A quick trip

          Well, we have been busy visiting families this past weekend.  And it has been a lot of fun.  We always have a great time when we are able to get together.  It was a fast weekend with lots of driving, but Whitney got to meet her new cousin, Grant.

         On Saturday we went to Anna’s birthday party.  Anna is the daughter of Scott and Emily and she turns three in August, but we decided to celebrate her birthday early so we could all be together.

Here is Anna opening her presents.  She got some cute My Little Ponies toys which brought me back to my childhood when my sister and I would play with those for hours on end.

There were two little wading pools for the children to play in during the party.  I hadn’t packed Whitney’s swimming suit, so we just took off Whitney’s clothes to let her play in the pool.  Will and I were surprised that she liked the water so much because it was cold water and she has just barely started enjoying warm baths.  But Whitney got really angry whenever we tried to get her out of the water so we could do some other activities.

Whitney even got a chance to take a whack at the treasure chest piñata.  The younger kids hit at it without any blindfolds and didn’t cause much damage, but one of the older boys was able to break it open so all the kids could get some candy and some jewels and gold coins. 

We were able to get several pictures of Whitney with her cousins during the party and after Grant’s baby blessing on Sunday.

The three little ones with their parents.

Whitney has always been fascinated by babies.  She loved having two very small baby cousins to play with.  Fortunately, no one’s eyes were poked or got any scratches or anything.  Whitney mostly just liked putting her face really close to their faces and giving them hugs and kisses.  We were prompting Whitney to be soft and she did pretty good.

Dana is a bug collector and he got out one of his big black bugs for Whitney to examine.  It was funny because Whitney seemed to like getting close to the bug herself and wanted to pick it up.  But if the bug started getting close to Whitney, she would get scared and want it off of her.  I don’t blame her though; if a bug that size started crawling up my legs, I would probably not like it as well.

I think Whitney was trying to climb over Angie, one of Scott’s sisters, but then decided to stay for a little while.  I am not sure why because usually she likes to be moving around too much and doesn’t want to just sit.  But maybe she wanted a little break.  So she just sat there for several minutes.

Here Whitney gives Grant a goodbye hug before we left Portland.

And we had to get a picture of all five of them before we left.  It is hard to get a picture of five small children, so we did our best to get them to look at the cameras.  Now Whitney can say she was together with all of her cousins.  And aren’t they all cute?

We went back to Pasco for several hours before making our way to Cheney.  This happened to be the same weekend that my brother Michael and his wife Allison were in Pasco for Michael’s ten year high school reunion.  Michael and Will graduated from high school the same year.  Unfortunately, the reunion didn’t actually take place when it was suppose to, but we were happy to see them anyway.  Whitney is with three of her aunts in my parent’s living room.

This also happened to be the night that my Uncle Andy, Whitney’s great-uncle, came riding in town on his motorcycle.  Whitney saw him at our family reunion when she was really little.  I think Andy was surprised at how big she had gotten.

So it was great being able to see everyone this past weekend.  I don’t know the next time we will be getting together, so we feel fortunate for all the opportunities we do get to hand out.  Thanks for being such a great family to us Keelers in Cheney.