He (They) See You When You're Sleeping...

...They know when you're awake.  They know if you have been bad or good.  So we have been using our elves on the shelf and they have been in some fun places around our house.

A little elf reading an intense book.

An elf trying to get into the rest of Rachel's and Will's birthday cake.  But we caught him just in the nick of time.

The girls love looking for the elves in the morning; they jump out of bed to go find where they are hiding.  Here an elf is on a Christmas box and covering it with stickers.

An elf actually in a shelf, that didn't actually happen very often.

An elf was caught cooking something for us.

Rachel stands by an elf that managed to get into the cracker box.  It is hard to tell from the picture, but the elf has broken a cracker and left some crumbs on our table.

Megan checks out one of the elves.  She gave it a couple of smiles, but she mostly just tried to shake it off her legs.

One of my favorite elf on the shelf places was them on the table unrolling a paper towel roll.  The girls determined they were being "silly", instead of naughty.  Anyway, it has been fun hiding them all around and watching the girls search for them.  We will definitely be doing it again next year.


P.S. The elves determined that the girls have been mostly good, so they will receive presents from Santa this year.

Some Happy Birthdays!

We have had two great birthdays here in Umatilla.  Will turned 31, but I think you are suppose to stop counting at 29.  And Rachel turned two (technically, not until the nineteenth, but that is too confusing for her).  She kept saying that she was now three, but I think we finally convinced her that Whitney was three and she is two.  Here are some pictures of our two birthday people.

I hid the letter to Happy Birthday around our house for Will to find in the morning.  It was fun to hide things from another adult because then you really get to hide something, not what I do when I 'hide' things for the girls to find.

Will gets some help opening some presents early Sunday morning.

The girls made this little card for Will.  They painted puzzles pieces and then told me reasons why they like their dad.

Whitney came up with all the ideas by herself, no mom prompting.  She picked things like 'Goes to work' and 'Fixes the car' and 'Changes poopy diapers' and 'Plays outside with us'.  It was really cute having her make the list and think of things she likes about dad.  I think Will really liked the present too.

My family came on the Saturday between birthdays for a joint celebration.  Rachel was pretty excited to open presents, but then she would give the presents to my dad, which was humorous.  I am not sure why grandpa was the present holder, but it was cute.

Whitney watches Rachel open a big blocks present. Whitney was very good at letting Rachel open her own presents, but she did watch very intently to see if Rachel would need some "help".

Rachel smiling with all her presents.  She got a baby and blocks and candy and a little toy train and some puzzles, all kinds of good things. 

Whitney and Rachel help frost the birthday cake.  There ended up being a huge hole in the middle where Rachel kept just jabbing her knife, but it was barely noticeable with some extra frosting put on top.

Here Will is about to blow out some candles. The girls went a little candle crazy and he had like 36 candles on his cake, but he was still able to blow them all out in one breath.  Good job.  Rachel also had a turn to blow out candles, but she wouldn't do it.  Maybe next year.  Anyway, I think a very merry (technically unbirthday) was had by all.

Santa Pictures

We had two opportunities to try to get Santa pictures.  I wanted a good one for Megan's scrapbook, but Whitney seemed to be the only one who really liked being with Santa.

This Santa came to the tree lighting ceremony that was outside the Umatilla city hall.  Rachel was only willing to sit with Santa with Whitney around.  But they both got candy canes at the end and they were happy.

Megan seemed not too interested in looking at Santa.  I think she is barely hitting the stranger danger phase.

Everybody waiting for the tree lighting.  It was really cold, so everyone was bundled really well.

The tree looking all pretty in the background. 

Santa also decided to come to our ward Christmas party.  That was surprising because we thought he wasn't coming.  So here we wait in line to go see Santa again.

Whitney was very happy to see the big red guy again.  She gave big smiles for the camera.

Megan didn't like the feel of Santa's beard, so she looked at him for a second and then started crying.  Rachel wouldn't sit still long enough to get a picture.  Oh well.  At least I have a few pictures for scrapbooks.

Finally, Santa's helpers arrived at our house.  These are the elves for elf on the shelf.  They hide around the home to report to Santa on whether the kids are naughty or nice.  The girls like looking for them in the morning.  So a good beginning to the Christmas season.

Turkey Tom

Poor Tom the bird had a horrible weekend all around America.  We quite enjoyed him in the Tri-Cities with our family.  It was a wonderful Thanksgiving for us Keelers.

Before Thanksgiving, we did a couple of little crafts.  Little hand turkeys get done every year.  I did one for Megan too and she did not like opening her hand for the paint and then opening again to get the paint washed.  After the paint dried, I asked Whitney and Rachel what they were thankful for.  I think Whitney understood the concept, Rachel kept pointing to her painted hand and saying "that one" - whatever that means.

This is Whitney back in Pasco helping get things set up.  Her job was to put three mnms on each plate so everyone could say three things they were thankful for.  For all that hard work, she got some extra mnms to snack on.

You can see the turkey behind us.  My parents have a turkey roaster and the bird turned out delicious and moist.

