaching every month

our family theme for the year is "be your best". inspiration from an amazing man in our ward battling MS.