Everyday Life

In the hopes that someday this blog will be more of a digital journal for generations to come I am going to try and post more often about everyday life. So if you are a regular reader sorry if I bore you to death.

Right now life around here is about finishing the den! We bought a new desk, unfortunately half way through building it Shawn realized the top had a crack in it. The company was very nice to ship out a replacement part though so we are just patiently waiting for it to arrive. For now it sits partially built in the corner of the room. We also made the trek out to Ikea this past weekend and found this great alternative to the usual office filing cabinet. I just love it! And the doors can even be covered with fabric once we have furniture to coordinate with it.

Isn't cool how it will hide all our files, paper and even boxes of video tapes! I need something to go on top though. We had originally pictured a window seat with the file drawers beneath it, but I like this better. Soon the den will be done and we can move onto painting the dining room! I'm so excited to be rid of all the orange in this house!!!

The Big 10!

My baby is 10 now! I'm not sure if that is the reason I went so over the top on her party this year or if it is because she chose a theme so close to both our hearts. Alice in Wonderland. It has always been a favorite of mine and I guess it kind of rubbed off on Athena at a very young age because she can quote the movie/book pretty much word for word. So, when she told me she wanted an Alice party this year my creative juices were flowing like crazy.
We decided a Mad Tea Party would be fun. I got inspired by the original illustrations for the invitations. There were several places online that could print something close to what we wanted but nothing was just right, so we made our own. Luckily her list was short so we just hand colored all of them to get just the right look.

One of the fun things about a Mad tea party is that nothing has to match, so I set out to find china and tea cups at all the thrift stores in the valley. So each girl had a different plate and tea cup. I also finally got to make use of all the mismatched silver utensils that belonged to my grandma that I haven't had the heart to let go of. I wanted to have something that sort of matched though to tie the table setting together. I found this great tutorial for napkin rings here. Then added a different colored paper flower I found at Michaels to each one. The funny thing is I think only two kids actually even took the napkin out of the ring and used it.

Athena wanted to have the little cakes that say EAT ME on them, but she also wanted to have a big birthday cake. So I came up with the idea of fun size candy bars as a compromise. We had a jar of these on the table and a few in each girls goodie bag along with the wax soda bottle with the Drink Me tag.

I found some fun decorations at the party store to hang from the light over the dining room table. Then just using a bunch of stuff I already owned, the thrift store china and some fresh flowers the table was ready. We served little sandwiches cut out in shapes like stars, circles and spades. There were chips, goldfish and pretzel rods. Olives, pickles and the candy jar. I just loved how it all came together. Every party should be a tea party in my opinion. I even snuck my little Cheshire Cat statue in front of Athena's place at the head of the table.

Athena made a bunch of silly signs to hang up around the house and in the courtyard leading up to the door. Just like the ones in the movie. Don't step on the momeraths, this way, that way, UP, yonder, mad hatter and then on the front door White Rabbit. They were so simple, just some craft foam in several colors and a marker. She wrote them in caps and lowercase haphazardly then cut them out in silly shapes.

The whole time I was working on the party I had the song in my head "we're painting the roses red" so I knew I had to do something with this but I just couldn't figure out what. I made a sign to hang on the back door leading out to the croquet game but it was missing something. Then just a couple of days before the party I was inspired by my very creative sister in law Natalie with this. So I was off to the dollar store for crepe paper. It took me a few tries but once I got the hang of it I was addicted to making these little roses. I needed to be able to glue mine to a sign though. So on the last round I just did a little twist of the two ends and then glued them both to the bottom of the rose so I could glue them to my sign. But this wasn't enough, I wanted more roses! But I wanted them bigger. I found that if I held two strips of crepe paper next to each other I could make them twice as big. So then as I was walking out to get the mail one day it came to me. On the day of her party Athena caught the cards painting the roses red.


Every party has to have games. And it just wouldn't be a proper Alice in Wonderland party without croquet. So my next quest took me accross the valley to a little party shop in Tempe for giant cards. Most of the girls had never played before, but all seemed to have a good time with it.

The other given is Pin the Grin on the Cheshire Cat. Athena and I painted ours to look like the Disney one because he has the best grin for the game. There were lots of giggles with this one. One of the girls even stuck hers on the door to the kitchen.


