Wheels on the bus

Evy has just recently started to enjoy nursery at church on Sunday.  She has learned all the songs and sings along.  I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a good video of her singing a few of the verses of "The Wheels on the Bus." She was more interested in looking at the camera I was holding than performing.  Ha ha.

Recital Day

 This week Alan and I (and Evy) attended Maggie's little mini-recital for her ballet class.  She was so, so cute!  She LOVES ballet.  She also loved wearing a fancy skirt for her in-class Christmas performance.

Stretching

So serious

Pointing and flexing their toes.  Maggie is on the far right.

Her whole class--I think a couple girls are missing.  They are all 4-year-olds and a couple 5-year-olds, so you can see Maggie is a little tall for her age.

This is her ballet tooth fairy dance they do almost every week:

Maggie is doing grand battements across the floor (you can see that Maggie's ballet teacher is literally 9 months pregnant in this video):

Doing posses across the floor:

1st Christmas dance--"Santa, bring my brother a big old box of rocks"

2nd Christmas dance--the "reindeer dance"

Not sure yet if Maggie has inherited her mother's (and grandmother's) talent for ballet.  Ha ha.  For some reason she never really learned this second dance very well and is a few seconds behind the other girls, as you can see.  :)

This is Maggie's gingerbread house she made at preschool this morning.  I wanted to snap a picture before she started nibbling on it.

Anniversary Trip

In November, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.  We decided to go on a trip to San Jose, CA and visit some of the same places we visited there 10 years ago on our honeymoon!

We left Jared and Maggie in the wonderful care of their grandparents, and we decided to take Evelyn with us (since I couldn't bear to leave her for a whole week--and also to make things easier for our babysitters).  Evy was an angel for almost the whole trip (except for one particular night when we slept in San Francisco and also on our late flight back home--she was exhausted), and we do not regret taking her at all.  :)

Evy loved riding on the "pane" and drinking the apple "doose" provided

 The first evening we ate at a bakery at Santana Row in San Jose.  It is a lovely outdoor mall that was all decked out in Christmas decorations.  (No picture)

We were so lucky to stay with Alan's grandma in her beautiful house.  She is getting a bit old and having some health problems, so we were REALLY lucky to spend this time with her.  We spent all evenings and nights with her (except one), and we also had a delicious ham dinner ordered from Mimi's Cafe with her on Thankgiving Day.

Evy and "Baga GG" (Grandma GG--for Great Grandma) all decked out before we went to church

 Alan lived with his grandma and grandpa for just over a year when he was a little boy, so he has lots of wonderful memories in this beautiful house.  (Oh, I need to add that the weather was between 65 and 72 every day we were there.  Beautiful!)

We spent a day and a half in San Francisco.  We had an amazing dinner and spent the night with one of Alan's old mission companions and his wife, David and Cheyanne.  They live right in the heart of the city in such a cute apartment.  They are literally just minutes from most of the famous landmarks in San Francisco that we wanted to see!  Alan and David really enjoyed reminiscing about their missions, and I loved hearing what Cheyanne does with her 2 children in the city every day.

This is a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the rooftop of David and Cheyanne's apartment building

(We couldn't get Evy to look at the camera)

We went to the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park.  I had been there before when I was 15, and I remembered them being pretty cute.  We went at a time when admission was free (bonus!)

You can't tell because of the morning sun, but I am on top of this very steep bridge

Alan is on it now

So pretty!

 Of course we went to Ghirardelli Square and at a very over-priced but delicious brownie sundae.

Alan in front of the chocolate churning machines

Can you see the "Ghirardelli" sign in the background of this selfie?

 We at lunch at a sandwich shop in Little Italy, and then the last thing we did in San Francisco was take the cruise and tour to Alcatraz Island.  I had been there once before as a teenager, but this was Alan's first time, and I certainly appreciated it more now than I did before.

In front of our little boat

View of Golden Gate Bridge from the cruise ship

View of Alcatraz

Alan in front of a cell with the headphones for his audio tour.  (I still can't believe what an angel Evy was on this long tour!)

View of San Francisco from Alcatraz Island

This is the only decent picture we have of the two of us together on the whole trip.  :)

One day on our trip we went to Santa Cruz.  Of course we had to go to the Mystery Spot.  We went there 10 years ago, and Alan especially loves it.  It's this weird place where optical illusions make gravity and height seem all messed up, and it's definitely worth the price of admission!

Looks like he's hanging at an angle!

Our tour guide took this picture of me leaning off the table!

Alan and Evy in front of the leaning cabin

Selfie on the Santa Cruz Wharf.  Alan ate some yummy clam chowder.

Evy loved looking at the yucky seagulls and sea lions on the wharf

We also visited Alan's cousin Jordan and his wife Miranda for an afternoon, as well as my Aunt Voni and Uncle Len for an afternoon.  I was so silly to not get any pictures of them!  We were having too much fun visiting that I didn't want to interrupt to take pictures, I guess.

This trip was a wonderful way to celebrate our 10 years together!  We were also able to eat at a couple of romantic restaurants--some of the same places we ate together 10 years ago.  Yay for us!  It was also nice to have a break from "mothering" Jared and Maggie, and I was so grateful that I didn't have to worry about them.  They had a wonderful time with their grandmas, grandpa, and aunts and uncles and cousins.

How many horizontal lines are in the letter E?

When Maggie brings home her papers from preschool, I see a varying number of lines each time.  It is so funny:

Evelyn has loved to carry around her own pumpkin all season long.  What a cutie she is!

She is talking so well now.  She seriously learns new words every day.  She says everyone's names in our family, tons of animals and the sounds they make, all the Sesame Street characters (Alan loves it when she talks about "Ernie and Burp"), plus dozens and dozens of other words.

Family Pictures, cont.

Evelyn cried every time we tried to take a picture of the whole family.  The rare times she wasn't sobbing, then one or both of the other kids looked bad.  Therefore, we did not get a SINGLE picture where everyone looked good.  Lame!  It was an extremely frustrating time.  

Soooo...Alan and I tried doing some photoshopping.  We have not tried it before, and we weren't using the official "photoshop" program.  Just some program called "Paint" on our computer.   I think sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.  Ha ha.  Here are our favorite three photos with their amateur fix-ups.  Which one do you like the best?

Pose number 1 original:

Photoshop attempt #1 of pose number 1:

Photoshop attempt #2 of pose number 1:

Pose number 2 original:

 Photoshop attempt of pose number 2:

Pose number 3 original:

Photoshop attempt of pose number 3:

Really, I feel my options were so limited to try and find a good photo.  What am I to do?

Family Pictures 2014

Recently my good friend took our family pictures.  Here are some of my favorites of the kids. Oh, how to decide???

I will post the pictures of the whole family in another post.  I will spare you all the outtakes (although some of them are quite hilarious.)