Our garden was not super impressive this year. We had mini-corn, gigantic zucchinis, one pumpkin, a few tomatoes (most of them Trevor picked while they were still green) and several jalapenos (which I am not quite sure what to do with). At least we tried! And the kids had fun watching things grow, so we'll just call it a "learning experience". Trevor and Charlotte did LOVE the raw corn on the cob, and I often would find one half-eaten in creative places...

Friday, September 3, 2010
The Harvest
Posted by Stacey at 8:10 PM 3 comments
Labels: Fall, Syphi Family
Sunday, August 29, 2010
2010 Family Portraits
I posted these on Facebook, but never put them on my blog! Here is our family back in April. Trevor already looks like a different kid!





Posted by Stacey at 8:34 PM 7 comments
Labels: Syphi Family
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Off to First Grade

Scott is officially a first grader! He has been SO excited for SO long that is has been hard to wait for the big day. He woke up at 6:30am, early for him (and me) and got in the shower without any prompting from me. And at 8:20am, we were ready to go -- complete with helmet, scooter, lunch and Phineas and Ferb backpack.
Too bad the first 105+ degree day just happens to be today...
So after school, I didn't get many details. All he would tell me was that he had 3 recesses, and if he comes to school early, he can have a 4th... But he did say he really liked it, his teacher is nice, he made a new friend, and is excited to go back tomorrow. I guess that's all I can ask for!
Posted by Stacey at 10:32 AM 2 comments
Monday, August 16, 2010
First day of preschool (year #2)

Charlotte has been so excited to go back to Teacher Cathy's for preschool! I convinced her to wear a matching outfit this morning, but I'm guessing most outfits for the rest of the school year will be much more creative... My little girl is getting so big!
Posted by Stacey at 8:47 PM 6 comments
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Thinking ahead to Halloween
Scott told me today who he wants to be for Halloween...
John Henson (on the right), cohost of Wipeout
Maybe we could make it a family thing and Charlotte could be Jill Wagner and Trevor could be John Anderson. And Drew and I could dress up as the Big Balls, or maybe the Motivator...
Posted by Stacey at 1:55 PM 4 comments
Sunday, August 8, 2010
First sleepovers
July was a big month for Scott... He had his first sleepovers, one with a friend at our house and another at a friend's house. Both were successful! No middle of the night phone calls wanting to go home, like I did to my mom at my first sleepover... Here is a photo of Scott and Conner sacked out on the couch, and the evidence of their fun evening spread all around:
Posted by Stacey at 9:12 PM 1 comments
Monday, August 2, 2010
Maui followup -- another great reason to be an Evers
One other thing I forgot to add about our trip... Some of you have asked to be adopted into the Evers family once you learned about our Christmas CostCo tradition. If you haven't heard on this before, here's how it goes: All the men go to CostCo with my dad, and whatever they see that they want that is edible, goes into the cart. And Dad pays for it all in the end. Well, before the Maui trip, my dad took all the boys to WinCo, and anything they saw in the bins that they wanted, Dad bought. So he brought a LARGE, extremely heavy carry on that was loaded with Swedish fish, runts, gummy worms, chocolate covered banana chips, nasty Chinese trail mix (the stuff with rice crackers that reeks), smarties, etc...
Posted by Stacey at 8:50 PM 2 comments
Labels: Evers family, Vacation
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Maui 2010 Adventure
Seriously? No posts at ALL in the entire month of July? Yeah, it has been a pretty fun and crazy and exhausting month... So I'll begin with the highlight of the month:
MAUI! No, this guy wasn't the highlight, but I got your attention, right? And I did truly take this photo on the beach. Apparently this guy didn't realize he put on his wife's bikini bottom... Two different days, two different bikini bottoms. Given the MANY other people snapping photos, I'm sure he is highlighted on other blogs besides mine. Anywho...
My parents took our whole family to Maui, which includes their 3 children, 3 spouses and 6 grandkids. Oh, and 3 of those grandkids are around 16 months. Needless to say, we were a bit nervous about the flight, but it certainly wasn't a bad as it could have been. Thank you, melatonin. We were very brave and attempted a family photo, and here is the result. Not bad! Everyone is looking at the camera, and with a little Photoshop work, we may get smiles on the kids.
This trip was just a bit different from our first Evers Family Maui adventure, when the only kid was a 3-month-old Scott. During that trip, we did ALL the exciting tourist stuff and Scott just slept and ate (except for the return from the Road to Hana, when he screamed). So this time, our schedule was pool, eat, naps, pool, eat, shave ice, bedtime, repeat. A few times we substituted beach for pool, but for the most part, we just stuck around close to Kaanapali, which was fine with me! We had a fantastic time, as is evident in these photos:
Shave ice was a huge hit with everyone. We promised Scott the Big Mama size if he would eat flank steak for the first time. It worked! So if you are ever headed to Maui, go to Local Boy in Lahaina and order the Local Girl. Yum. I miss it already.
Charlotte definitely made great strides in the water and was VERY brave compared to swimming experiences in the past. She is still nowhere NEAR her cousin Elle, who swims like a fish, but at least she was excited to jump in the water! She even was happy to go play in the ocean (holding my hand, of course) and collect shells. That may have been her favorite part of the trip.
And Trevor thought the water was awesome! He spent a lot of time doing this:
One of our departures from the swim/eat/sleep cycle was a trip to the aquarium with Scott, Charlotte and Elle. They had lots of fun and were especially excited to see sharks. I love that the older cousins are getting to an age when we can take them all to cool places like the aquarium. Charlotte and Elle did not hesitate at all to touch a starfish or other little creatures. I would have placed money on Charlotte being too scared, so she shocked me.
Pretty much every night, we came home, put the babies in bed, the big people played a game while the cousins had movie night in bed. I can pretty much guarantee they were watching Barbie in a Mermaid (or Wormaid, if you are Elle) Tale when this picture was taken since we watched it about 3 dozen times during the week.
When the week was over, it was sad to come home and return back to reality. The flight with the 3 babies was definitely not as terrible as it could have been. Here is what our kiddos looked like at one point:
Jeff and fam went back to Arizona and Cindy and fam went back to New Hamster (as Charlotte calls it). I wish we could all live closer, but since that just isn't possible, I'll take these fun trips and time together whenever we can do it.
Posted by Stacey at 10:51 PM 10 comments
Labels: Evers family, Vacation
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Big Boy Weekend
Wow! A lot of big news events happened for the Syphi boys this weekend...
First, Trevor has his first haircut. It was hard, because he is my only child to have curls. And lots of them. And they were SOOO cute. But I was afraid that I would be the parent who thinks her child looks adorable, even when sporting an out-of-control over-grown baby mullet. So we had it all chopped off. Trevor did a decent job sitting during the cut, thanks mostly to the lollipop.
Second, it was a red-letter weekend for Scott. On Friday, he ate (drumroll, please) ........
A CHEESEBURGER!
AND LIKED IT!
This is huge.
I had to bribe him with a trip to Sunsplash, but we were planning to go there anyway when Uncle Jeff and Aunt D get here.
He desperately wants a Nintendo DS, which I agreed to get for him IF he eats 25 new foods, learns to ride his bike, and reads 30 minutes a day. With our Hawaii trip 3 weeks away and the pressure of earning the DS before the plane ride at the forefront of his mind, he has been very focused on reaching his goal. He has 12 new foods to go, and added feta cheese to the list today with NO force from me. It was cheese, so it wasn't very risky in his mind. And it liked it, too! So tonight we made a list of the remaining 11 foods to try. Included are corn dogs, nectarines, cottage cheese (cheese being the important word), tacos WITH meat, and his own personal suggestion - bleu cheese. I told him he didn't have to try bleu cheese since it smells like dead ants, but he is motivated...
And that leads me to the second requirement for the DS -- learning to ride his bike. I think I will just let this video to the talking:
Posted by Stacey at 10:05 PM 10 comments
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Big Preschool Show
Charlotte wrapped up her first year of preschool last week! Her little class did a show, and like I expected, she did NOT want to participate. But at least she stood... wait... at least she sat next to her classmates while the rest of them sang cute songs and did the alphabet. Very adorable. I would post the video, but there's not much to see if you are hoping for Charlotte to do anything. My mom reminds me frequently that I was the same way in preschool, and somehow I managed to turn out ok (sort of).
I've said it before, and it won't be the last time you'll read it -- We love Teacher Cathy! Can't wait for another year (and 2 more after that with Trevor)!
Posted by Stacey at 11:05 PM 1 comments
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I swore I would never...
...get a minivan. But now with 3 kids, I get it now now. We still drive the Pilot, but this video is enough to give me the final push to convert:
Posted by Stacey at 3:52 PM 9 comments
Labels: Funny
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
A Little Obsessed