Everyone digging into the delicious food.  My sister Kylee surprised everyone by coming home for Thanksgiving.  She is going to BYU - Idaho and we weren't expecting to see her.  So that was a fun surprise.  And the food was super delicious.  Thank you mom and dad and everyone that helped.

Rachel enjoying her pie.  It was a chocolate ice cream pie.  Whitney decided she didn't like pie and just ate marshmallows for dessert.  Maybe next year.

And not really a Thanksgiving picture, but this was Whitney's favorite thing at grandma's house.  She liked to wear it and try to scare people.  I think Rachel was the only one really scared of the mask.  Anyway, we had a great long weekend.

Santa is Coming to Town

Not to our town, but down in the Tri-Cities.  We heard about a Christmas parade in front of the mall in the Tri-Cities that would have Santa come visit.  It seems a little early in the season, but we decided to go to let Whitney see Santa.

We went to the mall early because we weren't quite sure how busy the parade would be.  The girls loved looking at all the lights and wreaths and just playing for awhile.  They don't get to go to the mall very often, so it was a very exciting place for them.

The parade was outside.  Thankfully, it wasn't a very cold day.  Here we wait in front of some huge Christmas tree ornaments.

The girls favorite part was the candy.  Here are some elves handing out candy to the children.

I love this picture.  After the parade, some people came inside and were willing to take pictures with the kids.  Mrs. Claus was all too excited to hold baby Megan.

And Whitney gives a high five to a reindeer.  Rachel was a little afraid at first, but she got over that after seeing that Whitney was still okay. 

There were little activities for the kids to do after the parade.  This one was making a snowflake ornament.  They also got to color and make 'minion' food.  (From Despicable Me).  

Here Rachel is decorating a card to give to our country's servicemen.  I wrote a little message inside and then Rachel colored.  We sure do appreciate the work our servicemen do for our country.  Whitney didn't quite understand why they didn't get to keep the cards they made, so I tried to explain what the cards were for.  I am not sure they really understood, but oh well.  I hope the cards bring a little Christmas cheer to someone.

    Anyway, we didn't get any pictures of the girls with the big guy.  They were at least thirty bucks a pop.  But later I found out that you can get free pictures of your kids with Santa at our local WalMart next Saturday.  So we will probably do that.  The girls had a really fun trip.

The Various States of Megan

We haven't really done anything major lately.  The girls and Will are recovering from colds, so we mostly just hung out at home.  But here are a couple of random pictures of Megan in various states.

This is her discovery state.  Megan just learned how to put her fist into her mouth and suck on her fingers.  She really enjoys the taste of fingers apparently.
 

This is Megan's cool state.  Whitney and Rachel seem to think it is really funny to put a pair of sunglasses on this poor kid.  Thankfully, Megan doesn't seem to mind.

This is the partially undressed state.  This state happens every morning where clothes just get strewn on the floor as certain small children decide what they want to wear.

This is Megan's defensive state.  She likes to clench her fists and she looks about ready to bop somebody on the nose.

Obviously, this is the sad state.  We are lucky because Megan is usually pretty happy.  But when she wants to cry, she can cry like the best of them.

  

And every parents' favorite - the sleeping state.  They are so cute asleep.

This isn't a Megan state, but we all really liked Rachel's new shirt.  So I just had to put a picture of it on the blog.  Look at just how cute she is.

A Great Halloween

We had such a fun Halloween as a family.  Whitney really got into the holiday and was super excited for it to come.

What an Incredible looking family.  I thought we were all looking pretty darn cute.

We went to the Tri-Cities the weekend before Halloween for my mom's birthday.  There happened to be a couple of Halloween things going on in the community on the Saturday.  So here we are at the library.  Whitney is making a spider web.

We decorated cupcake haunted houses.  The girls loved making the house, but didn't really like eating them.  So Will was stuck eating two cupcakes, but I don't think he minded too much.

The girls show off their little toilet paper tube bats.  

Then we went to a moose lodge that was just down the street from the library.  Whereas the library had mostly crafts, the moose lodge had classic carnival games.  Whitney and Rachel especially loved fishing for miniature candy bars.

The cake walk was also a big hit.  Whitney kept wanting to play it, even after getting her cupcakes.

Megan couldn't really participate, but we did pretend to have her play the beanbag toss.  She was mostly just there to look cute and complete our Incredible family.  Bytheway, we won cutest costume contest at the moose lodge and got a little stuffed skeleton teddy bear, so that was neat.

Then we went to the pumpkin farm to get a couple of pumpkins.

Look at my cute scarecrow and pumpkin.  The girls love putting their heads into any kind of cutout.

This was probably the favorite of the day - a sandbox full of corn kernels.  Both girls had a blast dumping things and playing with the toys.

It is kind of hard to tell but Whitney is riding in the back of the train.  She was the only one on the train and told me she wanted to ride in the caboose.  It only made me a little nervous because the driver looked like he was only like twelve.  But she was really happy with the train ride.

We went through the hay maze and didn't get really lost. Hooray for little mazes with little children.

We waited to get back to Umatilla to carve our pumpkins.  Whitney picked a smiley face for her pumpkin and the other one became the 'I' for the Incredibles.  Anyway, we had a great Halloween and now the girls are happy to have lots of candy to eat.