A Day in Spokane

We spent most of our day in Spokane last Saturday and it was a lot of fun.  My younger brother, Conner, is part of a DI group (I think DI stands for Destination Imagination and not Deseret Industries).  Anyway, this group has a big performance once a year where a bunch of schools send kids to perform.  They practice all year to get ready.

The skit they chose to do this year was impromptu, so here the lady is telling them some things they need to include in their skit (like the word turkey).

The DI Dudes preparing for their performance.

It was a clever little skit that was a rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but it was a polar bear and three penguins.

Conner is the one on the left; I am not quite sure what he is doing in this picture.

After the skit we went out to lunch at a buffet.  Just like at home, Rachel is dutifully eating her bread and Whitney is in the background ignoring the food to look at other things.

She did come back though and let me get a picture.  We went back to Conner's DI thing after lunch but we weren't allowed to watch the next part the kids did.  The kids aren't even allowed to talk about it afterwards.   But I guess they did really well because their group got first place in the awards ceremony.  Congratulations Conner and your group.  Thanks for letting us come watch.

While in Spokane, we also went to the Other Mothers store that was having their monthly quarter sale.  The clothes were just in a huge pile to sort through, but I found a couple of things that would be good for Whitney.  And I got all these clothes for only 3.25.  Isn't that great?

Anyway, it was a busy Saturday, but also lots of fun.

Happy Valentines

We had a great Valentines Day.  I love that Will and I enjoy celebrating the holidays; it is such fun.  Here are some things we did.

We surprised Will by making heart cookies.  I gave Whitney some of her own dough and she had a fun time rolling it and pressing it down to make shapes.  She told me that she was making candy canes for Wallace - who came and ate them and thought they were good.

We used some food dye to make different colors of frosting.  Whitney got really into the frosting; literally, just the frosting and not the putting of the frosting onto the cookies.  She frosted one cookie and decided she was done and just wanted to lick the frosting.  Kind of funny for a girl who didn't even like frosting not too long ago.

Then I made a treasure hunt for Will for after work.  I put this little heart note on our front door.

Will, with the help of ever diligent Whitney, goes through his treasure hunt.

He taped the heart clues to himself as he went along; the big heart was on the plate of cookies.  I think Will liked the little game.

And I know Whitney liked the little game.  Here she enjoys the chocolate rose that was part of Will's candy. I think she commandeered most of the chocolate.

Will game me some lovely roses and a wire whisk and an iTunes gift card and some doritoes.  I also got Will a new card game called Ratuki that is pretty fun (but hard to play with small children).   

We took a family picture on Valentines Day.  Look at those happy smiling faces wearing red and pink.  I think it turned out pretty well.

We went out to eat for dinner and just brought the girls to the Mongolian grill with us.  Both of them decided they liked the rice, but weren't big fans of anything else.  So it was a good Valentines Day.

Winter Adventures

Sorry it has been such a long time since posting.  Our girls have been sick for a little while and nobody has felt up to doing too much.  But here are a couple of pictures of some of our Cheney winter adventures.

We went to the park close to our house on Saturday.

Whitney loved going down the cold slide and made me go down it too.  

I thought it was freezing to be outside, but Whitney didn't seem to notice.

Rachel couldn't get over the big mound of snow that separated the sidewalk and the grass.  I was happy for that because she isn't very steady on ground that isn't smooth.  So poor Rachel just walked around and around trying to find a way to get to Whitney.

The real reason we went to the park was so Will could practice using his new boomerang.  He bought it on Amazon with some birthday bucks.  Unfortunately, the park has lots of trees and after a couple of tosses the boomerang landed in a tree.  Poor Will spent like an hour and a half getting the thing out.  We will just have to keep practicing.

Cheney had a very first winterfest this year.  Nothing like a party in the night time of the dead of winter.  Thankfully, we all bundled up and there were fires around the square and heaters to keep everyone warm.  

Whitney enjoyed some free cotton candy.

Here Whitney gets her face painted.

She, oddly, chose an owl.  The poor lady didn't really know how to make an owl, but it turned out pretty good.  There also was bowling and the library ladies were there reading stories and a lady made balloon animals.  So it was fun, if not quite cold.

And here are a couple of random pictures from Cheney.

  

Whitney and Emma dress like queens for the letter 'Q'.  For this time, it was good that Jess moved away because I don't think he would have liked to be a queen.

Rachel enjoying some ice cream.  We tried to give her bites, but she insisted on feeding herself.  Here she holds the spoon upside down and very slowly scoops some up.  I'm not sure how much actually made it into her mouth.  But she didn't seem to care.

Whitney and Rachel both played peek-a-boo under the blanket for a good ten minutes.  Go girls go.  So there is a little update on our lives.