Happy Birthday Evan

Evan is also doing this Summer of Seals challenge. He is trying to shed some pounds and eating a lower carb diet. I'm not so good at that. I like my pasta and rice and love to make bread sticks. But I am still a nursing mom with a lot of growing children who need the carbs.

Or have I just convinced myself of that so I can continue with my unhealthy diet?

I have tried to prepare meals that are helpful to his goal. I still have the carbs but give him other things to choose from.

So what do you do for a low carb eater's birthday cake?

I googled "healthy birthday cake" and found a recipe. I asked evan about it and he said he would like that type of cake. It was a spice cake made with molasses and sugar free. It had wheat flour and apple sauce so no fat or sugar. I gave evan the option of a cheese cake and he said he would like the spice cake.

So I did. I thought the recipe called for a little too much cloves. But what do I know. I usually make cakes from a box. I'm sure whomever wrote the recipe knew exactly what they were doing. Right?

Not even close.



I also made cream cheese frosting using fat free cream cheese. Bad idea. That stuff was so runny and really didn't taste good.

Just decorate the cake and the taste won't matter. At least that was what I was hoping. I put a lot of effort into this cake, about as much as I put into the carefully decorated birthday. Ames for my children. I wanted this one to be special and one that evan could eat and would make him happy.

Well, evan blew out the candles and served us all up. I think each kid took one bite and suddenly decided they were full. Nobody finished their cake. Evan took a bite and said to me, "is this some kind of joke?"



Didn't do too well there. I guess the good part was that I was almost uncontrollably laughing the while time. No wonder evan questioned it being a joke.

It wasn't. I really did try. I wanted to make him a cake that he could eat. I think he got a good laugh. The kids enjoyed helping me decorate it.



And we did take lunch with store bought cupcakes and a bunch of balloons to evan at work. The kids were so excited. Evan was one special guy because he got Chipotle and nobody else did.


We tried to make his day special. Taneal was sure Evan wanted a fan to put in the garage for when he works out there. She was excited to watch him open it. We were wise and stapled the receipt onto the fan box just in case we bought the wrong kind. We don't know anything about boy fans. The other children had fun giving him his favorite candy, hot tamales.

Hopefully he had a special day.

Happy 38th birthday!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Random Pictures

This is the second to the last post about my trip. And this really isn't much about my trip other then I took a lot of pictures and these are some I really liked that really didn't have a theme. I really like how blue Camie's eyes were in this picture. This girl of mine is gorgeous!

Nathan is so cute and cuddly here. You can't tell by the picture just how wild and crazy and creative and playful he really is.

Spencer really enjoyed hanging on the branch of this tree outside the St. George Temple. Spencer is one that even when he is super happy or excited, he tries to hide his feelings with a straight face. But when he lets his emotions out, his whole body lights up. Just like in this picture.

And Gavin. If it will fit, he puts it in his mouth. I think it is a rock in this picture.

Cute little crawler. 9 months and full of energy, excitement, curiosity, and cuteness. Big personality in such a small little body.

Taneal checking out the Magnolia tree in the front of the St George Temple. She says that the one thing she remembers about this temple from when she was little, was this tree. And she wanted a picture out in front of it. Course the sun was shining so unbelievably bright and Evan was in a hurry to get out of the scortching sun, so I didn't really get a chance to take a good picture. This will suffice.

Taneal and Spencer.

My three girls.

Danielle and Gavin. That girl just knows how to have fun. And she adores her little baby brother.

This picture shows their personalities so well. Camie pretty and sensitive, Taneal playful and kind, and Danielle about as silly as they come.

Temple Square

One of the main things we wanted to do on our trip was visit Temple Square in Salt Lake City. And I am so very glad that we did.

We got to tour the new conference center. And what is so cool about that is now, when my children watch conference, they can say, "hey! I've been there. It is such a wonderful and beautiful place." It will hopefully make conference a little more dear to their hearts and maybe help encourage them to pay attention more. Maybe not, but I'm hoping.

