evan, lindsay, nina, elena and esther

As I was uploading these images I thought how it would be fun to leave it to the reader to decide how they fit together and what was the whole story behind them. Or I thought of making a mad lib style post with captions for each picture with fill in the blanks. It could be like this:


Nina was all dressed and ready for a ____ (adj) day of _____ (verb ending in ing). Her mom ____(past tense verb) on the living floor _____(ing verb) the moment.


Her _____ (adj) eyes sparkled with _____(feeling) catching the light ____(verb) into the basement apartment.


When without a warning, something changed! Nina decided she was not _______ (adj) about leaving to go ______(verb ending in ing) after all. Something about the way her ______(pl noun) fit was _____(verb ing) her. Her little clenched ______(pl noun) stuck to her sides and her once sparkling _____(pl nouns) formed narrow ______(pl noun).

You get the idea. haahaaaa Here are the rest of the pictures we took that day.







And here's what actually happened:

10:30 I (Lindsay) rent two pair snowshoes and 1 pair gaters. (hestitant to spend $26, we usually keep our entertainment budget down to like $10 a month, truly. Unless we're traveling somewhere)

11:00 Nina dons the tights. Then we're on the road for a day of snowshoeing!

11:30 Feeling adventerous we decide en route where we'll trek - Harriman State Park, near Mesa Falls, or Big Springs in Island Park. We choose the latter, Melissa having recommended it the day before.

1:00 We take the turn onto what is called "Big Springs Ave" (I've been to big springs many o summer during family reunions at island park), following the sign pointing down that road saying "to Big Springs". We notice the road is not very well plowed, heavy snow and a beautiful sight. Well, is there another road? Probably not.

1:30 The road conditions suddenly worsen as we descend from the tree shadowed road onto a huge open sunny meadow with snowmobiling tracks on either side of the road. 50 yards into the meadow, and just as Lindsay says "Do you think we might get stuck?" the car locks its own tires up and we slide a few feet into deeper soft snow.

2:00 The towels we found in the trunk are not helping us get unstuck. We bundle Nina up, put on our snowshoes and start hiking to find help. A passing snowmobiler tells us we will probably only get out with a cat. A cat! We find a promising construction site.

2:45 Nice construction workers attempt to pull us out with their trusty bobcat (pictured above). Before they can reach us they too are stuck.

3:30 They are unstuck with the help of a huge tractor from said construction site.

4:30 Evan arrives via snowmobile (thank you nice snowmobiler!) two miles down the road at the gas station to call a better-equipped tow truck. A deputy is the first to inform Evan that we have broken the law, driving on snowmobile-only terrain. He lets us go without the $800 fine and 90 days in jail. Turns out we were supposed to have taken the Big Springs LOOP Road (parallel to the one we took, and fully groomed)

5:00 The towing bobcat (bob cat number two) gets stuck in the meadow before it can pull us out. It pulls itself and then us out. I drive with napping Nina to the tow truck guy's place, read Jane Eyre in the car while Evan and other tow truck guy fills in the hazardous holes left in the meadow.

6:00 Evan arrives to the shop and we are charged $880 with a hasty explanation of services. We only have enough to pay half of the amount. Paul the tow truck man takes our video camera AND digital SLR as collateral (apparently the first wasn't enough) threatening mercilessly to impound us if we make him wait any longer. We drive back. Evan misses his 6:00 class.




It kind of felt like we were led into a trap, ya know? No warning signs or ANY signs marking a snowmobile only road. WELL, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Treking in the snow was fun! We stole a few pictures before our camera was stolen from us. It was a BEAUTIFUL and memorable day. As I'm sure my mom would say "The stupids strike again" (any of you familiar with the kids book series The Stupids ? ongoing family joke). The story has a happier ending. I went back to Paul's on yesterday to pay our debt and collect our belongings. Turns out that other people have complained to the city about Paul's iffy tow trucking business practices, just this weekend as well. He has no competition for like 30 miles. (we did find out that about $300 of our bill was completely unjustified) I fought the amount and he shaved off $180 from the total. So that made the total $700. Luckily our insurance is reimbursing us $500 of it. $226 for a 4 hour snowshoeing trip? To think I had been worried about spending $26!!! We're hoping that since the city of Island Park now knows our story that they'll put up signs marking the road as it should be to warn unknowing and less snow-savvy people.

