best day of her life?

Eva and I went to Jill's for Creative Wednesday this week, since she is off on her girls' weekend now. Marc needed my van, so we took his car, and it was hilarious to hear Eva say, "I've never been in Dad's car before!" (I hadn't thought of it, but it's true. It's not fun putting a carseat in the back of a two-door car.)

Amie's kids Jessica & James were over, as well as the 3 kids that live next door to Jill. That's a total of 8 kids! Fortunately, they spent most of the day outside playing in the water. I don't think Eva has ever spent so much consecutive time outside (about 5 hours, I think) -- and I know she has never gone so long without needing me! She was so thrilled to be playing with the big kids, and I could not have been happier with that setup. Once again, I was left wishing I had a Jessica at my house...

So what did Jill and I do with all that time? We had Cafe Rio tostadas for lunch. We got to talk to Amie for awhile when she came back from her lunch and going to the temple. I worked on birthday tags and birthday cards:


Jill wrote cards and framed these 3 amazing enlargements of her typewriter photos.

I keep trying to get her to sell some of her photos on Etsy. Care to join my campaign??

Jill made Eva a ring with a stone out of Model Magic. Eva then wanted us to compare rings.

Hooray for Creative ___day!!! (when did I get so many freckles?)

While we were at Jill's, Marc took the boys to meet up with his friend Tim. Marc and Tim were friends during their freshman year at BYU and hadn't seen each other since, although they have recently reconnected through phone and email. (Tim lives in California and is a CHiP!)

Tim's family was passing through Utah on their way to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, so they made plans to get together. Tim proposed taking the older kids and hiking to Timpanogos Cave, which was pretty cool because I don't think Marc would have ever ever done that on his own initiative (he's such a city boy), but it also ended up being a good experience.

Max said it was one of the hardest things he'd done in his life -- Lucas said it was definitely the hardest for him!

Doesn't Tim look too nice to be a police officer? He also has 2 boys and a girl, and their whole family came back to our house. We ordered pizza for everyone -- (news item: Lucas actually tried cheese pizza and decided that he loves it! Well, duh! What took you so long?!) -- and the adults talked while the kids had water balloon fights outside.

Hands down my favorite time of day.

you've gotta love this inadvertent photo op... -- I don't think he had any idea.

So, twice in one day, Eva got to play with a bunch of big kids. She was running around with them and was on top of the world. She even got to stay up until 9:30! I think it may have been the best day of her short little life.