61 years

At the beginning of October my Grandma & Grandpa Lundeen celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary! Wow - what an amazing feat (especially nowadays). We had a fun dinner for them and it was so fun because all of my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. were there! My Grandparents are are so sweet and it is always fun to go up to their house for my Grandma's famous tacos. As a kid, I always enjoyed going to their house, and especially when my Grandma would let me come spend the night. It used to be tradition that I would go spend the night before Thanksgiving at their house so I could help my Grandma get ready for the big Thanksgiving dinner. They are an inspiration to me - and make me want to work harder at my marriage so that Paul and I can show our kids, Grandkids and Great-Grandkids how to have a long happy marriage, just like my Grandma and Grandpa Lundeen!

Summer 2011

I think the general consensus is that this summer just FLEW BY! Summer didn't seem to even get started until the middle of June and now here we are at the end of August! We didn't have time to do everything we wanted this summer, but Paul did start his new job in July, which is such a major blessing! Here are just a few pictures of Evans' Family Summer 2011....

Making Sandcastles

Dinosaur museum and my "World's Most Dangerous Creatures"

Kelsi's solo in her school program!

Carson graduated Preschool!!

My Aunt Sue, cousin Keri & her girls Taylor & McKaydee, Jaedyn and I went to the Princess Festival

We added a new cousin to our family! Baby Ariyah

Isn't she precious!?!?!?!?

The Aquarium

Wheeler Farm

Carson's "Mad Science" birthday party

The "Volcano Cake"

I can't believe he's 5!!

Mad Science googly eyes!

My Cowboy & Cowgirl at the "Hodown"

Ride 'em cowboy!

My sweet "Garth Brooks" of a hubby!

The Zoo

  

A Jadybug on a ladybug

Well....there ya have it - another summer in the books! Let's hope for a quick winter and an early spring!!!

Dinosaurs

I recently landed a new account for The Fruit Lady up in Ogden Utah, and since I had to make a delivery up there one day, I decided to make a fun day of it. I told Paul and the kids to get dressed and we made the trip up to Ogden. After delivering fruit we headed over to the Dinosaur Museum at the mouth of Ogden Canyon. It was a nice day - even a bit warm - and it was good to get out of the house for awhile. I packed a picnic lunch and we just enjoyed our afternoon. After the museum we went over and checked out Smith & Edwards - we mostly just browsed, but it was fun also!

Carson had to climb on the rocks, of course!

"World's Most Dangerous Creatures"

It's tradition!

Every year for the past few years I have tried to buy my family a new shirt/new outfit for Thanksgiving so that we can all get dressed up. Then I figured since we were all dressed up, why not get our pictures taken? So that has pretty much been the one time of year we actually get our pictures taken together as a family. This year was no exception, we all put on our best duds and dressed up for the annual family photo! The kids weren't too excited about it, but all the adults were because every one of my siblings decided they wanted to get their family photos done too! It was nice to get pictures of everyone! Thanks to my dad for being the photographer!  Here's the best of what we ended up with....

Evans Family 2010 Angie, Kelsi, Jaedyn, Paul & Carson

 Swanson Family 2010 Ashlie, Gracie, Olivia & Ryan

Swanson Family 2010 Morgan, Dustin, Natalie & Tanner

Todd Family 2010 Tavin, Ashley, Baby Todd, Daxton & Mike

(Daxton WOULD NOT look at the camera, this is the best we got!)

I so love my family and am grateful to live close to my siblings! It is fun to get together and enjoy each others company.

4th of July - 2010

We had a WONDERFUL 4th of July holiday weekend (it's nice to have a holiday on Sunday in Utah, you get to celebrate all weekend long!!). We started our weekend Friday night by going for a bike ride, we made a stop at the local Snowie shack to enjoy some summery goodness. It was a fun bike ride with the kids in the bike trailer.

Saturday morning we woke up and headed over to the West Jordan Parade. Mike, Ashley, Tavin and Daxton joined us! We drove the golf-cart over to the parade, and I was afraid that the police officer wasn't going to let us park on the street, but Paul was confident that West Jordan's finest wouldn't bother us - and YES, Paul was right! It was a fun parade even though we were at the end of the parade route so the kids didn't get too much candy (which was fine with me!)

