Junior's first days of school

This is a Picture of Junior on his graduation day from Kindergarten. He loved his teacher Miss Halter. She was such a great Kindergarten teacher. We really lucked out getting her.

Look at his eyes! Why do boys always get the crazy long eyelashes? He looks so young and innocent to me.

These are Junior on his first day of 1st grade. Look how happy he is to be away from his mom, all day long.

He had a blast on his first day of school, I just cried all day. He found out that his best friend Ethan was in his class, so he couldn't be happier. I was relieved after I picked him up and he was ok and wanted to go back the next day.

However, the second day, we weren't so lucky. I went to pick him up and was there early, got a good spot so he could see me the second he got out. The kids start coming out and I'm watching for him and watching for him... and don't ever see him. So I go to the class room thinking maybe the teacher kept them all after or something, but the classroom is locked. By the time I get back to my car, there are no kids around. All the parents and teachers have left, and I can't find my son. Panic set in and thankfully I saw Mr. Goudy (the coolest school janitor EVER, he was also there when I went to school). He told me to go to the office and see if they had him there.

So I go into the office and up until then, I'm doing good, no tears. Then I see that Junior isn't in the office and I lose it. She calls his teacher down to the office and we find out that he got on the bus that day. Now we don't take the bus. At the time we lived about four blocks from the school so there was no chance he could ride the bus.

I was so lucky that his teacher was on bus duty that day and saw him get on the bus with his friend Ethan. Unfortunately he lived clear out on Summit Ridge in Santaquin which actually takes about half an hour to get there and back because of the crazy roads.

There have been a couple of times when he has gotten lost after school since then, but at least I always find him. I am so glad that by the time he can drive, all the cars will have GPS and he'll have a cell phone.

It's been a while

So I realize that I am not the best at some things, or even very good. Like eating meat, being a morning person, and blogging.

Recently we have moved, again. This made our 11th move since Jay and I have been married. Someday we will get it down to a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. We are loving our house, Jay sister Sara is letting us rent her house while Jay has decided to go to school. It's so nice to live in a house where I don't have a million projects that I want to do with it.

Jay has decided to go to school in Audiology, which is an 8 year degree of course. But things will be great in about 10 years. :)

Junior started first grade, which was traumatic for both of us. (A great story on that to come later)

Abby started preschool which she has been dying to go to since Junior started a few years ago.

Gracie is into cleaning lately. She has decided that a drawer in my kitchen is the garbage and does a good job keeping it full.

I have started City league Volleyball and am playing in Spanish Fork and Payson again this year. I love all the girls on our teams and we have so much fun. This year we have had a winning season so far. Hopefully I can add a couple of tournament shirts to my T-shirt drawer.

Aquarium

We went to the Aquarium a few weeks ago, at the beginning of the summer. It was great for my kids, we got to look at everything and when the kids got tired, we had already looked at everything.

Gracie liked it the most. If you look at the reflection in the glass (pictured above) you can see Gracie's smiling face. She loved looking at everything and would talk to it all and try to touch it.

Junior liked climbing through the coral reefs that they had there.

Abby, being our climber, liked the frog.

This is how Abby measures up to a penguin.

"I Know You"

At bedtime, we do Stories and Songs and the kids get to choose one story and one song each. Abby is in love with anything Disney Princess. Sleeping Beauty is her favorite (because she wears pink). So she always wants to hear the Sleeping Beauty song and story even though she had never seen it until a few months ago. This is a video of her singing the song. I think she is going to be a music lover, she even picks out the notes on the piano to this song and sings along. (It's just the first part, but still pretty good for a four year old.)

Abby Cadabby

Abby turned four in May. The poor girl, she had to wait for everyone in her family to have their birthday's before her. It was a long couple on months, but she took full advantage when it was finally her turn.

The moment she woke up on her birthday, she informed me that she was to be called "The Birthday Girl" and didn't answer to anything else the rest of the day. If you forgot, she would say."You mean Birthday Girl?"

This is a picture I took of her when she was about 1 1/2 years old, just a couple of months older than Gracie is now. I chose it because you can tell from her face, even at that age, she was going to be a fun child. Abby is full of love for everyone and makes friends where ever she goes. She is called Abby Cadabby by most of the neighbor kids. We all love her a ton!!

My Little Monkey

Yes, this is how she crawls. All the time, every time. I think it must come from the Corry side of the family :)

Gracie's Firsts

I started this post clear back in the beginning of April, but I couldn't get it to work.  So finally, here it is.
  

Gracie sat up at six months
started crawling at eight months (video to follow later)
got her first tooth at eight months
stood up at 10 months
took her first step on her first birthday
finally took a bottle (that I had to get her to drink by using chocolate milk at first) at 12 months
and only started sleeping through the night around 11 months




Gracie turned one last month. Please don't look too closely to the cake, it didn't turn out how it was supposed too. I thought I found a recipe to make whipped cream frosting, but I didn't...Now that I've said that I'm sure you have all noticed the cake instead of the cutie featured.

 Gracie is such a doll. She gets comments all the time on how she looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll. When she is looking at people, she doesn't crack a smile or anything. I think she is going to be an actress or something because she is always studying thier faces.

I think that she is going to be the most spoiled child in her family, as she was born into a family of four that love her so much. Junior and Abby with both do anything for her and love to play with her any chance they get.

Six years already!!

This is Junior when he was little. What happened to my little man? He used to fit on my lap so easily and now he is all arms and legs. I can't believe he is already six.

