Some of my Favorite things of all time!

Sometimes we turn on our music and just start dancing! Evelyn is starting to get big enough that she is learning to do real moves! I love to see her and her Daddy-boy dancing together--both trying to lead the other.

And this? Well, it just makes me happy!

"Aren't I cute?!"

More Summer Memories

So last year we noticed that Evelyn was guessing a lot of the words she was reading and skipping a lot of sight words. We got her eyes checked and found out, her eyesight is fine, it's the focus muscle that needed strengthening! She needed to do daily focusing exercises and wear reading glasses for a month! She picked blue ones, of course!

Evelyn's summer haircut!

This is a hilarious journal entry Evelyn wrote for school! I hope you can read it!

Here are pictures of our beautiful garden we worked so hard on this year!

We got some new cabinets to make a computer desk in our kitchen! We love it--it has consolidated so much of our junk into one small space! This is what it looked like before we added the computers. 

Home's-Cool!

This year I decided to avoid my typical Evelyn's-back-in-school-depression, so I gave in to Evelyn's requests to be home-schooled! We love it! We love all the time together, and trying to find interesting and fun ways to make any information stick. Evelyn's favorite classes right now are Math (Go figure! I never thought I would hear that! Love "Life of Fred!") and P.E. and typing.

   We enrolled Evelyn in a swim class with a lot of other home-schooled children. I love having an official teacher work with her; all her nervousness has just evaporated and she is determined to practice hard because she was a little behind the other kids because its her first year. She swims so hard and long that her shoulders are getting quite toned! Eventually we are still hoping to enroll her in some sort of dance class.

   For History, we have done all sorts of mini units on all sorts of eras of history. We've talked about Ancient Greece, and the Olympics. We discussed Ancient Rome, and Medieval times. Now we are starting our study of the Renaissance.

This is Evelyn dressed up as the goddess of wisdom: Athena

This is Evelyn: the winner of the Adam's Olympics!

   We got to go on a field trip to the Hogle Zoo. It was on a very cold and rainy day in September. I think it was 48 degrees!

Because of that a lot of the big cats were very active! We especially loved the lions. The adult females were batting their ball all over their enclosure, and the cubs were stalking children!--Evelyn was pounced at twice! The cubs are now about the size of Labrador retrievers, so it is quite intimidating.

Evelyn has a blanket wrapped around her under that coat!

Right before she got pounced on!

Summer Fun (So Far)

We have had a very productive summer! Mostly it is boring stuff life ordering Evelyn's curriculum and planning our house remodeling. But we have been able to do some interesting things too. We started out the summer with a business trip up to Ogden where we visited the Children's museum there and the Dinosaur museum.  Evelyn wasn't nearly as scared of the animatronic dinosaurs as she was last time we went. 

 Evelyn is very energetic and has to get her wiggles out. She spends much of her times of boredom doing handsprings across my living room from couch to couch. (thank heaven we are getting her into a a tumbling class this school year!). But occasionally she finds other ways of wiggling. Here is her playing circus with all her giant animals. They all had to balance on the exercise ball.

 We put together a reading chart to keep Evelyn's skills sharp. Every five chapter books she finished would earn her a prize. Here she is celebrating her first prize: Cold Stone!

 To survive the hot weather lately, we were able to get and old billboard to use as a slip-and-slide! It is 15 feet wide and 50 feet long. We placed it on the hill outside my mother's house, and it entertained the kids for hours! (seriously, Evelyn came home with her very first sunburn because she was out there for 5 hours!) All the neighborhood kids loved it too, and it was big enough to let everyone play. I think we had about 15 kids on it, but could have done more.

Disneyland 2016

We bought Evelyn a Scratch and Sketch pad to entertain her during travel.

We went to Disneyland on Feb. 29th through March 4th this year. We went with my parents, my sister Jane and her husband Abe, and daughter Gwen. We wanted our trip to be a little different this year, so Michael and I made up a scavenger hunt to give us a little extra challenge. If you would like to use it on your Disneyland trips, you may find it here: Disneyland Scavenger Hunt

 

Evelyn was thrilled to have a cousin there, especially Gwendy because she rarely sees Gwen and Gwen had never been to Disneyland. So Evelyn acted as a tour guide the whole time.

