Lake Powell

We went to Lake Powell at the beginning of September! We had a fantastic time! Thanks to my fabulous sister-in-law Lindsay and her family we got to go! Heaven on Earth! That is exactly what it is. We all had a blast. Here are a few highlights!

Will and his cousin Lucy were best buds on this trip.

They had a great time playing together!

Nathan on the wake board!
I got up on 1 ski for the first time! It felt so great! I finally did it!

John is a fish! He loved the water. He'd float in the water with his life jacket on for hours. He loved the slide on the back of the house boat.

John on the last day of the trip got really brave and decided to go head first down the slide and take a 6 foot drop before entering the water. He surprised us all and did this without any coaxing on anyone's part. This video is when we asked him to do it again.

Thanks so much Morgan and Lindsay and the Moeller family for a fantastic trip!

John...the Grand Prize Reading Winner

So after really focusing this summer on reading we had a great surprise happen. When we finished the Library's summer reading program we entered into a drawing. And guess who won! John! It was amazing! John and I were jumping up and down when they told us over the phone! It was a huge, huge prize. There were only two winners for the library. John's bucket is FULL of books, movies, and activities. How exciting! I guess all the summer reading really paid off this year!

Evershed Family Photos

We RJ and Natalie getting married the Eversheds decided to get family photos taken. We truly are so blessed to have such a great family! These are just the snapshot photos taken on our personally camera. I'm excited to get the professional ones back!

The Original Evershed Clan

The 13 Grandchildren

Will & John: Best Brothers

JoJo and John: Best Buds

(7 weeks apart in age)

Roger and Paula: The ones who started it all

Natalie and R.J. - the newlyweds

Jordan, Sarah & Baby Rhett

My family

Morgan (Nathan's twin bro), Lindsay, Lucy, & Kate

Ryan, Natalie, Bryon, Alyssa, and Chloe

Brandon

Justin, Laura, JR, Rebekah, Emma, JoJo, and Grace


That's everyone! It's so rare to have everyone together and very special.

Will's 3rd Birthday!

Will's 3rd Birthday party was a lot of fun! Cousins, Aunts, and Grandparents from both sides of the family joined our family in wishing Will a happy birthday! We went bowling all together. Will was just so excited about everything!

He got a new helmet and instantly tried it on!

His Aunt Amy was his special buddy that night!

8 Happy Years

Happy Anniversary to my True Love!

August 1, 2001


June 27, 2009 (My 10 year High School Reunion)

It's true what they said 8 years ago, Our love just continues to grow! I love you even more now! Thanks for being my best friend and for always making me laugh...even when I don't want to.

You bring joy and excitement to my life. And I always love dreaming with you!

I love you to infinite and beyond!

Thanks for getting on the freeway with me all those years ago!

A summer of reading

I haven't posted in what feels like forever. This summer my goal with my kids has been to really focus on reading. We have been doing the various summer reading programs at the library and through the governor's office, as well as our own. We get extra rewards for not missing a day. I've been amazed at how much I've seen improvement in John's reading skills.

I thought I'd share some of our favorite books for children. BOB books are one of my favorite beginning readers series. My friend Nancy introduced them to me and they have been so great for John.

Teach your child to read in One Easy Lessons was a book we used a while back that really helped me get the basics down on how to teach John to read. We didn't complete all the lessons but it got both John and I started in on the process.

The Magic Tree House is a chapter book series for beginning readers after they can read. While John isn't quite at this level, we've begun reading these books out loud to him. He really enjoys the plot and it holds his attention well. It's a great introduction to chapter books.

The first chapter book we read out loud to John was The Wizard of Oz. This is a fantastic book. While it is very similar to the movie there are some variations. This was a great book to read together.

I'm always interested in any ideas anyone has for reading or good books! If you have any of the above, please send them my way.

Spring Time

Tax Season is over and I can once again breathe! And I just love that Spring is here! Here are a few photos from the past couple of months.

John worked really hard at his chores to earn enough money to buy a new frog at the children's museum. John has had a frog called Babo (from my dear friend Maggie) that he has slept with since birth and now Babo has a new friend also named Babo. John had to work really hard and save his money for a few months to get this frog! That is really tough! I'm so proud of John for working so hard. And now John has 2 blankies and 2 Babos to sleep with every night!

One of the things John does to earn stickers and eventually money is read books to Will. Will also gets stickers for John reading to him. Here is a photo of the two of them reading books together.
We have absolutely loved going to the children's museum! We especially enjoy going with other friends. Here are some of John's friends from Preschool.

And here is John with his friend Katherine! I'm lucky enough that Katherine's Mom, Marsha is one of my best friends, and we get to chat for a couple of hours while our kids play.

Will continues to love cars and trains. Even when he is tired he continues to play with his cars on the tracks.

While outside Will enjoys lining up all the bikes, cars, and really anything with wheels. His favorite is the car!