Going to a funeral

Courtney's grandma died last week. She has been living in Pasco with my parents and my grandpa for the past six weeks because her health has been failing. Will and I were there over Thanksgiving when they moved in and we were able to visit during Christmas as well. So I am glad that we were able to spend some time with her. It is never fun to have someone you love die; I will always remember my grandma's smile and her yummy cookies and how they always had ice cream and candybars for the grandchildren. But, I am glad for my knowledge that she is in a better place now and her body's physical limitations are gone. We all went to Idaho for the funeral, even my siblings who live in Utah were able to make it. It was nice being able to be together.



Here we are all just standing around. We stayed up late talking and playing games. It was great of Courtney's dad's uncle to let us use the spare house for a couple of days so we could all be together.



This is Michael, Courtney's older brother, and his wife Allison. And afer the funeral Will takes a little snooze on the makeshift bed.



Conner is beside him playing some video game or another. Here Whitney is probably thinking that she would be so happy if she could only get the cereal out of the bag. But we are too clever for her and ziplocked it extra tight. For some reason, Whitney loves to dump everything on the floor and that cereal would have made a huge mess in this uncle's house.



The funeral ended up being nice. I was able to learn some neat things about my grandma. She had a good life and died peacefully in her sleep.

In other news, Whitney is continuing to get bigger and into more trouble. She likes opening shelves now and sometimes closes them on her fingers. Ouch.



Here she is very happy with her chips holder. I don't know where she finds these things, but I guess little people can fit into little cracks and find little things. I have started to crack down on my cleaning because she gets into everything.



Everyone at church loved Whitney's hat with her green dress. I loved that it kept her hair out of her eyes, which is something we are constantly battling. I refuse to give her a haircut though.



Whitney, like all babies, loves to play the piano. Will and I don't have one. But my parents do and we were there for a couple of hours this past weekend as we were traveling home from the funeral. So Whitney took advantage of the chance to bang on keys and make as loud of noises as possible. It was really cute. Who knew that we were raising a little Mozart.

During my free time while Will is at work and Whitney is napping, I have been working on a couple of projects. One was using our new food deydrator to dry baby food and make fruit leather. I learned that was possible from a friend in the ward and we always have lots of baby food thanks to WIC. It was sort of successful.



We did get delicious fruit leather, but we also got a huge mess and very sticky cheese cloth. I spent a lot of time trying to peel off pieces of fruit leather. So I will not be repeating that anytime soon. But it is tasty.

I am also working on two scrapbooks. I got a lot of scrapbooking stuff for Christmas that I am putting to good use. The first one is our wedding. I know...it's three and a-half years late, but better late than never, right? I am also making one for Whitney. I have about 130 pictures from our wedding that I am using and almost 400 for Whitney, so my projects will take awhile. But I am having lots of fun at it.



So that's our life in Cheney. Most of our snow has melted and we are hoping that it stays that way. Will is enjoying his job and Courtney is enjoying being a stay-at-home mom.

Vancouver Trip #2

All of us went to Dana's mom's house for New Years. She was very nice and invited everyone; she even keeps some toys for her grandchildren so there were lots of toys for Matthew and Anna and Whitney. It was a fun celebration. We ended up sitting on the kid table so we could help Whitney in her highchair, so I hope we weren't too loud for the grown-up table. No one warned me that when you have babies you lose your grown-up status and go back with the kids. Oh well, Matthew, Anna, and Whitney were pretty entertaining. Here are some pictures from that party.



Whitney sat on top of Uncle Dana's shoulders and Anna was on top of Will's for a little baby war. Anna liked being on high and I don't think Whitney really understood the greatness of being on someone's shoulders. But it won't be long before she wants piggy back rides all the time.



This is Whitney with her Uncle Scott; she just barely met him on this trip because they have lived in Japan for the last couple of years. Now Whitney has met all of her aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone. She really liked that turtle toy; something about the string was super fun and she was mad at me when I took it away from her so she could share the toy with her cousin. I tried giving her another toy but that didn't work at all, so much for all those child development experts that claim distraction is the key.



Here everyone is just hanging out playing on the ground. The children played with toys and the adults played games and talked while we waited for New Year. Whitney even made it to her first New Year, but just barely. We kind of forced her to stay awake for the last fifteen minutes of 2010. We even gave her just a small sip of Martinellis to celebrate; she didn't seem to like it too much. And she was completely passed out by like 12:04.



We wanted to make sure to get some family pictures since we had almost everyone in Vancouver. Our camera died after this one picture, so we didn't have a chance to take another one. But it turned out pretty well, as long as you don't care that Whitney's isn't looking.



Here is one more picture as we come out of Sacrament Meeting right before we came home.



It was so great being together with family. I wish that we could see everyone more often and that we lived closer together. I hope everyone did have really awesome holidays and a good start to the year 2011.

Happy New Year to everyone. We are excited about the year 2011, even if we keep forgetting to write the correct date on our checks and everything. I hope that everyone had a great celebration and was able to stay all the way up until midnight.

We were lucky and were able to make it to Vancouver for the New Year. Will has family living there and almost everyone decided to come visit. So it was really fun seeing them. Some of Will's siblings hadn't met Whitney, so it was a nice get-together for a couple of days. Thank you Ruth and Dana for letting us sleep in your apartment.

This is Whitney looking in a mirror at the OMSI center. Her cousin Anna is standing in the background. The OMSI is this really cool science museum in Portland that is huge. And it is really kid friendly. Whitney loved it and so did Will and I. This post is going to be based on just our trip to the museum because we took a ton of pictures and had to break it up. So I hope you want to look at some pictures.



Whitney didn't like wearing the goggles, which were a requirement in the special chemistry lab. So she just stayed outside. But now we can say that we have seen her in goggles, really bright goggles.



This is a rock from the moon. How cool is that? I was able to see one when I was younger when my family traveled to the Smithsonian Center in Washington D.C. But now Will and Whitney were able to see one. I think that would be so cool to just be able to feel it and see if it feels different than our rocks on earth.



There were lots of things for kids to touch. We let Whitney touch these "volcanoes", but we couldn't get a very good picture because of the funny light. Oh well.



There was one section strictly for children six and under and in that section was a small spot only for infants. We let Whitney play in the little ball pit that was being shared by a couple other babies. I never knew how much Whitney likes balls; she didn't want to leave.



And I got to ride a segway. I have always wanted to ride one since seeing them on some movie. You control the segway with your feet and it was awesome. It was a cool way to get around. Unfortunately, I asked the guy and he said that they cost roughly 5000 dollars and we don't have that kind of spare change lying around. But it was still fun.



One of my favorite exhibits was the earthquake house. I have never been in an earthquake before and this was a simulation of a 7 earthquake. Whitney didn't seem to care about the shaking at all, she was just jumping around and having a good time.



...and take off. Whitney went into a spaceship. You were technically suppose to sit in it upside down, but that seemed a little too cruel for our little baby.



This is a little hard to tell, but Will and Whitney are giving the weather forecast. They were actually standing in front of a green screen and pointing to the wall, but isn't that what real forecasters do anyway? It was cute watching them predict rain and snow and all that.



Whitney was exhausted after a long day at the museum. I think everyone was pretty ready to call it quits. It was a really fun place and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes science.
We have more pictures from our trip. But I have to go home and make dinner. Maybe one day we will have the internet at our home and we won't have to go to the library to update our blog. We will try to post some more family pictures in a couple of days.