Thanksgiving

I would be so ungrateful if I did not tell my Heavenly Father how thankful I am for all that I have. This past year has been filled with so many answered prayers. We started the year off in our beautiful new home. I didn't think we would be able to upgrade to a better home until at least 2009, we were so blessed to be inspired to purchase our home when we did, and definitely guided to this home in this neighborhood. We have so many wonderful neighbors and our ward is great too. Kelsi has made so many new friends and is thriving! In March Paul & I were so blessed to celebrate our 2nd year of marriage! I am so grateful for my husband, and although we have our share of struggles and challenges, I would not want to share them with anyone else! We were also so very blessed to finally sell our old house (granted it was 5 months after we were supposed to), but it sold when the housing market took a dive and a lot of other houses are still on the market. We were able to make double house payments during the winter (I don't know how, but we managed) and were even able to take a trip down to Yuma Arizona to see Mary & Fred. In May we were so blessed to have a safe delivery for our healthy & beautiful baby girl Jaedyn Michelle Evans! As Paul puts it he "waited 23 years for this little girl". She is the first baby girl this generation on the Evans' side - Mary has 14 grandsons and finally added that baby girl (along with Kelsi of course). She is such a joy and we were so grateful everything went so well with the delivery. The Sunday before we had Jaedyn we were so blessed, with the help of our loving Bishop, to be restored to the church and therefore Paul was able to bless Carson and Jaedyn. We now have callings: Angie is the visiting teaching coordinator and Paul is the first counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency. Once we had Jaedyn we decided that it was time for me to stay home and raise the kids. With A LOT of faith I quit my job of ten years at Ultradent and became a stay-at-home mommy. Even though this job is A LOT harder than I imagined, I am so grateful that we were able to work it out financially and that I have such a supportive husband. I am able to be home to watch Kelsi, Carson and Jaedyn grow up! Paul was also recently blessed with a job change. He had been struggling with Pepsi for several months and didn't know what to do, once again the Lord guided us and Paul was able to land a new job as a business unit leader for Womack Machine/Interstate Hydraulic. This was a long awaited for job change and has come at a time when a lot of other people are out of work. This past year we were also able to become good friends with some pretty incredible people: Nick & Heidi Galieti. Nick and Paul have so much in common and we are so thankful for their friendship. We have had a lot of wonderful things happen this past year, but we were also blessed during the bad times: We survived a summer with a newborn baby, a teenage son, a teenage house guest, a two year old and two eleven year old's. Yes there were a lot of sleepless nights, but we survived it. We also survived helping Mary & Fred sell their shop, hauling stuff up to Heber, meeting with their accountant and sending them on their way down to Yuma for some retirement bliss. It was really hard for Paul to see his parents go, but we will look forward to going down to see them at Christmas time. The Lord has strengthened us, tested us, blessed us, protected us, has been merciful towards us, guided us, answered us and loved us. This is what I am thankful for.

Halloween 2008

There is no more appropriate way to start this blog than by sharing our Halloween Holiday! Halloween is Angie's favorite holiday and she looks forward to it every year. The Swanson's have had the tradition of making home-made Chili, breadsticks and Rootbeer as far as I can remember. Grandma Swanson used to host the festitives until she no longer could and then I took over! It is so much fun decorating the house, making Chili, putting the dry-ice into a big pot of bubbly rootbeer, making and decorating sugar cookies, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, putting scarey music on and enjoying all the fun! This year we spent the weekends leading up to Halloween going up to This is the Place Heritage Park, Trick-or-Treat street, and Boo at the Zoo. This is the Place Heritage Park is always one of our favorite places to go and their Little Haunts celebration was no exception. They had trick-or-treating, Paul and Kelsi made corn-husk dolls, Carson got some burnt taffy from the candy cannon and we all enjoyed dipping candles. If you haven't ever been to This is the Place, you really ought to go. I can't wait for their Holiday Lights this December. Paul, Angie, Carson and Jaedyn went to Trick-or-treat street and Carson really got into the whole knocking on doors and saying "trick-or-treat" to get bags full of candy! Most of the candy was the rejects from the candy companies, but that's ok, we still had fun! We also went to Boo at the Zoo (along with everyone else in the Salt Lake Valley). It was really crowded, but was a BEAUTIFUL day and we really enjoyed being outside! We really got good use out of the over-priced Halloween costumes this year! Last, but not least, we hosted Chili and Breadsticks at our house on Halloween night. We had a great time with Mary and Fred, Scott and Michelle, Mike and Ashley, and Nick and Heidi. It was so fun to see Frankenstein (Carson), the Good Witch (Jaedyn), Hobo Clown (Tavin), Tiger (Daxton), Dead prisoner (Rykley), Hannah Montana (Katelyn) and Sleeping Beauty (Kara). The kids make it so fun, even though they were all hopped up on sugar! Next year we will be adding to our decorations, maybe even getting a strobe light!! I think Carson's favorite part of this Halloween with the pumpkin that Paul carved. The pumpkin was "throwing-up" his guts! Paul's seemed to really enjoyed imitating my mom's talking pumpkin by saying "HAPPY HALLOWEEEN...AHAHAHAHAHA" and my favorite part was seeing all the cute kids in the costumes, and spending time with my family! I only hope next year that Mom and Dad don't schedule their Florida trip on Halloween!!