Down one of the halls at the conference center are amazing pictures. I had my children pick out their favorite one and stand in front of it for me to get a picture. Spencer liked the picture of Abinadi.

Danielle like the picture of Alma baptizing at the waters of Mormon.

Taneal like this one, Nephi on the boat sailing towards the promised land with his family.

Camie liked the picture of Samuel the Laminite on the wall preaching repentance to the people.

This is a picture that I see in many church buildings. I was amazed at the size of it and wanted a picture with someone in it so you could really see it's size.

And Spencer was so excited to see the bust of a prophet who has the same name as him, Spencer W. Kimball. I didn't think about taking his picture in front of it, he did.

Aren't all children drawn to water and more specifically water fountains?  I really liked how they all looked bending over and touching the water. I imagine they weren't supposed to be doing it, but there weren't any signs posted. And I figured someone would let us know if we weren't supposed to. Nobody said anything and I made sure my kids didn't get out of hand. No splashing and nothing more than hands could get wet.

Camie. I sure love that girl.

Danielle and Spencer wanted their picture in front of this statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

My girls at the conference center.

And check out this picture. Isn't it awesome? It melts my heart and make me tear up.

And here is my lovely family with the conference center in the background.

And here they are with the Salt Lake Temple in the background. We had a sister missionary take a picture of all of us, but she cropped Gavin in the stroller out of it.

We also got to watch the film about Joseph Smith. I am so grateful to the man who restored the true gospel  of Jesus Christ to this earth. Who restored the keys of the priesthood in this latter-day.

Dinosaur Land

Vernal, Utah is a place I hold dear in my heart. We lived there for about a year and a half of which I spent two winters. Two very cold winters. Colder than I have ever been in my life. I moved to that place when Taneal was 2 and Camie had just turned one. I was lost. Didn't know how to entertain my children inside all day without going anywhere. I remember really struggling because there was NOTHING to do. Everything had to be indoors and the only indoors to go to was Walmart and my home. My appartment. Tiny. Small. Sure I could read books and scrapbook and all that kind of stuff, but not with two small children. I had to play and entertain them all day long.

After a few weeks I started going to the library for story time. I sat next to this lady and after a few minutes of small chit chat asked her, "What to people do here in Vernal in the winter?" And her response, "You come to my house."

So I did.

She saved me from the long Vernal winters. We started play groups, scrapbook groups that we held during the day so the kids could play, and we reached out to others who were feeling lost like I was. Those who were struggling with the bitter cold that didn't really allow children to be outdoors for very long.

I actually cried when I left Vernal. My Dad warned me before I moved there that I would develop relationships that I would treasure. And that really happened.

I hadn't been back to Vernal since I left, so when we were so close, I decided I wanted to show my children Vernal. The dinosaur bones. The small town. The special temple.

I knew it wouldn't mean nearly as much to them as it did to me. So maybe I really did it for me.

I got to see and stay with that friend that was so kind to me 8 years ago. The one who rescued me from the bitter cold winters of Vernal. She is still just as amazing as she was years ago.Very hospitable. She insisted we stay at her home. She even took Gavin for me so I could take a nap. The first nap and only nap I had on my entire trip!

We visited the dinosaur museum while we were in town.

The kiddos had a great time seeing the live size dinosaurs and all the bones.

The museum was having a dinosaur birthday party so they had games at the museum. It really was a lot of fun. They even had cake.

It was well worth the drive. Loved seeing friends and visiting the place I learned to love.

Family Reunion in Zions

This is the reason we took our trip to Utah. We met up with Evan's family at Zion's National Park near St. George, Utah. The weather was beautiful, the company fantastic, and the dirt, way too much.