Junior is such a sweet boy with a contagious laugh. His laugh could make anyone smile. He is extremely intelligent and is doing excellent at school. I am going to be so sad when he goes into first grade and is gone all day. We will all be so sad.

If you know Junior, you know that he loves all things Red and Spiderman. He starts liking other things like Bakugan but will always be excited for Spiderman. His favorite song is "Skidamarink". His favorite number is 10. His best friend at school is Ethan E. and he loves riding his bike and doing tricks that I think are too old for him to be doing.

Happy Birthday Junior!!

Jay's friend party

Every year Jay and his friends from High School get together and have a party. We eat, talk and have a white elephant exchange. This year I had to work so I couldn't go. :( But, Jay did bring me home a great gift, the "Shave my Legs Jenny!" I laughed so hard! If you look closely, you can see the real, yes real hair on her legs.

New Pictures

My Aunt Karen, takes the best pictures. I was trying to channel her when I was taking these of my kids.

Junior-isms

Junior - Mom, which shirt do you think would be the best to wear? The red one, the spider-man one or the BYU football one?

Me - I think that you should wear the BYU football one.

Junior - No, Which shirt would be the BEST to wear today?

Me - I think you should wear the BYU football one because it has long sleeves and it's cold outside.

Junior - No, it's the spider-man one because it has heroes on it!

Spring Lake

When I was younger, we would ride our bikes to Spring Lake to feed the ducks. So I thought we would do it. We saved our heels from our bread until we had a freezer full of them and took the kids to the "Lake". Junior and Abby just loved it!
This is my family, except for Gracie, I am holding her. I love that Junior is trying to throw the right way like his father taught him, but is throwing with the wrong arm again. Abby would throw the whole piece into the water because she was too excited to break it up into little pieces.

These ducks were smart! By the time we left, I think we had all of the ducks from this HUGE (wink, wink) lake over by us, hoping for food. If you threw it high enough, they could even catch it in their beaks before it hit the water.

I tried to get them catching the bread in their beaks, but didn't. At least you can hear Junior and his excited giggle.

Abby's First Day of Preschool!!

This is Abby showing off her new pink shoes. I have never seen a child more excited to wear new clothes, shoes and a backpack. She would get so excited, she just couldn't stop herself from jumping for joy!

Abby loved her first day of preschool! She was devestated when she realized she wasn't going to go to Miss Candi's, (where Junior went the year before), but cried when she had to leave. We are doing a round robin style of preschool, so I know that she will absolutely love it when it's time to have it at our house.

Blackberries

This year we finally have a yard with a garden!! We even have blackberries!! I love having all of these fresh fruit and vegetables. We didn't do very well with our garden, but the fruit trees and blackberries have been wonderful!! This is a picture of my family picking blackberries for cobbler (yummy). I didn't help. Bad memories from growing up?

This is a picture of my angel.
Abby loves pink if you couldn't tell from this picture and was wearing a bowl for some reason. Who wouldn't like to get into the mind of a three year old? I love how the light bounces off of the bowl and makes her look even more like an angel :)

Junior and Kindergarten

Junior started Kindergarten with Miss Halter on Wednesday. He just loves it! He just beams when he tells you what his teacher said the first day, "You guys are acting just like first graders!" It's so cute to see him all excited about school. We miss him around here, but at least he's only gone a few hours a day. I think that Abby misses him the most, but she gets some one on one time with the parents and starts pre-school on Tuesday. What am I going to do with only one child at home?

Family fun

This year for the Evans family reunion we had so much fun!! We did several things including swimming in the pool with the kids. In this picture, Ethan is standing at the top of the slide and rolling down a fisher-price little person for me to catch with my mouth. The things you will do for family. I never caught it, so I guess you could say I was unsuccessful in that venture.

Junior and Abby are so cute!! Don't I just have the prettiest babies ever!?! They had so much fun playing with all thier cousins and keep asking me to go back to Grandma Paula's house.

Jay is the Champion!!

This year, Jay won the Evans Family Ping Pong Championship! He did so well playing Matthew for the coveted title. This is a picture of him holding the tournament brackets. If you look closely, you'll see that I took fourth.

Here is Jay, concentrating on his game. And below is a picture of the great player passing on points to the younger generation (Junior)

Really clean restaurant

So we went to Red Robin this weekend, which my kids LOVE for some reason. Junior will make his own menus all the time for it and draw the pictures and everything like they have on the kids menu. And maybe because it is Red.

We finally got done eating and were leaving the restaurant and Abby was leading the way. She went down one of the steps and started heading for a plate glass window. I tried telling her she was going the wrong way, but she just didn't stop. I was wondering if she thought she knew the people at a table nearby or that she would stop before she got to the huge plate glass window. But she didn't. It was so funny seeing the surprise on her face when she hit the window, but even better when I saw everyone's face at the nearest table. I laughed so hard!! And the best thing was, she was so tired it didn't even phase her. She just turned around and followed us out of the restaurant.

A Laughing Matter...

So Jay is the KING of laughter at our house. He is the only one that has been able to make Gracie laugh more than once. I was lucky enough to catch this on film yesterday, so enjoy!

A day of firsts

Today was a day of firsts for our family. Gracie had her first laugh!! She started smiling the day we brought her home from the hospital, but waited until she was almost three months old to laugh.

Junior also had his first T-Ball game today. He did so well, we are so proud of him and the nice, friendly boy he is becoming. He made it a point to talk to all of the base coaches while he was waiting for his teammate to hit the ball so he could run to the next base. We all loved watching him play today.

Junior: " We were good also" (Meaning his team?)