Easter

Happy Easter to everyone. We have had a busy couple of days with BYU graduation down in Provo and then Easter, but it has been a fun busy. Courtney’s younger sister Erin and Erin’s husband, David, and Michael’s wife, Allison, all graduated from BYU. Will had to stay at work, but Whitney and I went down with my family to be part of the celebration. The graduations were fun; Elder Scott spoke at the big graduation on Thursday about working on our character and the importance of staying strong in the gospel. Then on Friday were the individual graduations where the names were read and everyone got to cross the stage. Erin and David went together in the morning and then Allison’s was a little after that. Congratulations graduates and good luck with future opportunities. Here are a couple of pictures from the graduations.

These are the three graduates all decked out in their caps and gowns. David’s gown was black because he received his Masters degree.

This picture didn’t turn out very well because of the strange light and our camera acted funny. But we wanted to get a picture of Whitney in a cap, so Erin let Whitney borrow hers for a minute. Maybe in like twenty years, Whitney will be wearing her own cap and gown.

Here we wait around between graduations. Those are David’s parents in the background. After the graduation, there was a little meet and greet in the Talmage building where families could meet different professors. We didn’t know anyone, so we just went for the free donuts and muffins and fruit. But we were glad that there was food for everyone because we hadn’t thought to pack anything and there wasn’t time to go back to Michael and Allison’s apartment in between the two graduations.



Allison’s family has really big Easter celebrations that we were all invited to attend on Saturday morning. It was really fun with games and an Easter egg hunt for the kids and a nice lunch. Here are some pictures from that morning.

The huge backyard was separated into three spaces for the Easter egg hunt. So Whitney was with the littlest children and there were tons of eggs for everyone. However, we didn’t bring a basket so we planned on just putting her eggs into our pockets so Whitney could collect more. But Whitney had different plans; she picked up two eggs, one for each hand and she wouldn’t let us take them from her. Here she has put one of the eggs into her mouth. Eventually she learned how to open them and tried to get into the candy inside, but for awhile she was content sucking on the plastic.

Another contest was a relay race for the older kids. Conner wanted to be part of it. You had to put a ball between your legs and move across the yard holding a spoon with an egg on top. It was really funny watching the children attempt this relay because they wouldn’t keep their legs tight enough together or they would take too large of steps and they would lose their balls.

Whitney didn’t mind though. She really enjoyed playing with all of the colorful balls and she kept going back and forth between different balls.

Erin and Conner were both in charge of chalk decorating. Erin drew an Easter bunny and Conner did an Easter egg. They both did a really good job. Whitney just stayed in the background and watched all of the children. She was pretty fascinated by this new place with lots of new people.



We spent Sunday driving back to Pasco. The time went by faster because we left at four in the morning and most of us got to sleep for several more hours in the morning. Whitney did really well on both long car trips, so I was very grateful for that. Having a screaming baby in the car is not fun. In Pasco, we did another Easter egg hunt for just our family.

Here Whitney finds some candy on the kitchen chair and she hands it to Will (who drove to Pasco on Saturday to be part of the hunt) to put in the bucket. This time Whitney did much better and grabbed a lot more candy and eggs.

There even were candy eggs on the staircase for Whitney to grab. She needed a little help from my mother because she has a hard time going down the stairs.

Whitney found a huge stash of candy underneath the kitchen table. This is just a cute little video of her collecting the candy for her bucket.

Finally, her bucket got too heavy and Whitney had to drag it behind her across the floor. So Whitney did a good job of collecting candy. There were only a couple of times where we had to stop her from putting the candy in her mouth, so I thought that was pretty good.

We also took a couple of pictures of Whitney dying some Easter eggs for the first time. We took off all her clothes, which was a good idea because she ended up liking to splash dye on the table and on herself. I wasn’t sure whether Whitney would like dying the eggs, but she did.

Here Whitney has put like four eggs into one cup of dye. Obviously, that didn’t work. But that never stops her from trying.

Here Whitney holds up her blue egg that she just finished dipping into the dye. She kept trying to put it into her mouth, but we wouldn’t let her. We did let her play with some undyed eggs though, so we aren’t completely mean parents.



It was a fun couple of days. I’m glad that we had the chance to go to Utah and to be able to celebrate Easter. It was so good to spend time with family. Now we have another long trip in a couple of days to Portland to spend some time with Will’s family.

Going to the playground

A week ago, it was finally warm enough to take Whitney to the park for the first time.  She has been to the park before, but she was too small last summer to do anything but sit on our laps.  This time, she loved playing on the playground with the other kids.  Will and I both had a great time chasing after her and just watching her have fun.

Here Will helps Whitney go down the slide.  She wasn't too sure about slides at first, but I think she enjoyed them after the first couple of tries.

This time Will and Whitney both went down the slide.  Will had to kind of scoot them along because it is not quite meant for adults. 

Whitney got pretty good at climbing up the steps all by herself, but a couple of them were too high and required our help.  She really liked climbing to the top of the playground, maybe she just likes being the tallest around since she is use to being the shortest at home.

