Mommy & Evelyn's Weekend of Fun (with Daddy in Indiana)

For Dan's birthday, I surprised him with a plane ticket to Indianapolis to visit his family.  This weekend was his Mom and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary, and his brothers/sisters were throwing a party in their honor.  He decided to keep the trip a surprise from everyone but his brother, Mike, as well.  He left Corpus at about 5:30am on Saturday morning, landing him in Indy in the late morning.  Mike and Kendra picked him up at the airport and transported him to the party.

Brothers don't shake hands...brothers gotta hug!

While he was gone, Evelyn and I flew solo with a weekend of fun.  We started Saturday off with donuts at the donut shop, then - with help from a friend here - went and got Dan's car from the airport parking lot so we could surprise him by picking him up when he flew back in on Monday.

This was taken after naptime...and I see so much of myself in it, it's crazy!

I think my Mom even has a picture very similar to this in an album somewhere...

We read books...

And took pictures with Mommy's phone...

While Daddy spent time with cousin Micah watching videos of Evelyn...

We went to church on Sunday...

While Daddy played at the park with cousin Micah...

...and Uncle Mike...

On Sunday, I surprised Dan with one more surprise...tickets to the Pacers first playoff game against Atlanta!  He took his Dad to the game with him.

Here they are at Banker's Life Fieldhouse...

Evelyn and I cheered from Texas

We also played outside.  

Apparently when Mommy says, "Evelyn, don't climb in the sand table"...

It means climb in the sand table!

Evelyn and I missed Daddy a lot, but we had a fun weekend with just the girls.  I'm so glad that Dan was able to spend the time with his family and celebrate with his parents.  We surprised him on Monday evening by showing up at the airport to pick him up.  He nearly missed Evelyn running towards him because he wasn't expecting us!  I wish I had a video of that whole meeting...I was bawling.  I love to see the love between those two!

Hooks Game Fun

For the last couple of years, my boss has treated everyone in our department to a Hooks (minor league baseball) game as a thank you for our hard work over the year.  He rents out a private deck where we get all of our food/drinks paid for and get to sit and watch the game in fun rocking chairs.

Or...when you have an almost two-year old, you get to take it the other amusements of the ballpark.  Our ballpark is really great for kids - they have several playground type attractions, huge grass areas to run around in, and several older-kid kinds of things like rock-climbing walls and bungee jumps on the trampoline.  It's a great, family-friendly ballpark.  

This was the first time we had made it to a game this season, and it was fun to watch how much Evelyn has grown since last year.  Seeing her do things she never did last year with so much independence.  She was pretty much running around non-stop most of the night.

Playing on the castle set

This slide would have been more fun if the sun was behind her!

"I climbing!"

(one of her favorite things to do...which accounts for about 90% of the bruises you see on her legs in half our pictures!)

This game was a Friday night game, which means that there is a free fireworks show after the game.  It's actually a pretty legit show, and they do it for every Friday night game.  We figured we would play it by ear and see how Evelyn did.  We knew she would like it, but didn't want her melting down because it was late, either. 

This was during the last inning...waiting for the fireworks (and completely zoned out)

She did enjoy them once they came - except for the loud ones that just explode into a white ball that aren't really pretty, just loud.  She kept saying, "loud" "lights" "sky" "pretty" over and over.  I was pretty surprised that she made it so late (it was nearing 10pm)!  I was equally surprised that Dan made it that late because he was catching a super early flight the next morning that required him leaving our house around 3:30am.  A fun night, though!  Thankful for a boss who appreciates his faculty and staff!

Painting Feet

One of Evelyn's favorite things to do is paint.  Amber and I have quickly learned that the clean up is usually much easier when we just strip her down and let her paint naked (even though the paint is washable).  We both have done some cute projects with her that required painting the bottoms of her feet, then stamping them on the paper. 

She's now figured out how to do it herself...

And now my hands...

Toilet Paper Bandit in Training

We have been in the "toilet paper is fun" stage for a while, and tonight the toilet paper bandit struck again.  I was making dinner, during which she usually plays with her play kitchen that is basically in our kitchen, or plays in the living room.  I can see her from most of the places in our kitchen, but happened to be in the blind spots for too long tonight.

She came around the corner with a wad of toilet paper, so I went to see the damage (her recent favorite thing is to throw the roll into the toilet). 

Here's what I found...

Down the hall, around two corners, and into the kitchen.  Impressive.  Pretty sure there's close to a whole roll there.  Good job, kid.

Urology Update

We went to see Evelyn's urologist again this week to follow-up on her VCUR (urinary reflux).  She had to start the day with a renal ultrasound to look at her kidneys and the yucky lab where they inject dye into her bladder and watch to see if it refluxes into her kidneys.  I was able to be in the room during the ultrasound, but because the second lab requires x-rays to view the dye, I had to wait in the hallway (which is totally for the birds, by the way). 

Here's our little cutie waiting for the yucky lab - the best part of it was her favorite, Cinderella, on the wall.

