Fathers and Sons Overnight Campout

On the drive through the mountains to Current Creek, Cy says, "Roll up the windows! I hate the smell of nature!"

Getty rode horseback and ATV's, rappelled, and went canoeing. 

Cam went fishing with Rob and caught four fish.

Cy, the nature lover, played basketball in the ranch house garage for two days :)

Make-up with Mia

Admiring her lengthly list of things to do before the term ends, including attendance school for her 83 (eighty-three!) tardies....


She was voted to represent Lone Peak for Moral Strength, 2012-13.

Cousin Sarah came up with the awesome idea for the Evans' women to earn their Young Womanhood Personal Progress award by February 8th next year in Elle's honor. Mia and I had a contest to see who could get it done first—cash vs. 10 car washes, inside and out.

She won.

I'm getting there.

This is Mia doing something crazy and violent... rugby.

By the end of this particular game, she had split open the skin behind her ear, had a huge raspberry abrasion on her hip, a bloody knee, sore back, and pain shooting down her legs. Not to mention the meltdown in our car driving home....

Mia's not one to discriminate against any one brand—she'll take all sponsorship offers ;)

She choreographed a little "Stomp" for the rugby talent show fundraiser.

I was amazed to find out that our town's United rugby teams have coaches from all over the world: New Zealand, England, South Africa, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Australia. 

The main coach's father, who started rugby in Utah in the late 80's, concluded his remarks for the night by saying, "Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans. Rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen."

Random Mia Trivia:

She would text me every few days from school begging me to pick her up and take her out to lunch.

Wants to cheer for the Oregon Ducks with McKenzie.
Me: Why not cheer in Utah, so we can watch you?
MK: I could never cheer where people knew me!
(?) Must be a soccer image thing.

Me: Why U of O?
Mia: I love the rain.
(That's her whole answer.)

Mia wants to get a degree in criminology, so she can investigate homicides and gruesome crime scenes.

{Waaaaay back in October}: Sixteenth birthday at Grandma's.


Mia and Riley saw pocket-switched shirts like these on Pintrest and asked me to sew them. I haven't sewn in so long I had to get the manual out to figure out how to fill my bobbin....

I am seriously so proud of myself for pulling it off that it's embarrassing. I'm following Getty around the house, "Did you see those shirts I made?... Bet you want one, huh!...."

[Below] This is the former Abercrombie model we met at the mall whose job it was to stand shirtless in front of one of their California stores. I have since learned of the Abercrombie controversy. I'll have to think about donating my A&F sweatshirts to DI :)

School is out! The party begins...

The Heights and Depths

Last night I dreamt that I held Elle's dead body.

When I held her for the last time, she had thick tubes running to and from her body that were hooked up to bulky machines. When I dressed her body days later, she was wrapped in plastic to prevent fluids from staining her clothes. Mia was with me and wishing she weren't. I wanted to hold Elle but felt prevented from doing it. It was my last chance, and I didn't take it.

So, last night I dreamt that I held her dead body free of tubes and coverings for what seemed like hours. Sometimes she would say something or move around. I knew she was dead, but I didn't want to bury her.

I've been reading about dreams. (Is this akin to astrology?
Oh well...)

If you dream of someone who has recently passed away, ... their death is still freshly in your mind. You are still trying to grasp the notion that he or she is really gone. You don't want to be alone.

To dream of your dead child is a way for you to keep your child alive through your dreams. For a parent to lose a child is extremely difficult. Such dreams occur because you still cannot accept or understand how or why your child was taken from you so soon.

The heights and depths of grief always surprise me. I don't write when I feel good, because it comes across as denial. And why wouldn't it? I can hardly believe myself that I can feel happy and live a life without her. But really, I was doing so well for several weeks. I felt like if I never got better than I was then for the rest of my life, I would be ok. Not great, but fine. I couldn't have said that during the first year or so. Staying in that state would have compromised me—made me less of who I was meant to be. But, the last several weeks I had felt hope and more acceptance of our new situation. 

Even as I typed that word, acceptance, the tears started flowing again. Memorial Day was the trigger this time for sliding me down the grief slope once more. I couldn't stem the tide at Target when I heard a little girl singing a made-up song in her mom's shopping cart. A few days ago I took down the pink striped shower curtain that had hung in the kids' bathroom. Little by little the evidences of having a little girl are disappearing from our lives. No matter how much I cry or how I long to hold her, she's not coming back here.