There was a little spot with numbers in all strange positions.  Whitney played with it for half a moment and then wanted to go back to the rest of the playground.

There is a little "store" section where the kids can pretend to be at a store and can "sell" things to people.  Whitney played with it for a little while, but you cannot actually push any buttons and that is just not any fun if you cannot push any buttons.

You can kind of tell if you look really hard at the left of the page that Whitney met a little friend at the playground.  He was just sitting on the playground stairs and looked to be just a little older than Whitney, so the two of them just looked at each other for a little while.

Finally, Whitney sits of this big rock where she can feel like the king of the world, or the queen of the world.  It only required a little bit of mom's help to avoid any jumping off the rock.  So Whitney had a lot of fun at the park.  She learned how to walk on the unstable wood chips and the grass, so it was a good balancing exercise.  Unfortunately, it got a little too chilly and windy, so we left the park early and ended up having our picnic on the living room floor.  But it was good that Whitney was able to get outside for a little while.  Hopefully, warm weather will come back and we will be able to play outside more often.
 

mustaches and socks

We have just been watching Whitney grow up everyday here in Cheney. But we would like to say congrats to Emily and Scott on their new arrival. I am glad that everyone is healthy and strong. We have a couple pictures of our little girl.

With her new outfits that Whitney got for her birthday came some cute hair scrunchies. We use to be able to put them on Whitney all the time, but now it is a major struggle. I hope she gets use to the idea of wearing them again. Anyway, one day I put on a purple one to match her purple shirt and it stayed on for about 10 minutes. This picture kind of portrays how much Whitney tries to take them off because the scrunchie is all loose and her hair is crazy from Whitney trying to get the tie off. Don’t worry, I didn’t make her keep it on once she got it off.

So we have a new favorite activity of Whitney that we have had to prevent. She likes to throw things into the kitchen garbage. One day I put some extra big socks on her and she took them off pretty quickly. I didn’t really care because it was a warm day, so I let her play with the socks. Eventually, I wanted to put the socks back on and could only find one. I searched our whole apartment for the missing one and finally gave up and put new socks on her. Lo and behold, several hours later when I open the garbage lid to throw in a wrapper, there is the other sock. Luckily, I just took out that garbage that morning, so it wasn’t sitting on something gross. But now we keep the lid kind of locked so Whitney cannot just toss away anything she doesn’t want. I decided to get a picture of Whitney holding the trouble sock.

Will got this little puzzle ball in a package from his mom a couple of weeks ago. The ball comes into pieces and you have to put it together again. Whitney really likes the little pieces; the other day we caught her with the black piece in her mouth in such a way that she looks like she has a moustache. It was cute.

I don’t know what this look is that is on Whitney’s face, I just know that it cannot be good. She has either done something she shouldn’t or is about to do something she shouldn’t.

Whitney practices her kissing skills on her toy monkey or toy baby. She is always giving kisses to everything. The other day we were at a party with some people in our ward and she went up to some other guy and kissed his foot. Fortunately, this other guy has a baby Whitney’s age, so he didn’t mind having his foot kissed. I think he was just surprised.

Whitney has gotten very good at playing fetch. We have her well trained. Now, we can always get Whitney to get us a book or a bear or her baby or whatever. Of course, you would think that means she always listens to us, right? Definitely not. I think she must have selective hearing because she never seems to hear when I tell her ‘no’ when it is something she really wants, like the TV wires or the lamp. But we are still working on it. Hope everyone else is doing well.

General Conference

  Well, this is going to be a post with no pictures, so if that is too boring, just stop reading and wait for the next post.  I just wanted to write some of the things I found interesting from general conference this last weekend.  On Saturday, Will and Whitney and I went to both sessions; we were in the loud room so Whitney could run around with the other children and no one would give us mean looks.  I liked Sister Jean Stevens talk about beholding our children and really paying attention to them.  I know that I fall short of doing that sometimes when I am too busy with dinner or whatnot.  But seriously, what could be more important than our children and helping them as they grow up?  I also likes Elder Oaks talk about our desires and how we need to prioritize.  He said that our desires shape our choices, so it was interesting to think about some of the things I desire and whether they are all worthwhile.
    On Sunday, Whitney was sick.  She had a horrible cough and runny nose and we thought just letting her sleep all day would be better than trying to pack her to church.  So Will went for the morning session and I went in the afternoon.  I really liked the talks during that session.  It was cute to hear the stories about Elder Scott and his wife passing love notes to each other and expressing real gratitude for what the other person does all day.  I also really liked Elder Robbins talk about the difference between 'to do' and 'to be'.  I know that I am always writing 'to do' lists, but I don't ever think of 'to be' lists.  That talk made me really think about what I want 'to be' and what I want to teach Whitney 'to be'. 
   So it was a great conference.  I love hearing the words of our beloved prophet and all of our church leaders.  I hope everyone else was able to enjoy the messages as much as we did.