Little Ballerina, I love you!

Evelyn,
I love your silly stretches.

I love that you listen so intently to Miss Kim that it looks like you're glaring at her.

I love that little tongue sticking out of the side of your mouth as you practice your ballet positions.

I love it when you get so into the dance, you lose your balance and while flailing, knock the girls around you down before you finally succumb to gravity and fall.

I love your free style dance: spastic, hyper and joyous.

I love your wrinkly dance tights and your saggy leotard.

I love your hip wiggles.


I love your floppy tap shoes that might fly off when you are kicking.

I even love it when you won't dance because you tell me your shoes are shy.

I love that you have the dance positions song memorized, but you still struggle with actually getting your body to do them.

And yes, I even love you monkeying on the ballet bar.

Our Pet Owl

Ok, it's not really our pet. It's more our community's owl. ...Except we haven't seen it in a week. But we'd like to claim it as ours, because it was just too darn cool!

Here it is in all it's splendor and glory: A Great Horned Owl!

It was in the tree ten feet above us. It was just waking up at dusk. I guess it had been there all day.

The only reason I wouldn't want it to move into that tree permanantly is I would probably get pretty sick of Michael and Evelyn dissecting all the owl pellets.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Has anyone else noticed how eager toddlers are to learn about Jesus? Evelyn's second word she spoke after she barely turned one was, "Jesus." How is it, that these young people with an extremely limited attention span have an incredible capacity to learn about the Saviour? My answer: They just came to us from His presence. How else could they recognize pictures of him in all their variety and different renditions, but it's always: "That's Jesus!"

Evelyn is constantly shocking me with her love for Christ. I would like to take credit for this early devotion, but I can't. It's just her own sweet personality. When I put her in bed, I usually sing her some songs and on a certain night I started to sing her old favorite, "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree." She quickly cut me off by putting her hand over her mouth and stated, "Actuwee, I would like a song about Jesus." The first song she had memorized was "Jesus the Very Thought of Thee."

Once I was having a great old pity party for myself because the doctor said I couldn't take ibuprofen for my arthritis pain anymore because my stomach was getting to weak to handle it. I was really discouraged and not sure what to do, and generally feeling picked on. Evelyn caught on at the dinner table that something was wrong.

"Mommy, are you mad with daddy?"

"Oh, no, Sweetheart! I love your daddy. I'm just a little sad right now."

"Mommy, don't be sad! Jesus gave you a body so you would be happy!"

She was right! I have no idea how she knew what to say at that point.

Today I was preparing my lesson for Relief Society on Sunday. Evelyn started climbing all over me and my chair and chiming, "Play with me, Mommy! Play with me!" I told I was sorry, but I couldn't. I had to prepare my lesson so I could teach people about baptism. Then, I got an urge that I couldn't resist. "Evelyn," I asked, "Why do we get baptized?" I was extremely curious to know what she would say. You never know when she is going to say something profound or whether she's going to talk about how Jesus always washes His hands after using the bathroom.

"So why do we get baptized?"

"Because we love to!" She exclaimed.

"But why does Heavenly Father want us to be baptized?"

She went very still. If you know Evelyn, you know that only happens when she is violently ill or thinking very deeply...sometimes only when she is violently ill.

Then she looked me in the eye and said, "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

I was astounded! She is familiar with the song "God so loved the World" but I didn't know she could quote the scripture exactly! The thing is, later I asked her to say it again, and she couldn't say it.

Here is another favorite scripture of Evelyn's:

Sob or Smile?

Evelyn just got her first real haircut! I was not sure whether to bawl when they cut off her cute little curl. She still looks adorable though.

She surprised me how brave she was. She kept protesting all the way to Cookie Cutters that she didn't want a haircut; "it's too scary!" I just told her it would be fun, and she would watch a movie and get a treat. She was surprisingly brave. The only part she got scared and clingy to me was when they had to blow-dry her hair. She hates the blow dryer. But she did pretty good, considering.

Heaven and ... the Other Place

When Evelyn is mad at me, she screws up her face and says one of two things:


1. "Go back to Heaven, Mommy!"

(This is also the same face she uses while singing in God So Loved the World "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world!"

2. "The Lamanites will KILL you, Mommy!"



Evelyn playing with her dried blueberries at breakfast:

"You want to marry me?! NAAAAH!"

Evelyn can say "Scrumptious" (ie. "Dese pancakes are really scrumptious, Daddy!") but she can't say "Delicious." She pronounces it "Allicious." Why? I suppose we don't use delicious in normal conversations. We use synonyms (or cinnamons) such as scrumptious, yummy, "makes my taste-buds do the hokey-pokey," and if something is REALLY good, it's "scrumptulescent!" Evelyn only knows the word "delicious" because of the "5 Speckled Frogs" song. And if you say "Allicious" it sounds perfectly correct when you say "Most Allicious Bugs, yum yum!"

HALLOWEEN and Fake smiles

We had a Halloween party with Michael's family. It had been a long time since we had entertained anyone, so I decided to go all out. But Michael's poor family had to put up with all my juvenile party games. I'd like to claim that we played them for Evelyn's benefit, but no, I would have subjected his family to them anyway. I am just not sure how to throw a party without playing silly games. Any good ideas?

Anyway, here are our costumes:

Guess Who?

What is it about Evelyn's fake smiles? Will I ever get a natural smile again?!


We played a good game of Pin the Skeleton.....Together. Here is Evelyn's attempt: (we let her do it with her eyes open.)

Still doing a pretty good job!

....And the finished product. Beautiful, eh? (And another fake smile!) Here is the adults' attempt:



Next we went on a Witch Hunt: a gag pinata (I have no idea how to get that little squiggle over the "n"). How was it a gag? Well, we had to choose our weapons out of a hat. There were little poems assign your weapon to you. For instance,

"The Boomerang of Wonder,

Will likely never blunder,

'Cuz our witch comes from

Way down...

...in Australia."


We had all sorts of weapons from toothpicks to an oven mitt; from a pen to a needle nose pliers.

Here is a picture of Cory biting the witch like a dinosaur:

And Carl using the rolling pin:

Evelyn with a rolled-up newspaper:

The toothpicks' destruction:

Finally, once we ran out of weapons, we passed out the last poem;

"I have a clue that will make you sick:

The living room, You, and the Candlestick!"

That brass candlestick sealed the witch's doom.

Next we painted pumpkins. Evelyn was so excited! She almost took longer than anyone else painting hers, and she definitely used more colors. I actually got a blister on my thumb from opening all the different paints she wanted!

And here are the finished products!