After the parade we went to see Toy Story 3 at the movie theatre. Carson did really well sitting through the movie. Jaedyn had a harder time, but didn't do too bad. The movie was really cute! It makes me want to buy Toy Story 1 and 2 to add to our movie collection. Carson like Buzz Lightyear the best. Afterwards we stopped at YogurtLand and got a frozen yogurt - yummy!!!

Saturday night we made some BBQ Pork sandwiches and invited the Galieti's over to join us. We enjoyed visiting with them! When it got dark we all headed over to the West Jordan Park for a nice fireworks display!

Sunday (the actual 4th) was a nice day. We went to church - where I had to teach the R.S. Lesson - which wasn't my idea of fun, but it did go well. After church Paul wanted to go for a ride up the canyons. The little kids were both very tired and whiny, so Kelsi graciously agreed to watch them while Paul and I went for a drive. We went up one of our favorite canyons - Millcreek Canyon. Once we got up there we decided to go for a little hike. The weather was cool and the hike wasn't too hard - so it ended up being a very enjoyable time!!! We took our time walking up and back, sat on some rocks and listened to a squirrel in the tree above us. We then stopped and sat on a log and enjoyed the rustling of the leaves and the babbling of the creek. It was a very pleasant hike! Once we got home we made some fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob - it was a pretty yummy dinner if I do say so myself. I also got ambitous and tried making a Strawberry Tart, which also turned out pretty good. Later in the evening we decided to drive the golf cart around the neighborhood and saw our neighbors - the Snyder's - setting out their fireworks, so we asked them if we could crash their party. They were kind enough to let us watch their fireworks. Our sweet neighbor lady Kale even gave the kids glow-sticks. They were really sweet and we had a lot of fun with them. We were tired by the end of the day, but it was relaxing.

Monday the 5th Paul had the day off work, so we decided to go up to "This is the Place Heritage Park". It was also a cool day, which made the whole experience nicer. They have changed quite a few things at the Park, and they have also added a few new things - like a boat - it was a nice afternoon. We enjoyed some ice-cream and in the Huntsman Hotel and they had a candy cannon down main street. Carson's favorite part was washing the clothes on a washboard and hanging them out on the clothes line.

Monday night our neighborhood had a big get together. They had water-balloons, glow-sticks, swimming pools & slip-n-slide, BBQ's, sides & desserts, and a great fireworks display. There were a lot of people there and we got to visit with a lot of them. The kids had so much fun getting wet and playing with all the kids. It was really nice of the Moffat's to plan and organize the whole event - Thanks Richard and Heather!!

We had such a great time this past weekend! We got to spend time with family & friends, enjoy some yummy food, stay up late, enjoy being outside, remember and give thanks for our freedoms, wear some Red, White & Blue and most of all show how proud we are to be American!!

Can you say "Competative?"

Last night was our Ward's Family PineWood Derby! It was a lot of fun, and two of our cars made it into the final four...this was not quite what Paul was hoping for, but I think it was great! Paul spent the 3 days prior to the PineWood derby making sure our family had a good showing in the race! We took on making four cars - One for Paul, one for Me, one for Carson and one for Kelsi and Jaedyn to share.
We started out by defining our car's shape, then painting the cars. We also got to name our cars: Pauls car was named "Blue", my car was name "Its a girl thing", Carson of course had to paint his car orange and name it "Lightning" and Kelsi & Jaedyn named their car "Jadie Bug-ie"- it was decorated like a lady bug with anntena and all. It was so funny how each of our personalities came out in our cars!

After we got the cars painted, then Paul's competative side came out! He spent hours polishing the axels for the wheels...using three different grits of sandpaper and three different polishing chemicals. Paul then precisely weighted the cars using some bullets and even had to buy a scale to make sure he was under 5 ounces. He was so determined to beat out the competition, he even came home during his lunch hour the day of the race to make sure the cars were ready to go. He had heard from one of his co-workers that the more miles you put on your car before the race, the better it will do - so he rigged up a system to have the cars race on the treadmill to put some miles on them.

This was a really fun family project - we will have to start thinking ahead to next year because we know Shari Ott will be ready for us!