Evan is soooooo busy. It can make life tricky. I'm at home with Nina mostly alone for all the blow-outs, new development changes and curve balls (today she learned what the word scratch means, and I was her test dummy), new teeth, meal after meal after meal, clean-up, bathtimes, her pooping in the bathtub times, story time, etc. Evan's also gone for the amazing moments when you realize she understands and has understood what you've been repeating to her day after day, or when she's dancing (like 10 times a day), or when she practices kissing on you, practices words (thank you, doggy, kaysi), or mimics you doing something that you thought was beyond her. There's barely enough time to catch each other up and I've had to learn to be a better communicator. It can be hard having less flexibility in terms of me-time. He's even on campus all day from 7 AM till 9:30 PM two days a week.

But then I stop and think about all that he DOES with his time. he is really productive. Amazingly productive.

There's a lot that Evan makes in his day to day graphic design work/school routine. Probably enough to fill almost two people's lives with work. (he works so hard) But in addition to that he's also a dad and a husband (and a friend, son, cousin, brother, ward member, etc)

Here's what else he has been making these days besides super creative and talented design:

Dutch babies (i'm eating it as I type!!)

Saturday night, he (and I) made letterpress Valentines (in the mail)

He wrote nice notes on a lot of them for our loved ones.

Awesome impressions of eagles and monkeys.

On Sunday Evan made chicken and dumplings. FROM SCRATCH. (he made the chicken stock and everything. He has a weekend cooking ritual. Mandated by me :)

Nina happy. She smiles and gasps, and laughs every time he walks in the door.






Music time on the couch

Great whale conversation. (one of our favorite newer pastimes hahaa )

Really good strawberry gingerade (his own invention. I crave it)

Time for things like reading the scriptures, praying with us, being a boy scout assistant scout master, temple attendance, monday family night time, being a good guy. The fact that he makes time for all these is nothing short of a miracle and blessing from God.

Me HAPPY. I've been reading Guns Germs and Steel and he lets me go on and on about it. It feels super good to be learning something I'm excited about, and to have someone to share it all with who can be excited about it too. He brought me donuts on Monday. On Valentines Day he shocked me with an anthropologie skirt that I LOVE and I'm pretty sure was beyond our gift budget allotment. He encourages my creativity in ways I never knew I had the capacity for. He does yoga with me in our living room some times. He lets me be a youngest child (fetches me a glass of water almost every night, puts lotion on my feet, lets me whine. I ask for waaay more than I should)

Am I bragging too much? Let me continue...

He's been making his boss soo happy. Evan's been blessed with regular steady freelance (is that an oxy moron?) from Orton Design in Utah. His boss is such a great guy, and communicates so well to Evan. I've compiled some exerpts from his boss' emails:

Jan 29th

hey evan,
just wanted you to know how much i appreciate your efforts the last couple of weeks. it has been such a relief to have you consistent and producing really good work. please take your wife out to a movie this weekend on me. see avitar 3-d if you havent yet. just send me the receipt or add it to your invoice.
thx again,
mark

Jan 27

cool. thanks evan. i think this is a solid direction to put in the mix.
thanks so much.

Jan 22

thx for stepping up your game, evan. you have become an asset.
mo

Jan 18

it looks great, evan. i sent it on to the client.
start on the ads in the morning.
thank you for being dependable and solid. what a great thing.
thx
mo

Jan 15

looks great, evan.
thank you for your work on this.

Jan 14

looks great, evan. right on brand. a couple of little things not even worth mentioning at this time.
thank you so much. i feel very comfortable where its going so far.


The encouragement has continued. I just haven't been stalking his email as much :)



Yes, I sometimes feel alone or that things can be lopsided for me. True, I can't WAIT for him to graduate and move on to a new stage (July!) with a different schedule. I admit I get antsy, feel snow-trapped in a basement in rexburg and can be a control freak. I've been waiting for Evan to remove a rag from the shower for a month now, and I feel irritated at myself that his scattered socks irritate me. But, really - I can't complain about changes and challenges I'm facing with momhood. How could I complain when I'm really not doing this alone? We're happy healthy and making the most of everything in the best way we can. It's not perfect, but in a way it is. It's ours.
I love you Evan


(besides, who wouldn't want to be joined at the hip with this munchkin?)

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye
from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems


I've had this poem sitting in my blog post drafts for over a month. As I watched this video featuring our prophet Thomas Monson I felt like it was time to share it:



I also highly recommend watching The Namesake. I happened to see this movie soon after I found the above poem. What a duo those two make! I haven't seen the unedited version so I don't know what to say of that. But what a beautiful film! What a virtue that is so needed! - kindness.