Christmas time

It's hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone, and another year will be closing tomorrow! Wow, how time flies! We had a wonderful Christmas and I thought I would share just a few pics. For some reason, it put them on backward, so we will work our way back, I'm flexible. :-) For those of you who have seen "A Christmas Story", you will appreciate this first picture. I showed that movie to my boys for the first time on Christmas Eve day, and then when we were down at my parents house after Christmas eating some Cherry cheesecake for dessert, I look over and Cooper is snorting with his face in his plate, then he looks up and says "Momma's little piggy", and then snorts a few more times. Of coarse that is the part of the movie he would catch on to, what a silly boy!
Here is a family picture after church on the 26th. This is actually the only picture we have of us other than the hospital. Eliza wasn't looking at the camera, but oh well, at least it's documented that we are a family. :-)
Here's Daddy and Eliza- I LOVE this picture of Eliza! I swear she is the cutest thing I have ever seen!!! And I love her little Christmas dress that I was able to find on clearance for $6! So cute!

Mommy and Eliza

Here are the kids on Christmas morning in their new pajamas. They loved their jammies and wanted to stay in them all day long, so I let them.
After we opened presents and packed, we headed down to my parents house. We were on our way down to Parowan when TJ started complaining of a "stommy ache". There was a little backpack thing in the backseat so Matt told him to take the toys out of that and if he needed to throw up to do it in there. Well, it wasn't that long after that the I heard some not-so-appealing noises and I look back and TJ is totally barfing! He got some of it in the backpack, but then he put it down on the seat and it tipped over and dripped all over the seat/floor. It also got all over his pajamas, and I hadn't brought another pair for him, so we got to enjoy that lovely smell the rest of the way there, which luckily was only about 25 minutes (we did pull over and I tried to wipe up as much as possible with some wipes) and as soon as we got to my parent's house we had to strip him down and throw his PJ's and car seat cover in the wash and scrub down the van. What a way to spend Christmas evening. But he felt much better and we had a great visit down in Parowan. We feel blessed to have a wonderful Christmas. The kids loved all their gifts, and Matt and I both enjoyed a few surprises ourselves. I have been saying for a few weeks that I wanted to take violin lessons, so Matt totally shocked me and got me a beginner violin. I got him a bunch of UPS stuff, which he loved and we also got some pedestals for our washer and dryer and a cupboard for my laundry room too. Overall it was a fabulous Christmas.

Christmas letter

As we reflect over the last year, we have so much to be grateful for with lots of fun memories and new friends. The year started out with me (Valerie) finding out just 6 days into the year that we would have a new member of our family come September. So most of the year I was pregnant, but it was a pretty good pregnancy and I stayed active up to the end. I went to Girl’s camp and Youth Conference with the girls from our church, although I was 6 and 8 months along, respectively. In February I also found a clogging group here in Spanish Fork for adults and I was ELATED since I missed dancing so much. I absolutely loved it and was 5 months pregnant when we had our recital, but I performed anyway, and it was a blast. I also served as a county delegate for elections this year and that was a very new and very good experience. I spent my summer going to a lot of different parks with the boys and just loving being in our house - I finally have a window in my kitchen...a dream come true. :-)

Life for Matt is going great. Early in the year he and some of my brothers/bro-in-laws plus a few friends started a “Guy book club”, which he has really enjoyed so far. He spent a lot of hours this summer getting our yard ready and building a playground for the boys. He did a great job, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want to repeat that. He played softball again this summer/fall and they were the fall ball champions of their league. He hit a grand slam and was able to save the ball, so that was a big highlight for him. He turned the big 3-0 this year and I was actually able to succeed in throwing a surprise party for him, complete with a UPS cake. J He has really enjoyed working for Extra Space Storage the past two years, but come January he is finally getting the job of his dreams and will be working for Salesforce.com as a Senior Customer Success Manager. He will be working from home, which is a major bonus, so no more commuting 2-3 hours every day - hooray!!!

The boys are doing great and growing up so fast. TJ just turned 5 and Cooper will be 3 the end of March. TJ is in preschool and a music class, and this summer he also took swimming lessons and absolutely loved them. He loves to color, count (he holds the record at our dr’s office for 5 yr olds - 259), and spell. He is a great brother to Cooper most the time, and is such a great helper with Eliza, whom he just adores and loves to hold her all the time. He also takes after his mom and LOVES fun socks! We just love having him around. Cooper is BUSY and keeps us on our toes (with activities such as pulling the fire alarm at church), but he is such a fun member of our family. He has a great sense of humor and some of his most common words are “Just kidding”. He loves to make a joke and he keeps us laughing on a daily basis. He was great when Eliza was born and has never seemed the least bit jealous. Quite often I hear him telling her she’s so beautiful. What a lucky girl she is to have brothers like them.

The newest member of our family is Eliza Mirae Evans. She was born on Sept 8th at 1:23pm after just 2 hours of labor (start to finish) and weighed in at 6 lb 12 oz, my smallest baby by over a lb. We didn’t find out the gender this time, but both Matt and I thought it was a boy, so we were more than a little surprised when it came out a girl. She’s got the cutest, chunkiest cheeks and a smile to melt your heart. She is such a sweetheart and we all just love her to pieces.

As a family we became owners of a mini-van, which we named Maggie, grew a garden which produced a million tomatoes and Anaheim peppers and not much else, enjoyed a trip to Chicago in March to see family and old friends and enjoyed a family reunion with Valerie’s family in July. We kept up some of our old traditions, such as Pancake Tuesday and Pie day (March 14 = 3.14) and we started a few new ones, including a Root beer tasting contest, dance parties in the kitchen, and going to see the hot air balloons on July 4th. We are happy and feel sooo blessed, especially as we think of our Savior Jesus Christ and all that He did for us as we celebrate his birth! We hope you are all doing well and having the happiest of holidays.

Look at those cheeks!

I took some pics of Eliza as she was having some tummy time. Looks at those cheeks! Aren't they the most kissable things you've ever seen? It takes great restraint not to just sit and kiss her all day long. Man, I love this little girl!!!