National Anthem

Derick was asked to sing the anthem at a volley ball game this past fall and we ended up missing hearing him sing because of a time mix up by me.  I was so upset because I wanted to be there.  He had people in tears because of how beautiful he sang.  I had one lady tell me that of all the years that she has heard the anthem she had never heard it sang so beautifully.  Well, he was given the opportunity to sing it again this past month at the Girls Varsity basketball game.  I am so proud of him.  He just sang it the way it should be sung.  Nothing fancy but purely beautiful with such feeling.

Kaitlin turns 12

Turning 12 is a big deal in our home.   Kaitlin has been looking forward to this day for a LONG time.  She is now old enough to go in to Young Womens and to the temple, AND she’s old enough to start wearing make-up.

Kaitlin had a few of her school friends over for a party where they played Just Dance on the Wii, Sang on the Karaoke machine, made their own pizzas and made A LOT of noise.  (In fact the doorbell sensor kept going off.  We ended up taking if off the wall and into a suitcase before it stopped ringing.)

When the kids turn 12 Grandma & Grandpa Evers take them on a little trip.  They went Las Vegas where they went to the Phantom of the Opera out to eat and then the next day Kaitlin was able to go to the Temple for the first time and do baptisms for the dead.  She had a blast!

Derick’s First Win!!!

Derick went out for wrestling this year at Delta.  He had mentioned that Coach Thomas had been trying to talk him in to wrestling during the previous school year.  He told Coach Thomas that he would if I would let him stay there at Delta this year.  I kept thinking “Are you kidding me Derick, you won’t try out for Delta football because you don’t think you can do it but you want to try out for DELTA WRESTLING”  “Do you have any idea what it means to wrestle for Delta??”  Derick has never wrestled before.   Not even messing around with his Dad, brother or Uncle. 

Wrestling season comes and we are still in Delta and Derick says he’s going to do it.  I’m still asking him, “Are you sure you want to wrestle?  You don’t really have to if you don’t want to!” 

Well he’s wrestling for Delta High School.  He is going to practices and working his rear end off.  If you don’t know anything about Delta Wrestling, they are serious about wrestling.  They work HARD!  Even the heavy weights, which Derick is, WORK HARD!  He goes to those practices every time and works his hardest.  Sometimes he works so hard that he is throwing up.  But he has never complained once and has never even talked about quitting.  In fact he loves it.  He loves the team and how they encourage him.  He loves the coaches and how they are tough on him but yet  he knows they love him and want him to do his best.

Derick received his first win which ended in pinning the guy yesterday at one of the biggest JV tournaments in Utah.  All of his hard work  finally paid off for him.  He still has a lot to learn as most of the wrestlers have been wrestling since they were little.  But we are so proud of him.  Their team ended up winning the tournament against 32 schools.  Derick place 6th.

New Years Party

This year for New Years Eve, we went up to Lori’s.   It was a blast.  Lot’s of fun playing games, laughing, laughing and more laughing and plenty of snacks.

Church Ball

Church Ball season has started at our house.  Tyler loves it, Derick not so much.  There team did a great job on their first game.  We shall see how the rest of the season goes.

Derick’s Christmas Tour at Temple Square

Happy Thanksgiving! 2011

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this year in Cedar City.  Everyone was there with the exception of Chad’s Family, but we were able to visit them via Web Cam.  Aunt Paige brought apples, cubed cheese, grapes and toothpicks for the kids to make turkeys.  That was lots of fun and yummy too!

The kids also went out to the shooting range and shot Clay Pigeons.  It was a blast but SUPER COLD!!!

This is cute little Ashdon wearing a Hand Me Down Dinosaur hat that Aunt Paige made Derick for his birthday when he turned three.  Isn’t it so cute?

Annie Get Your Gun!

Cool Cousins

We recently had a family photoshoot and this layout is from one of the snapshots that Lori took.   I just love the one  of all the boy cousins.  And we are really lucky if we can get a picture of Trav smiling so I had to include that one.

This is a layout that I did for our Family History challenge this month.  We were supposed to do a layout about our Birth.

Another layout from Kaitlin and my day at the Witch Festival at Gardner Village.

Derick and his Homecoming date, Jalice Losee.

Here’s a layout from a Speed Scrap that I did the other night.  It was super fun.