Then last but not least, we had to have the perfect cake. She didn't want the usual sheet cake with a few plastic critters stuck on the top so we decided to try out a local bakery this year, Baker Wee. She chose to do it in the colors of the Cheshire Cat. It was very delicious, and very cute. But based on the price, I really need to start trying my hand at fondant! I think I could have pulled it off, you know with all the spare time I had the day of the party.

Visiting Mickey

We are back from a wonderful vacation to Disneyland. Shawn's work has a yearly private party at Dsineyland, we have been once but it is usally right after Christmas and during school so we haven't made it back since the first time. This year it happened to fall on Athena's early realease day for the month and right before MLK weekend so we could make a real vacation out of it! The weather was wonderful, more like June most days. And we got to pretty much walk onto all the rides during the private party so that left plenty of time to do a bunch of things we never get around to doing. We went in Inoventions and Athena got to play in a band.
We rode the Mark Twain, and even made the kids sit through Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. We all tried out the shooting gallery (I didn't even know it was still there) We also managed to get Athena on the last two rides she was afraid of, Splash Mountain and Tower of Terror. I got to enjoy the best Monte Cristo ever made, and no visit is complete without having a soup bowl.

It was also a lot of fun for me that my kids got to see Captain EO. It is back for a tribute run for a while, I had such a flashback to my teenage years watching it. Then as we were walking out I said I wish they made a t-shirt like the one Michael wears. Guess what? They do! I just had to have it, the funny thing that Hailey noticed in one of the dark rides though is that it glows in the opposite way that his does.

I don't think we missed a single ride in all of Disneyland. I even rode Dumbo, which is something I haven't done since Hailey was old enough to take Athena on herself.

Over in California Adventure we went into the Redwood Wilderness Trail for the first time and had fun climbing, swinging and meeting a bear. We were all a little shocked at how fast the swinging gondolas swung on Mickey's fun wheel, but managed to survive the ride.

I have to say one of my favorite things about this trip was the new water show, World of Color. It was truly amazing, I recommend planning a trip this year just to see that! I will never need to stop in Vegas to see the fountains at the Bellagio again.

There was also a nighttime thing going on called ElecTRONica. They had the Hollywood Pictures back lot all decked out like TRON, complete with Flynn's arcade. There were a bunch of great authentic 80's video games in there. And the cases were amazing, we even saw one like ours. Wish we could find a TRON case that would be cool!

One day Athena got her face painted like a puppy. It was so hard to tell if she was smiling because of the face paint. She got pulled out of the audience to be in a show with the Incredibles and I couldn't tell if she was having a good time or not because the puppy mouth made her look sad the whole time.

It was a wonderful trip. I loved having Athena at an age, height, bravery level that we never had to split up. Yet her face would still light up at the sight of one of her favorite characters. I can't wait to go back after the new Ariel ride opens to check that out!

Happy New Year!

I really have been slacking at posting, the last one was in November. Things around here are going pretty well. We had a mostly nice holiday, part of it was a little surreal though. My mom came to visit and that was very fun, it has been a whole year since we last saw her. It was fun to have her here for Christmas. Here we all are being silly in our new Christmas jammies. We stayed in them all day on Christmas!
I think the girls had a nice Christmas with the big surprise being a trip to Disneyland in January! That was one of the best surprises we have ever had around here. Just to make sure the girls didn't find out I didn't tell anyone else about it so there was no chance of them overhearing a conversation about it. To back up a bit, the Newton's, Hailey and Jon all spent some time with us on Christmas Eve. They were all good sports too and let me get this picture.
Too bad my husband didn't realize his face was right behind my head! Oh well at least I got a picture this year of everyone that was here.

We also had lots of repairs scheduled for the week after Christmas. I'm sure you all remember the big hail storm we had this year. Well we got new garage doors, a roof and AC/heating unit out of it. So the roofers and the AC people were here on the same day, lots of noise going on. And in true Evans luck that night with only the paper down on the roof it rained, and rained, and rained some more. The next day it rained all day, even snowed just a few miles away from us! (no not "real" snow like we are used to, but as close as you can get here) The roof is all done now and there was only a very small leak over the garage so we lucked out on that one.

Another downside of last week was I had some surgery to remove some basal cell skin cancer. They tell me that if you are going to get skin cancer that's the best one to get, but I still didn't think it was very much fun. But I'm glad that it is all taken care of now and let this be a lesson to you all, WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!

