It's Begining to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We have been busy the last few weeks with a lot of fun activities to get us ready for Christmas! I have been so excited to have Makayla celebrate with us for her very first Christmas!

Makayla had to wear some very festive clothes. This one said, "Dear Santa, I've been good. Get Busy!" Our little punkins certainly has been good this year. She is really the best baby ever!

 Makayla helped us by setting up our Christmas tree.

 She wasn't too interested at first, but now that she has figured out that the ornaments can come off, she has been playing with it every chance she gets. We had to move all the ornaments off the bottom layer of the tree so she couldn't get to them.

 Our headless doll decoration showed up again. Tyler and Makayla were very excited to put it back on the tree.

 And this is our tree finally done.

 We have also done some other fun things to get ready for Chirstmas. We went to Zoo Lights at Hogle Zoo. It was freezing, but we bundled Makayla up so much that she couldn't move.

 The zoo lights were really fun. Most of the animals were put away for the night, but we did get to see the tigers playing for a while.

Here's the whole group that went with us

 After a few hours, Kayla was ready for bed. She fell asleep a few minutes into our drive home.

 We went to a fundraiser for a family friend and they had Santa there. He looks so believable, doesn't he? Kayla was terrified of him.

 But Carson and Colton seemed to have fun.

 We had a date night and went to see Kurt Bestor. The concert was really good and Terry and Tammy waited in line after the concert to meet him.

 The last two years we had the whole family down to Richfield for the light parade, but since we moved back up here, we still wanted to continue the tradition of ginger bread houses. So last night we had Tyler's family over for lasagna and ginger bread houses. A few of the family members had the flu and couldn't make it, but we still had fun. And, the kids got their new Christmas jammies.

 This is the best picture I could get of all the kids in their new jammies.

 Everyone was hard at work to make their house

 Kayla tried to help us for a little bit, but got bored.

 So she played in her tupperware drawer the rest of the night.

 Here's our finished house.

I can't believe Christmas is almost here! One week from today... and the best part is our fun is just beginning!

Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!

Love, The Evans Family

Tyler, Kristen, Makayla, and Baby Boy

(Due in April 2012)

Messes

The only way to sum up our little girl at 10 months is that she loves to make messes! It is so hard to get mad at her when she is so cute at making them. Here's a few of her recent discoveries...

Makayla loves the tupper ware lid drawer. She pulls all the lids out then leaves to find another mess to make.

 One day she found our junk mail cupboard and pulled all the paper out of it. She was very proud.

 That same day she discovered that toilet paper can come off the roll

 Pulling all the diapers off her changing table is another of Kayla's favorite things to do.

 She is obsessed with our new shutters. She loves to pull on them and try to open and close them. We tell her no, which she understands, but then she just gives us this cheesy smile and goes back to playing with them.

 My favorite day was when Kayla got into my bathroom drawer and found a pad and tampon. She crawled all over the house with them and was having so much fun.

 She managed to open the tampon and was sucking on the string. I can't wait until she goes on her first date and we can pull out our blog book to show her date this story!

 Some days I feel like all I do is follow Kayla around and clean up her messes, but who can resist such a cute little explorer!

I made breakfast the other day and made Makayla her own plate.

 She had a baby sized pancake, bananas, and eggs. Most of it ended up every where but her mouth.

 A few more highlights from November:

• Makayla has been sick almost the whole month. First it was the flu, then it turned into a cold. I took her into the doctor last week and it turns out she had croup and an ear infection in her right ear. Even for being sick the whole month, she was so happy. Just night time was bad because her cough would keep her up.
• She is still the happiest baby. When ever we go to the store she loves to smile at all the people. Every one comments on how happy she is.
• Makayla is starting to "talk". Some of her favorite words include "da-da", "ma-ma" and "doh".
• Our new favorite nickname for Makayla is Kayla-Bugs.
• She loves to give her daddy kisses. Just this morning Tyler came in the room and she crawled over to him and gave him the biggest kiss. It's definitely a slobbery kiss, but we love them still.
• Makayla started at a new day care place. She seems to love it and our new baby sitter has her on a good schedule.
• Our little stinker is so close to walking. She can cruise on some of the furniture. We are in big trouble when she starts walking.
• She has a little piece of hair in the back that sticks straight up. No matter what I do to get it to lay down, it goes back up.
• In the mornings Makayla will drink her bottle in our bed. She still loves her blankie and likes to rub it on her cheek while she drinks her bottle.

We just love our little girl and can't believe how lucky we are to have her in our family!

Tyler's 60 Seconds of Fame

The Occie Evans Award was created by Tyler's great Grandpa back in the 1970's. It is awarded to the best female athlete at the University of Utah. They present the award at a football game and this year was Tyler's grandpa's year to present it. The award is named after William Occie Evans and Tyler's grandpa wanted all the William Evans' to be there. Here they are all lined up... William Reid, William Craig, and William Tyler.

