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.