We camped out at some camp grounds near the park. We were packed in quite close, but when you reserved 10 camp spots to hold somewhere around 75 people, it was great. We were in close proximity, but that meant lots of visiting, lots of cousins interacting, and lots and lots of fun. My kids didn't realize they had so many cousins. With 16 children in Evan's family, there are bound to be lots of cousins. Taneal's comments was, "I actually have GIRL cousins my age!" On my side of the family, all the cousins her age are boys.

We were camped about 50 yards from a swift moving river. We were the first ones to arrive at the camp by several hours, so we headed down to the river to cool off. We decided to form a dam around a shallow area as a boundary to keep the kids in. They couldn't go outside the shallow rock wall. They pretty much followed the rule and stayed legal. Until Uncle Robert snagged Taneal and Camie and took them river rafting. He commented that he had no idea my girls were so much fun and gutsy. Taneal and Camie said that that was some of the most fun they have ever had.

We took a few hikes into Zion's Park. Wow. That is one beautiful place. The walls of the mountains were spectacular. Taneal kept grabbing my phone and snapping pictures. It was fun. I just wish I had worn different shoes. The hike was a little difficult carrying Gavin and sporting flip flops. I don't know why I didn't realize we would be hiking.

This squirrel was a little too friendly. There were signs posted all over the place not to feed the animals. So what does Evan do? And that squirrel got so close to Nathan. Fortunately Nathan thought it was cool and didn't freak out.

Check out the deer in the background. Fun to see Danielle share that moment.

This is the bus that took us through the park. No air conditioning. I thought I was going to die when I heard that, but it actually wasn't too bad.

We went to the weeping rock, or I think that is what the name of it was. Basically water was dripping out of the rocks overhead, kind of in a cave, sort of. I have a picture of it.

 Uncle Trent. So fun to have him there, just wished Christi, his wife had come. I was so looking forward to hanging out with her!

Here is that weeping Rock picture I was telling you about.

Camie was filling up her spray bottle with water.

Taneal was just getting a drink. Don't know if it was safe to drink the water, but we didn't get sick?

Spencer was cold. It was on the side of chilly, probably around 75 degrees. This is a true born and raised southerner. Couldn't believe he was actually cold! The rest of the group was sweating their guts out!

Danielle and Breman playing together.

This is a picture of us back at camp. Did I mention there was a whole lot of us there? I think only 3 of the 16 kids were missing. And then you add spouses and children and wow!

Imagine feeding that group. They assigned all the meals to different families so that we only had to bring food for the one meal we were in charge of. Talk about a lot of food. But that family just prepared it like they were making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Like it was no big deal. The food was good. That is talent to be able to prepare that much food for so many people without it being a big deal.

Here is my little Spencer. It was quite a hike for him. He wanted to be carried after about a mile. Fortunately Rachel was willing to carry him. I would have but I had Gavin and Evan had Nathan.

Spencer taking a break.

Can't remember what they were doing there, but I'm sure it was fun.

Camie climbing a rock.

Danielle being her normal goofy self and Spencer actually cracking that smile he likes to suppress.

Daren and Shannon. We hadn't seen them in something like 5 years. Of course we hadn't seen a lot of the clan in about 5 or more years.

Nathan had had enough and slept in the stroller. When he is out, well, he is out. Recharging. Getting more energy. Gearing up for some active moments.

Camie and Grandma Black

And my crew with their Black grandparents. I love my last name. It can be so much fun.

Brandon

Uncle Lance, the youngest of the 16 children. You'd have to be relaxed to be the youngest of that many.

Miya.

We had a blast with cousins and Aunts and Uncles. There was a bit too much dirt for my liking. It was that kind of chalky dirt that blows in the wind and gets between your toes and feels like you are running your fingers down the chalk board. It was everywhere. The camping wasn't too bad because it cooled off at night. The kids loved being able to be around so many others their ages and to just play and have a great time. I think I am the only one that minded the dirt. And I can put up with a lot to be around good company.

Don't know what next year will hold. Hopefully we can make it to the reunion next year and get to know family even better.