…worth it

I love our challenges at our new store.  This month for the journaling challenge we were challenged to write about something that was hard in our lives.  We tend to only “Blog/Scrap” about the fun times.  I’ve been wanting and needing to write about this hard time in my life so that my children and others who may need to read about it can know that we all have hard times.As long as I can remember I’ve suffered with anxiety. Although I didn’t know there was a name for it back then. I remember when I was little that my heart would beat so fast that I didn’t know what was wrong and then I couldn’t breathe. My parents took me to the emergency room several times with the Dr. sending us home telling them that everything was fine. I never felt very fine when that was happening to me. I never liked it when my parent would go away on dates because I was always nervous. One time we were over at some friends of ours while Mom and Dad were on a date and us kids decided to watch poltergeist I had watched it before with no problems but this time I couldn’t relax. I left the room to try and calm my heart and breathing down but I couldn’t so I went and asked my brother, Greg, if he would come sit with me, he did. He wasn’t mad or anything, he just came upstairs and we visited until I was able to relax. I was in my teenage years one time and my parents were going to go on an overnight date, I was so nervous about them leaving me that I begged them to take me with them. I told them that they wouldn’t even know that I was there and that I would sleep in the tub if they would just take me. They ended up not going. I hated that I had made them miss out on their time together because of me. I had a hard time being able to sleep at night. My Dad was really good at helping me relax. There were many times that I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I would go wake him up and we would go out into his wood shop and we would talk about all sorts of stuff. Dad would work on a wood project that he was making and we would just visit until I was relaxed enough to go back to bed. We would kneel by my bed and say a prayer together and off to bed again we’d go. Dad also sometimes worked shift work and I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I would call him in the middle of the night to talk. I prayed a lot! Not just my morning and night time prayers, but all day long sometimes. Praying that I would just be able to make it though my classes that day at school. Then I told my parents that I was going to go to college. I don’t think that they ever thought that I would be able to leave home. But through one of my Heavenly Father’s “tender mercies” I was able to go to college without any problems at all. I was able to get married to my sweetheart. I then lost the twins and had a little bout of anxiety but then was able to go on with life. I went through my tubal pregnancy amazingly fine also. After Derick was born and life-flighted, my OBGYN wrote me a prescription for a depression/anxiety pill because he didn’t want me to have post partum problems. I kept the prescription in my purse but never filled it because I was afraid of how it would make me feel. I thought that it would make me a different person with no feelings. I thought that I would feel one way in my head and act a different way on the outside. There goes my anxiety talking again. I did pretty good and then one day soon after, it hit me again. It was horrible. I didn’t like being home alone. I would be nervous fighting panic attacks all day long until Kirk would come home from school and work. We lived in a little house behind the best landlords of all time. I knew that if I got too nervous during the day that I could go visit Bonnie. The bad thing was that I was always afraid that what if I needed to get away and couldn’t handle the fear anymore and that if I were to call someone that they wouldn’t be home. Then what would I do. So I never called anyone because if I didn’t know whether or not they were home it was better. Then I got to the point that I couldn’t be by myself any more. So Kirk would take us around the corner every morning to his Mom’s who didn’t know there was a problem. She just thought that I was coming there to visit for the day. One day she asked me if I could do a favor for her and go and pick up my Father in Law at the airport. I had to tell her no. There was no way that I could get in the car and go anywhere. I couldn’t even get in the car and drive around the corner to her house let alone go somewhere where I might have a panic attack and not be able to do anything. I couldn’t imagine being stuck at a stoplight. After that happened, I finally broke down and told her what was going on. She was wonderful about it. She would take me with her while she taught a class at the institute and I would sit out in the hall with Derick until she was done. Pretty Pathetic I thought. I couldn’t handle staying for a full Sunday of church. We always blamed it on Derick that he needed to go. There were many a time that Kirk and I would “Try” to go grocery shopping and I would have to leave in the middle of shopping. Kirk was wonderful!!! He never made me feel bad. He would try to talk me through things. There were times, in my head, that I thought for sure that he would take Derick away and put me in a crazy house because sometime I really did think that I would go crazy. He never gave up on me through it all. Truly an amazing man. I then got to the point that I couldn’t sleep at night. I didn’t like waking up Kirk because I knew that he needed his sleep and have to go to work. So I would go get Derick out of bed. He was probably 1-2 years old, and I would put in a Disney movie and have him lay by me on the living room floor until I was able to relax enough to fall asleep. I didn’t like being alone and he would give me something to think about or look at. We found a councilor through the Church to see if that would help but I would end up coming home from there worse off because I was always trying to figure out what he wanted me to say. I didn’t do that for very long. I was getting worse. I got to the point that I was lucky if I would sleep 1 hour through the night. I wasn’t wanting to eat anything, I knew that I had to do something. I would read my scriptures, say my prayers, everything that I could think of to be closer to my Heavenly Father so that He would take the fear away from me. One night I was awake not sleeping again flipping through the channels when I stopped on one called “Attacking Anxiety” there were people on there talking about feeling the same way I was feeling. I was amazed that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. I went in and woke up Kirk and made him come out and watch it with me. There were a set of tapes you could order and Kirk told me to order them so at 3:30 am I picked up the phone and ordered them. While I was waiting for them to come, I called a Friend of mine’s Dad. He was a councilor. We talked about everything and He told me again about taking a prescription and I was able to talk to him about my fears of why I hadn’t taken it before. He calmed my fears and I knew that nothing could be worse than what I was feeling at the time. So I went and filled my prescription. I started taking them the same day that I received my tapes in the mail. I’ve never looked back since. Just knowing that there was a name for what I had and that there were ways that I could learn to cope with it was a miracle to me. I know that my Heavenly Father had me go through this for a reason. I have been able to help other that have suffered from anxiety also. I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. If I could help just one person deal with it like I did, it was all worth it.

October Layouts

Derick, had All State this month where he spent 3 days up in SLC at classes with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Director.  He had an amazing time with his classmates/friends up there.  We were able to go up on Saturday night and listen to them perform.  Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing was my favorite.  They sounded like a Heavenly chorus of Angels. 

Kaitlin and I went up North on Tuesday and went out to lunch and  to Gardner Village to their Witch Festival.  We had a great time walking around to all the different shops and looking at the fun Halloween decorations and witches.   Kaitlin wore her costume and fit right in dressed up like a witch too. Tyler and Kaitlin in 2003 at a FHE with friends carving pumpkins.

More Halloween Pics to come!!!

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?

September