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.

A Happy Halloween! Pumpkin Carving

We had a great halloween this year.  It was fun dressing up two little girls and going out to get candy.  But that will have to be for the next post.  We carved two pumpkins this year, both of which we found at the pumpkin patch. 

Whitney and Rachel both giving some loves to their pumpkins. 

Rachel seemed to really like just touching the pumpkin.  She gave us lots of cute smiles whenever she was around it.

It took a lot of convincing to get Rachel to want to put her hand in the pumpkin to feel the goo.  She would do it for like a second and pull her hand out as quickly as she could.

However, it didn't take any convincing for Rachel to try to eat the pumpkin; she did that all on her own.  She even got a little bit because she spent awhile trying to spit it out.

Whitney got to carve her pumpkin, with a lot of help from dad.

She did a good job during the whole process.

Not quite matching faces with her pumpkin, but a very good try.  Whitney was very proud of her pumpkin.

 

Will also carved a pumpkin.  He did the cool lightening symbol from metroid.  Anyway, carving was fun.  But we couldn't find our candles so we didn't get to light up our jack-o-lanterns.  We will have to do better next year.

F is for flowers

First off, I want to thank Matthew Guptill for coming up with some great ideas for my letter F alphabet days.  I decided that I really liked the idea of F being for flowers.  I think the kids really liked it too.

We started off by coloring the letter F.  I found a picture of a letter F with Zoe from Sesame Street holding a flower.  Whitney did a good job with her picture.  She is getting so much better at staying in the lines - when she wants to.

We also put flower stickers onto picture frames.  I picked out three different picture frames from the store and let the kids pick the one they wanted.  Whitney thought putting the stickers on was pretty cool.  Although it was Emma that had to cover her entire frame with stickers before she could be done.  There was not any space left for any more stickers.  I printed out pictures of the kids to put into their frames too.

Here is Whitney's one all decorated.  I thought it turned out pretty good.

Then we planted flowers into pots.  Each kid got their own pot and I put some potting soil into a bowl on the table and gave each kid a spoon.  There was a lot of flying dirt everywhere but the kids really liked being able to put their own dirt into the pots.

Whitney is waiting for a turn to get another heaping spoonful of dirt for her pot.  Each kid got a bulb to put into their pot and then they covered it with more dirt.  If we are very lucky, maybe we will get a flower come spring time.

Then we moved away from the flower idea and we fingerpainted footprints.  I traced the kids feet and then we let the kids fingerpaint.  Whitney didn't want to get too messy I guess because she only used like three fingers for the paint and managed to keep herself as clean as possible.

And for snack we had fish crackers and fruit snacks and fruit cups.  It was a really fun alphabet days.