Now the house is quiet with just me and Bubbles puttering around. Time to get back into the regular routine. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that 2011 is a wonderful year full happiness and success for you all.

Field Trips and Turkeys

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was fabulous, the food and company were both fantastic! Unfortunately I am usually too busy cooking to get the camera out, I did manage to get the kids playing Rock Band though.

I did take the camera on a recent field trip with Athena's class so enjoy a few shots from that instead.

Hope everyone has a great December getting ready for Christmas. We are staying home this year so we will miss all our Utah family and friends, unless you all want to come and enjoy some fantastic weather this year ;-)

All Things Fall

We had such a busy week leading up to Halloween. Along with all the usual weekly activities Athena had a scavenger hunt at school. They have been learning about maps and this was a fun activity to see how well they learned how to follow directions on a map. All of fourth grade was split up into groups of 5 and handed a map with directions to each stop. At each spot they would get a sticker or stamp to show they made it, then at the final stop the reward was popcicles! It was a lot of fun.

Then Athena was the recipent of student of the month on Friday! The look on her face when she walked in to the cafeteria was awesome! She was so surprised to see Shawn and I there, then just very excited knowing she was the one picked this month.

There was also a Fall Party on Friday. It's always fun to watch the kids relax and just interact with their friends for a bit once in a while.

Athena and I also got to spend Friday evening with our dance friends at opening night of 42nd Street at the Arizona Broadway Theater. Her dance teacher Jan let them use the studio to practice so they gave all the girls 2 tickets each! It was a lot of fun and a great show.

Then more tileing on Saturday, it's almost done!!! You can sort of see a sneak peek behind Athena with her pumpkin.

And of coarse we had lots of fun on Halloween. Shawn and Athena carved the pumpkin in the morning. (actually Shawn did most of it with his nifty dremmel but Athena was the foreman ;) She did actually dig out all the guts on her own this year though.


They went for a nice scene from A Nightmare Before Christmas this year. Shawn got a lot of compliments on it and one woman even took a picture!

After changing her mind several times this year Athena finally decided on Mother Nature for her costume. It was really fun for me to get to just be creative and not have to make a costume look like someone from a movie or TV. But, it being Athena she still wanted to be very girlie and elegant. So we found a dress pattern with long flowing sleeves that she was very excited about. She picked out the fabric and all the leaves and flowers herself. I wasn't real sure how the ivy she picked was going to look but she really wanted it. After it was all done I agreed that she made the right choice.

And as most of you probably know by now, I have this thing about matching the treat receptacle to the costume. This year it was actually Athena that came up with the idea to use the earth! She also did almost all the paper mache and painting all by herself. I think it turned out great, and was a great addition to the costume.

It was nice to have Hailey stop by and hang out with us on Halloween. I think Athena loved that she went out Trick-or-Treating with her!

Now for a few fabulous weeks of fall weather to just enjoy. I am on boycott of even thinking about Christmas shopping yet because I am so sick of stores trying to cram it down our throats earlier and earlier every year. I am however already craving that turkey! Happy Fall everyone!

Dancing at the Fair

We had a toasty but great day at the fair yesterday. We have managed to avoid the fair for nearly 20 years of marriage, but when your daughter has a chance to dance there you have to go. She did a great job dancing and we had a nice time after with Hailey too! We realized it was both kids first trip to a State Fair! So even though we were all sweating it was a lot of fun.



The highlight for Athena though was probably when she saw Ms. Champ in the audience. She had no idea she was coming to see her dance.

It was really hot in the tent behind the stage that the girls had to change in. At one point when she came back for a costume change she told me "I am so hot and sweaty, I don't know if I even want to stay at the fair!" When it was all done though she had changed her mind.

My goal for the day was to have fry bread. So after she danced we headed to the food carts. The girls all had fry bread, but Shawn was a little more adventurous and decided on the Krispy Kreame doughnut burger! He claims his heart only stopped twice. We also shared a deep fired Snickers, not impressed. And of course at the end of the day even though we had spent about $100 Athena was still a tad upsett aht she didn't leave with a giant, stuffed, crappy rip off of some cartoon character. What are you gonna do, it's not a day at the fair without a little disappointment right?