Yesterday we celebrated Joshua's Gotcha Day. What's that you ask? Well, it's the anniversary of our finalizing his adoption. He was almost a year old when we finalized...he turns three next Tuesday!
We are so blessed that God chose our family for this amazing, exuberant beautiful baby boy!
Okay, so I was messing around in Snapfish tonight and found the share button. Since I've been such a bad blogger, here's our month of October in pictures. Includes crazy hair day at school, Tori's first field trip, some cheer pix, and Halloween. :-) Miss you all...
Click here to view photos
On June 20st we hosted mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary at our house. We had about 116 people over for a fabulous dinner, dancing and fun.
The slide show really says it all, photographers for the evening were Paul Regier and Tracy Williams...thanks guys.
There is one photo of mom singing Mr. Wonderful (a song sung originally by Peggy Lee) to dad. She first sang that to him when she was 16 and he was being installed as the president of something or another. Sixteen, can you believe it? And she sang it to him again, more than 50 years later!
It was truly an amazing night. Thanks mom and dad for being such an inspiration to us. We love you!
Okay this is a delayed post, but we've been crazy busy!
Say what you will about his choices later in life, his impact in the music world is phenomenal.
This past weekend end we kicked off the summer pool party fun with the Roths and Sassanos. Great fun, food and flips!
I think that summertime is a gift from God, allowing us much needed time to reconnect as a family and with friends. So often we kicked completed swamped during the school year that we put off staying connected with others.
This summer we are making a concerted effort to connect with YOU!
Party at the Alveys...(or maybe just with!) be there!
(photos by Karl Roth)
Last week I was getting ready for work, in fact, my car was already running, when Kevin informed me that he couldn't find Joshua. "What?" I said. "What do you mean?" "I can't find him," he said. So the four of us (we enlisted Lizzie and Tori to help) started searching the house. All of the doors leading outside were locked and he can't unlock those yet. So we knew he had to be in the house. We searched cupboards, drawers, the pantry, the laundry room, bathrooms, and closets to no avail. We could not find him. Finally, after about 5 frantic minutes of searching, Kevin found him. The back of our bedroom we have two closets, one for Kev and one for myself. Kevin's closet door has a lock on it. Yes, you guessed it. He locked himself in Kevin's closet. It took some persuading, but we managed to talk him into unlocking the door. Yes, the doorknob has now been fixed so he can no longer do that. The next night, Kev was at school late and I had to pick the kids up from babysitters, get them home, get Tori into her uniform and to her game within about 15 minutes. Time was tight and I wasn't messing around. As I was bent down tying Tori's cleats I felt Josh messing around behind me. He was chatting away and grabbing at the top of my waistband of my pants (in back). I just ignored him and continued to focus on Tori. When I finished with her, I went to quickly change myself. As I pulled off my pants I found what Josh was chatting about. He had put a live stink bug (good 'ol country living) down my pants. Yup, true story. Moral of the story…Josh will not be ignored! 
This past weekend was a whirlwind! We kicked it off Friday night with a Giant's win over the Dodgers (always a great way to start the weekend!). Saturday found us walking in the Flatlander's Parade in the Ranchos. We were invited to be part of four floats, (part of being involved in a small community!) but only managed to squeeze in two.
We celebrated Mother's Day a little early. On Saturday, we attended a mother-daughter tea hosted by my mom's church. It was held outside and it was gorgeous. Two of my nieces, Kristina and Alyssa were able to join us. Leslie and her family drove up on Friday night, so she was able to attend as well. My other sis, Lori was unable to attend as she and her hubby, Paul were in Vegas celebrating their 25th anniversary!
Sunday we had a fantastic BBQ/champagne brunch in which the men of the family planned, cooked and cleaned. It was a very relaxing day! Thanks guys!
Today my sweet little girl turns five! So hard to believe...feels like we just brought that little bundle of joy home!
Tori continues to be a source of constant joy for our family. She loves to laugh and have fun. Some of her favorite things to do are: playing mommy, playing with Barbies, swinging on the bars, playing outside, and eating chocolate (she gets this from auntie Joyce I think!).
She is looking forward to attending big-girl school this fall, she can't wait to go to school with Lizzie.
Thank you Jesus for such a sweet, sweet addition to our family!
Tori was pretty excited about her Barbie cake mommy made for her...can you tell?
Partying with cousin Kaylee.
Blown' out the candles.
Hooray for me!
Herreeesss Barbie! My mom and Tori share a birthday, so they get to share cake and parties too. Happy birthday mom!
Easter was a bit different for us this year. Instead of hosting 30 - 40 people at our house, we ran away!
My sister Leslie invited us to join her family down south in San Juan Capistrano for the weekend. It was delightful! My parents were in New York with my bro, Lane, so we thought, "why not?" and hit the road. My other sister, Lori and her husband, Paul also cruised down south.
We left Thursday prior to Easter and returned on Monday. What a great weekend! Great Good Friday service, good company and fabulous food.
Thanks sis, for a fantastic weekend!
A little delayed, (kinda like her birth, 23 hours of labor!), but Lizzie turned 9 on Saturday! Hard to believe that my oldest is in her last year of single-digit birthdays!
We had quite the birthday weekend...slumber party Friday night, softball game Saturday morning, spent the afternoon at the MCC sale, capped off with a pasta feed family party Saturday night. All in all, a great birthday!
Elizabeth Grace Alvey was born, Tuesday, April 4, 2000 at 11:43 p.m. After nine long years of infertility, God blessed us with an incredible gift. Thank you Jesus for the amazing little girl that she is growing up to be!
Love you Lizzie La-La.
has begun! It's softball season and spring training for baseball. (Giants kick off the season April 5th!) The Alveys love this time of year. Kevin's team kicked off the season last night with a win (19-12), Lizzie's team is in full swing (she won MVP award this week!) Tori's T-ball team is great fun, and Joshua continues to work on hitting those fastballs. (Thanks for the pitching last night Julie!)
Can you see any of the 'hidden' eggs?
Uncle Ernie trying to hold them back.
Michael shows off the new 'do'.
Tori and Lizzie w/their eggs.
Big Joshua and Little Joshua.
Brandon and his haul.
Lizzie 'hunting'.
Josh checking out his baseball egg.Last month we took the kids up to play in the snow. We had so much fun! We bundled them up and let 'em go. It was so pretty, it snowed the entire time we were out. We made a snow man, went sledding and made snow angels.
Playing in the snow really made Lizzie think of (and miss) Utah, her grandpa and grandma and all her cousins. She thinks that she'd like to live somewhere where it snows. I tell her that she's a California girl and that after shoveling the driveway she'd think again about living with snow, but she disagreed with me! :-)
Our little snow angel.
Kinda wimpy, I know, but the kids were still proud!
Josh loved the snow and enjoyed trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.
Lizzie and Tori about to head down the hill on the sled.
It was so beautiful. This is in Yosemite.