But the fact that I consistently felt ok for about a month and a half means I will feel that way again. And I'll keep getting better. Even in the depths, I now have a greater capacity to bear up under it.

And that gives me hope.

Memorial Day

Rob took us out to dinner at Chilis, where we spent over an hour waiting for our food...

Still, better than having to make it and clean it all up :)

I thought I recognized a lady I'd had lunch with months ago through a mutual friend who had lost her toddler son in a similar accident to Elle's. Memorial Day was tougher than I had expected, and I wondered if it might do any good for her to not feel alone on this day. I walked around the restaurant til I found the lady, but I wasn't sure it was her, so I started back to our table. Then I remembered something.

"The most important virtue is courage, because you cannot practice any other virtue consistently without courage"
(—Maya Angelou). I turned around.

It was her. We hugged and cried, then hugged again.

She knows.

I know.

Getty's "come hither" look (and bike crash shrapnel. Why do I let him out of the house?)

(MK met us later at Elle's gravesite.)

The weather was gorgeous. I felt like spending the whole day just sitting near Elle's grave watching for all the relatives of people buried in the cemetery, knowing we all have loss in common.

I recently found a friend's 2-year-old daughter's grave just up the hill from Elle. The little girl had drowned in their hot tub. The engraving on the back of her headstone made me heartsick.

The boys went up to the very top of the hill and found graves as old as 1811. Whoa. I thought Utah was pretty much uncharted land when the pioneers arrived in 1847.
How many pioneers buried children along the way?

The kids are doing so well. I can tell they have worked through some of their grief, maybe the worst part of it.
I sure hope so.

Catch-up with Cam

Cam told our friend Emily recently, "I'm doing good! ... actually, I'm doing GREAT!"

Cam's word choices make me laugh.
Eating butterscotch pudding, he said, "Isn't this delightful!"

He told Rob he wasn't excited to go back to school after the weekend, but on second thought he said, "Well, I guess I'll get to see my classmates." Classmates? i love him.

Last week, he asked for a hummingbird feeder.


He wants to play the harp, draws "nature" and pandas, in soccer games doesn't want to take the ball away from anyone because it isn't polite... who is this kid? And why are we so lucky to have him?


A few months ago, he said out of the blue, "A lot has changed since Elle died. I'm scared. Bored. Really want to play with friends."

He still wants to be at least on the same floor of the house with someone since Elle's death. He's mentioned a few times how "Elle was just walking along being so happy... and then she died."

More recently I asked him, "Elle, your kindergarten teacher, and now Grandma have died—are you feeling like more people in your life will die soon?" His answer surprised me.

"I feel like I'm going to die."

He went on to explain, "...because I'm the youngest now."

We had a long talk about the natural order of things.

He often rolls himself up in a blanket so you can't see any part of him and just lays there.

He draws a lot and plays pretend.

Cam was pretty excited to find this gnome hiding in our porch geraniums. (Bet he was thinking "how delightful!")

I love how he's crossing his legs. Our prof is an old soul.

Aunt Britt and cousins Emma and Avery have had Cam over for Cama-lama-Wednesdays, where they did cool stuff like make clouds...

Hang at "dizzy" park...

Visit the aquarium...

... and make slime, ghosts, and maracas.

Cam also got to go with Griff and Si's family to City Creek and have parties and make crafts.

Si's got an Elle bear, too, made of the matching dresses she and Elle wore.

Vampire Cam and Griff Dracula

Scary movie night?

St. Patty's rainbow

Hide-and-seek in the closet.

As I write, Cam is taking a tubby, one of maybe three since Elle's accident 16 months ago. Tubbies with Elle were a daily before then. As he climbed in he said, "Baths always remind me of Elle." He's singing to himself and playing with bath toys. M&M and Cy are running around the kitchen laughing, making smoothies, and generally making a ruckus with Justin Bieber's "Die in Your Arms" playing loudly in the background.

One night I sat up til early morning hours looking through Elle's book. When I looked through the sections of each of the kids with her, it was obvious they had since lost part of their identity. Each of them loved playing the part of big sister or big brother to her. They were protective, patient, affectionate, showed her how to do things, and played with her on her level. I also realized they didn't necessarily play that role with anyone else, even though all but Cam had other younger siblings. We all talked about it, and I've noticed the kids making an effort to take on those roles again.

Progress and adjustments.
I, for one, am glad to have a little one who still enjoys a good tubby.