Birthday Celebrations

My family came into town on Saturday to be part of some birthday celebrations.  Since Will's and Rachel's birthdays are so close together, it just made sense to have one big party.  It was fun.

We tried to decorate the apartment a little bit.  The sign is kind of hard to read, but it says "Happy Birthday Rachel".  Will said he didn't need a sign for him.

We also blew up some balloons and let the girls play with them for awhile.  It was hard to get a good picture of balloon playing since the balloons (and the children) wouldn't hold still for very long.

Rachel takes a good long look at her present.  I don't think she knew what she was suppose to do with it.

But with a lot of help from mom, she got the hang of unwrapping.  Good thing too with Christmas right around the corner.  Thanks for the presents everyone.

Whitney apparently thought that Will needed help opening presents too.  She was oh so kind at pretty much opening most of them.  Such a nice girl.  Again, thanks for the birthday presents.

Will asked for cupcakes for his birthday; each one had two or three candles in it to get up to thirty.  Here Will is right about to blow them out.

Rachel got a special '1' candle.  It has little stars all over it because Whitney liked that one more than the one with polka dots.  Rachel was pretty interested at the funny shiny thing on her high tray, but there were no burns, so that was good.  Will helped her blow out that candle too.

And stuffing her face with the cupcake frosting.  Rachel loves frosting, but not the cupcake part as much.  Whitney only likes the cupcake part and not the frosting.  So with their powers combined, they can eat a cupcake.  I know she looks tired in the picture, but I think the flash just made her blink. 

Will also took a big bite of his cupcake so he could have frosting lips.  Aren't they cute?

And the frosting was finger lickin' good.  Rachel also really liked the bite size pieces of ice cream we gave her.  She was one happy, and slightly messy, little girl.

While I cleaned up Rachel and the kitchen, the men did the manly work of putting Whitney's new bed together.  Kylee supervised to make sure everything went as planned.  We found a twin size bed on Craigslist in Spokane, so Will and my dad went and got it and put it together.  It only required one trip to the hardware store to get the pieces that somehow went missing from Spokane to back home. 

Thank you guys for coming and helping get the bed and all that.  It was a fun birthday for everyone.

Santa is coming to town

We went to the tree lighting ceremony at the library last week.  It was fun for both the girls, especially when santa came along.  I took a couple pictures of our time.

It started snowing just lightly right before it was time to go, so we bundled up the girls really well.  I think they stayed plenty warm while we were outside.

This is the big tree outside the library right before they turned on the lights.

We got to have hot chocolate and cookies and listen to a youth choir sing Christmas carols while we waited for the tree to light up.  The hot chocolate really hit the spot on the cold night.

I'm afraid it isn't the best picture of the tree lit up.  But it was really pretty.  Whitney was pretty amazed by it and kept staring (I think Rachel was a bit indifferent, oh well).

Then santa came on the fire truck and all the kids crowded around him.  Whitney went up to him and got a candy cane, so she was happy.  Rachel also went up to santa, but he had run out of candy canes.  Sorry Rachel - maybe next year will be different.

A police officer read Christmas books in the library. 

A nice lady inside the library volunteered to take our picture next to the little tree in the library.  So it was a great beginning to the Christmas season.

I is for Indian

I was in charge of the letter I for alphabet days.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out things to do that start with I and then my dad came up with the idea while we were down in Pasco.  He said we could do Indians.  I know it is suppose to be Native Americans or American Indians, but we just focused on Indian because that starts with I.

We danced to One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians and we read a book about Indians so the kids would know what an Indian is.

Rachel got to do a little coloring too since Enoch wasn't there and I had an extra copy.  She sometimes does okay with coloring, but mostly she still prefers eating the crayons.

We made Indian headdresses.  The kids got to glue on feathers and string beads to make them.

I made Whitney's a little big at first, so I had to restaple it.  She kept telling me that it needed to be fixed.

We did a funny painting activity.  You color white paper with white crayon and then you lightly paint over it with a rock color.  The wax in the crayon is suppose to prevent the paint from hitting that part.  It sort of worked, but you had to color really really hard and the kids weren't good at doing that.  But it was suppose to be an Indian rock painting thing.  Oh well.  The kids enjoyed painting.

Then we made Indian corn for snack.  You take a graham cracker and break it in half the long way.  Then you cover it with nutella or chocolate frosting and put reeses pieces all over it.  It gets wrapped with a cupcake liner for the husk.  Whitney made a corn and didn't want to eat it.  So she just ate graham crackers.

We also had orange juice ice pops.  They didn't really have anything to do with Indians.  But it did start with I and the kids loved them. 
So I think the letter I was a success.

Turkey Time

What a great Thanksgiving we had down in Pasco.  I am grateful to have family so close by that we can visit for the holidays.  We had a good couple of days there this last weekend.

Thanksgiving morning the kids all made cookie turkeys.  You take a cookie and a mini reeses cup and a chocolate covered peanut and some candy corn and frosting and you got it.

It was easy enough that Whitney could mostly do it by herself.  But I was the supervisor to make sure no frosting got spilled.

Whitney holds up her turkey for everyone to see.  This is a girl who doesn't like getting her hands dirty - sort of.  So she was trying to hold it all tenderly, so I had to help.