Since his birthday, Scott has been a little obsessed with Super Mario Brothers Wii. Fortunately the 24/7 desire to do nothing but play Mario has subsided a bit in the past couple weeks. That's since I implemented a new rule that he has to earn time to play Wii by reading. If he reads 30 minutes one day, he can play Wii 30 minutes the next day. One of my more brilliant parenting moves. But I thought I would share the evidence of his obsession that he brought home from school a few weeks ago:
If you can't read it, Scott's sentence using the word "up":
I got a 1up on Super Mario Bros.
He did use the word 'up' correctly, so I guess he gets full credit.
Posted by Stacey at 11:01 AM 2 comments
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
What has gotten into me?
I am not naturally domestic... When I received a calling as "Homemaking" counselor at church (back in the day), my family and friends laughed. I am not crafty. My idea of making homemade bread is using the Rhodes frozen rolls. It even took me several attempts to figure out how to make those. If I have anything that needs to me hemmed, repaired, or otherwise mended with a needle and thread, I pass it off to Mom.
But for some reason, the past few weeks have brought out a new side in me...
For Charlotte's birthday party, I had the girls make cute frames to take home. And with Charlotte's thank you note, we included a picture of the girls to put in it. Scott was so disappointed he didn't get to make a frame that we had to go get more stuff for him to make his own. Frames are $1 at Michaels and we bought scrapbook stickers to decorate after paining. Go ahead and say it -- SHE'S CRAFTY! (Beastie Boys)
Then the other day, Charlotte brought a bread pan to me and asked to make bread. Why not? So I did, and it turned out pretty good for someone paranoid of yeast. The first loaf looked like this:
And the second one looked like this. Don't ask what happened. There is room for improvement, but I was very proud of my first attempt.
I tore out some boring bushes and Scott, Charlotte and I planted all these beautiful flowers.
Our garden is all planted and our seeds are starting to grow.
And I am now obsessed with the world of coupons! Thanks to my friends and some very helpful blogs I follow, I am saving a ton of money and my pantry, freezer and bathrooms are STOCKED! I know my stockpile would be put to shame by some of my friends, but I'm getting there! Anyone need body wash? I probably have 7 or 8 bottles that were all free. Same with Windex. It is fun game to play, and rewarding to get so much stuff for so little!
And if you are wondering what has gotten into me, no - I am not pregnant. There is no explanation for this madness, but I don't expect it to last forever.
Posted by Stacey at 8:58 PM 10 comments
Labels: Stacey