Eating Pineapple Ice Cream!

 Unfortunately after the first day, Gwen came down with the flu, and didn't enjoy too much after that.

Dancing in Downtown Disney with Daddy

 One of our funny memories this year was on the new Hyperspace Mountain. They sat us in the handicapped car and then changed their mind and had us move to the normal cars. As soon as we were taking off, Evelyn cried out, "OH, no!!! I left my hat in the other car!!!!" So after the ride (which is awesome, by the way) we hung around so the workers could retrieve it for her. While we were waiting for the handicapped car to return, Suddenly Jane gasped and exclaimed, "Crud! I left my hat and Gwen's purse in the other car!!!" Then Michael realized that he was missing something too: His hat!!! Then Abe couldn't find his phone and it turned out to be on Hyperspace mountain too!!  Evelyn and Jane got their hats back, and Gwen got her purse and Abe of course found his phone, but Michael never got his cute little newsies cap back, even though we checked the lost and found daily for it. I'm sure someone commandeered it. I'm going to have to see if I can order one online to replace it.

The one ride Michael has tried to talk Evelyn into going on (and failed) is Tower of Terror. Heck, he's only talked me on it once, and I hated it so much that Evelyn decided there was no way she would EVER set foot on that ride. We've gone through the queue to give her an idea of what it is about, but then we'd wait at the bottom of the ride by the gift store until Daddy got off the ride. Michael (by the way) giggles through that whole ride. Anyway, because Evelyn wouldn't ride it, Gwen didn't want to ride it. Grandma Mary decided she wouldn't have that! So she bribed Gwen and Evelyn (and me, for that matter) to go on the ride. She told them she would give them a whole dollar! (And for me, she promised me a Ghirardelli's ice cream!)  So we all cheerfully got on the ride. Evelyn was definitely nervous, but Gwen seemed pretty perky. (And I was a sweating mess, but excited for ice cream!)

Well, to make a long story short (too late!) we all survived, but Gwen and Evelyn broke into hysterics when it was all over. Grandma felt so guilty she gave them each a TWENTY DOLLAR BILL!! Spoiled kids!  Here is Evelyn snuggling me after the ride:

You remember that last time we went, Evelyn was excited to go on California screaming because I told her it was like riding a dragon? Then she got on the ride and changed her mind really quickly. She has been dreading getting on that ride ever since. But she promised she would ride it once. I knew she wouldn't be so surprised once she knew what to expect.. So we got in line on our last day in Disneyland. The whole time Evelyn was saying, "Id rather go on any other ride than this: even Tower of Terror!" Then the ride shut down and we had to forgo the ride and Evelyn changed her tune pretty quickly: "You know how I said I would rather go on any other ride? Well that was IF this ride was open!"

This is Evelyn dressed as a balloon knight. We took a day off in the middle of our trip to rest and go to Medieval Times Jousting tournament. We all really enjoyed that, though Evelyn was offended when our server called the chicken that she served us "dragon meat" and the show got a little too intense at the end for the kids. But I highly suggest going if you are in the area, and plan on buying your souvenirs there because it is significantly cheaper than Disneyland, but still really cool!

Evelyn and Gwen both got carnations from our knight, and that thrilled them. Evelyn was really torn when our Red Knight had to fight the blue knight: she didn't know which one to cheer. Then she was really offended when the blue knight won!

I remember that the first time we went to medieval times when Evelyn was 3, we were put with the blue knight. Evelyn loved cheering him and that is when she developed her undying love for the color blue.

Evelyn with our Red Knight

 Someone told me at Disneyland that with my hat and glasses I looked a lot like Audrey Hepburn! I was so flattered, I decided to not take them off again (mostly because I knew the resemblance ended with the hat and glasses...)

yes, Michael took a break from shaving that week.

 Evelyn's favorite ride again this year was Thunder Mountain. But I'm pretty sure it would have been California Screamin' if we could have rode it....She also decided she was no longer scared of Splash Mountain, and was smiling when the camera got her picture on the big drop! I was so proud of her!

 

Look at all the cute little invalids!!