I thought this test was awful last year, it was even worse this year because she was more aware of what was happening.  When it was over and they finally let me back in (after hearing my baby scream for over 45 minutes), I was bawling and scooped her up to hold her.  I didn't even care that she didn't have a diaper on and was probably going to pee dye on me.  The nurse had told us before we started that this is the worst age because once they inject the dye, they have to wait for her to urinate.  At this age, if they aren't potty trained especially, they tend to hold it in and can't understand when you tell them to pee.

We received partially good news from the urologist.  Her reflux has gotten better, but has not completely resolved itself, on one side in particular.  Dr. Smith-Harrison assures us that this is normal and it usually takes 3-5 years before the condition completely resolves.  We are still believing that God will heal her completely before then so she can come off of the maintenance antibiotic she has to take daily.  We go back in 18 months, when she will have to complete the two labs again.  Hopefully this next time will be a little smoother because she'll be potty trained and more able to pee on command!

My Work Life

These pretty much sum up my work life right now...

Easter Weekend

We had planned to go to the Easter Festival at our old church this morning for quite some time.  We've always been on the working end of it, so we were excited to take Evelyn and let her explore and enjoy it.  Unfortunately, it didn't quite go as planned.  There were so many people there (I've never seen it that crazy!), so everything had a line.  We got there just as the egg hunt for her age group was starting, but by the time we got into the building, it was done.  Fail #1.  So we took her over to the bounce house for the little toddlers.  Of course she loved this!

Jump!

She looks so serious here.

We tried to wait in line for a couple of things (cookie walk, petting zoo, snow cones), but she just wasn't having it.  The sun had come out by then, and she wasn't too fond of it beating down on her while she had to be held.  Fail #2.  So we figured we'd take her to McDonald's and let her play in the play place there while we ate some lunch.  Lunch was fine, but the play place was packed with big kids not really watching for little ones.  Fail #3.  So we took our crying little home and put her to bed (with no pluggie).

After naps, we went to Build A Bear - which was good, then let her run around at the mall play place for a while.  It was better than McDonald's, but still not grand.  At one point, three older kids trapped her in a tunnel while one of them growled in her face.  Poor Evelyn was trying to back away from him, but the other two had her trapped in.  Needless to say, I grabbed that kid and told him he needed to stop doing that to her.  Clearly his parents were not watching because he was being a bully in the first place, and no one said a word about me touching their kid.  Some parents amaze me.  I just want to smack them (with the love of Jesus, of course).

We came home for dinner, and Daddy thought it was a great night for a picnic (he was right).  So we ended the night on a good note!

This was the best shot we could get of all three of us!

On Sunday we went to church and had a sweet, sweet time in the Presence of the risen Jesus!  Our pastor gave an awesome sermon unlike any I had heard on an Easter previously.  I'm so used to the "yay - Jesus is risen, celebrate life" sermons (not to discount those!), but he took a forensic approach to the resurrection.  It's historical fact that Jesus lived and died, yet more than 2000 years later - despite countless people searching - His body is still not found here on earth.  Amazing!  I wish I had a link of the message to post here, but I can't find it on the website yet.  Anyway, Evelyn is so spoiled there as well, several of the young adults in the church made Easter baskets for the kids, which of course she loved.  Once we got home, we had our own Easter egg hunt and basket opening.

Playing with her new vanity (which will shortly be up in our bathroom so she can play with her makeup instead of wanting mine!)

Did you guys see this?!

The best family shot we got...

Hey, these eggs have chocolate in them!

Our little Easter princess!

Daddy helping Evelyn find all her eggs

She then piled them all up at the bottom of her slide and decided to go down the slide into them

Weeeee!!!

Finding more chocolate in the eggs

This little girl loves chocolate.  She's had it before, but today it was a whole new world of fun.  Twice we caught her getting into her basket to get some.  The first time, Dan was cleaning up after lunch and I was upstairs folding laundry.  I came down to get her to take her upstairs for a nap, and found a trail of Hershey's kiss wrappers from the stairs to her (3 of them) and a little girl with a face full of chocolate grinning from ear to ear.  I napped while she did, and Dan came to wake me up, leaving her downstairs for about 30 seconds, during which time she found her basket with the candy on the ledge and got another piece.

She's definitely my daughter... (and my Mom's granddaughter...)

We had dinner at some friends' house.  They had some glow-in-the-dark eggs and glow sticks, so we had one more egg hunt as it got dark.  While we were waiting for it to get darker, it was fun with bubbles time.

Evelyn LOVES bubbles - she was laughing and squealing for a good 10 minutes here

Bubbles!

Got one in the face!

Waiting inside while the Dad's hid the eggs

The hunt is on!

By now, she had figured out that all of the eggs had candy in them, so she had to open every one to see!

Such a fun day.  So many people told us that holidays are so much better with kids - and it's totally true.  I'm so glad that Sunday redeemed the failure that was Saturday.  I guess that's kind of parallel to what the disciples probably felt 2000+ years ago.  I'm sure they felt like things just couldn't go their way on Saturday, only to be confronted with the reality of a risen Jesus on Sunday!