Even Rachel made a turkey.  Unlike Whitney, Rachel likes to eat sweet things.  So I gave her fingerfuls of frosting throughout the turkey making process and she was pretty happy.  I think she wanted to eat more of the cookie though.

Here we all stand right by the turkey right before it was carved.  My mom uses a special turkey cooker and it does a good job. It was quite yummy.

Whitney pretended to dig into her food by stirring her jello for like twenty minutes.  I think she might have eaten a bite or two of the Thanksgiving feast.  But everyone else enjoyed the meal.

We played games after dinner.  We broke off into girls versus boys and came up with some hard words for the other team to draw.  Then the 'it' person had 60 seconds to draw something and have their team guess.  And we all played no mercy with really hard words - like white blood cell, or water chestnut, or Mitt Romney.  It was an intense game.

We did lots of other fun things while down in Pasco for a couple of days.  We played some video games.  Whitney loves taking turns.

Whitney got to play some ping pong with my dad.  With a lot of help from mom, she did pretty good.

And Rachel spent a lot of time practicing going up down the stairs.  We had a couple of close calls while we were there, but there were a lot of eyes to watch Rachel to make sure she didn't fall down. 
So it was really fun.  Thanks for letting us come visit you guys.

Baking some apple pie

We were given a lot of apples from another lady in our ward.  About a third of them were a little too bruised to want to just eat, but not so bruised to just throw away, so we decided to make something with them - good old American apple pie.  Neither Will nor I have ever made apple pie before, so this was a fun little adventure for our family last Saturday.

Rachel inspects some apples for us; apparently, this one was good and we could use it for our pie.

My job was the filling.  So I spent awhile peeling and cutting a lot of apples.  I am not really sure what kind of apples we were given, but my guess is golden delicious. 

Will and Whitney were in charge of the dough.  Will was thoughtful and did it on the floor so Whitney could reach the bowl without having to stand on a chair.  Here Whitney dumps in some flour.

You have to add water to the dough a little bit at a time.  Whitney did a good job dumping in one tablespoon at a time and letting Will mix it in.

Then the dough was divided in two for the top and bottom crust.  Whitney got to play with her dough for a little bit.

Then the two of them rolled it out. Whitney loves using the rolling pin.

And then Whitney licked the rolling pin clean - kind of gross, but I decided a little flour wouldn't hurt her.  And there were no slivers on the tongue, so that was good.

Meanwhile, Rachel gets a turn helping me stir the apple pie filling.  It was just apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and a little bit of flour.

Then we dumped the filling into the pie.  Such a strong girl you have become Whitney - holding the apple bowl the whole time while I spooned it out.  Rachel looks a little sad in the background; I guess she wasn't done stirring.

I am not super creative or artsy, so I didn't do anything too exciting for the top of the pie crust.  I just knew it needed a few holes to help air it our during cooking.

Here it is in all its cooked glory.  The smiley face I made stayed pretty intact.  We had a piece and watched a movie that evening. 
It was super fun cooking together.  And the apple pie turned out pretty good.  maybe I will be brave and try some other kind of pie later.

A Happy Halloween! Trick-or-treating

We have so much candy in this house.  And that is only with two kids; I cannot imagine how much more we will get when we have more children.  Whitney is in candy heaven though, so I guess that is good.

Whitney made for a very cute pirate this year.  Everyone commented on how they loved the costume.  And there were some other adult pirates while trick-or-treating who really loved seeing Whitney.  Whitney also loved her costume.  She wanted to try it on several times before halloween.

Rachel was a little monster for halloween.  I was a bit disappointed about the costume because it ended up being a bit small and Rachel had to wear pants over the romper.  But it was cute saying I'm a little monter and the feet say "feed" "me".  Everyone thought she was a boy though.  So next year I am going to plan ahead and do something more girly for her.

The girls got to dress up at story time.  Even the library lady was dressed up - here the kids are chasing bubbles before story time officially began.

After lunch and alphabet days, we went to Eastern campus for the big trick-or-treating.  I took the double stroller around campus and it worked great.  Whitney waited in line pretty well for it to start.  We got there early so we got to be in front of the line.  Whitney was so excited about holding her pumpkin bucket.

There was a little carnival after going around campus.  Whitney was not too sure about throwing the beanbag.  She went up and just kind of placed it through the clown's mouth.

Golfing was pretty fun. 

Whitney really liked the bowling.  It was with a basketball, but that didn't matter.  She got like seven pins down, so I think that was an improvement from last year.

We waited in a long line for face painting.  I was hoping to convince Whitney to do some kind of pirate themed face paint, but she wanted a puppy.  Oh well.

We got to do some real trick-or-treating this year.  This was the first time we have gone and Whitney loved it.  We picked a neighborhood with houses close by each other (everyone comes here for trick-or-treating).

Whitney did not want help running from house to house.  And she loved knocking on doors.  It was so cute watching her run to get as much candy as possible.

Then our ward had a halloween party also.  Whitney actually threw the beanbags for this pumpkin.

There was a cake walk that Whitney loved.  The prizes were these cute little cupcakes.  Whitney technically won a couple of times because she kept wanting to go again and again.  But we just let her pick out one cupcake (which Will ended up eating since Whitney doesn't like frosting).

Will was a nerd for halloween.  He got to wear his costume to work.  I wasn't anything this year, but I will try better next year.

And our stash of candy.  Whitney is one happy toddler now.  So we had a great halloween.  It was a long, but very fun day.