William Evans #6 will be here in April, so hopefully he'll be able to present the award with them another year.

 The football game was crazy! I've never seen so much red

 Here are the boys waiting on the sideline to present the award.

 And walking out to the field... yes, I had to document every moment.

 Here they are presenting the award. They were on the big screen, and Tyler felt pretty famous for a good 60 seconds!

It was so cold during the game that we ended up leaving during half time and going to lunch. The day would have been perfect, but the Utes lost to Colorado. :( At least we had fun being there to present the award!

Oh BOY do we have a lot to be thankful for!

This Thanksgiving we have so much to be thankful for. First of all we found out a few days before Thanksgiving that we are having a baby BOY!!!

 This is a cute picture of his little feet! It is always amazing to see your baby on the ultrasound.

 We are so excited! I don't know if I can wait until April to meet my baby boy. Tyler has been so excited too. He keeps talking about how excited he is to play with all the fun boy toys... apparently Barbies and dolls are getting a little old! Here is my 5 months pregnant picture.

 We are also so thankful for our little Kayla-Bugs. She is so much fun and keeps us laughing. She is figuring out things and loves to explore and make messes. We couldn't ask for a better baby. She is always so happy. She never cries when she wakes up, she smiles at every person when we go to the store, and she loves to give her Daddy kisses. We are so thankful for our little Loveies!!

 And I'm especially thankful for Tyler. He is the best husband! He works so hard during the day and then comes home to help out around the house. I volunteered to have our family over to our house for Thanksgiving, and Tyler ended up making our ENTIRE Thanksgiving dinner this year. The night before he made the stuffing while I ran to the store, he stuffed the turkey Thanksgiving morning while I slept in and he made the mashed potatoes while I was showering. The turkey dinner was probably the best I have ever had! The turkey was perfectly cooked and moist! I think he can cook Thanksgiving dinner every year now.

 Check out that turkey!

And I'm so grateful for our families. We decided to start switching off holidays with families to make the day less crazy for us, so this year dinner was with my family. I have a great family! They are so much fun be around.

And I am so grateful for my in-laws. We weren't able to spend Thanksgiving with them this year because Terry and Craig went to Texas, but we are lucky enough to have them close by and there for us whenever we need them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scooby Dooby Flu

Happy Halloween! This year was Makayla's first Halloween, but it sure wasn't that much fun for her... I'll explain in a bit. But, we did do a lot of fun things to get us in the Halloween spirit. On Saturday we carved pumpkins with Tyler's family.

 The Jones fam working on their pumpkin

 And Grandpa Craig and Carson working on their pumpkin.

 Everyone hard at work.

 After we got some fun Halloween toys and candy.

 Monday (Halloween) I took Makayla to Tyler's work because they were having a little trick-or-treat party. It was fun, but Makayla was getting a little ornery. She was dressed as Scooby Dooby Doo, but about 3 different people called her a boy at Tyler's work, so we switched costumes later that night. One thing is for sure: Kayla HATES dressing up for Halloween. She screamed every time we tried to put the hood on her.

 But doesn't she just look like a real dog crawling around? We thought the costume was cute even if she didn't.

 This was our second costume for Kayla. this time she was Tigger, but Kayla didn't like being in that costume either.

 I think this was the only picture we managed to get of her smiling.

Kayla was just not herself the whole night. She was so clingy and cried at everything. My parents were supposed to stop by later that night to see her costume, but I ended up calling them at 7:30 and told them not to come over because I was putting her to bed early. Kayla was just dozing off and finishing her bottle when she threw up... all over me. We got her changed and into new pajamas and finally got her to sleep. A few hours later she woke up again and I was rocking her when she threw up again. We started to think she was sick with her first flu. We gave her a bath, put on her 3rd pair of pajamas that night, threw in a load of wash and hoped we would get some sleep. I felt so bad for her. It is the worst feeling to know that your little girl is sick and there is nothing you can do for her but hold her. :(

4 am rolls around and Makayla was up again crying. We put her in bed with us and gave her a bottle, thinking she was hungry. She ate about half of it and then threw up again... all over our bed. That was the second load of laundry we did that night. Poor thing!! Tyler decided to stay home from work and take care of her while I was at work.

Makayla started to feel better that day and was able to hold down her bottle. I got home around 1 and walked in to find Tyler curled up on the floor and Kayla crawling around playing with her toys. Yep, Tyler was sick. He threw up that night and then felt a lot better. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got it. The next night I was sick, but not with the flu, I had a sinus cold that I am still trying to get rid of. Now a week later, we are finally all better and we have a clean, Lysol-ed house!

Needless to say, this was not the best Halloween night for Kayla. Let's hope next year will be better for all of us!

Happy Halloween!