First Snow and Other Stuff

We, unfortunately, got our first snow this week. It was only two inches, which wasn't terrible.  The kids enjoyed it.

Just stepping outside.

Rachel tried to throw a snowball at me, but it stuck to her glove.  That made us both chuckle.

There was a lot of slipping and falling.  Lots of wet clothes.  Whitney and Rachel only stayed out for about fifteen minutes.

That was long enough to make Megan feel very jealous.  I left her inside and she was ticked.

I promised the kids that we would have hot chocolate on the day of the first snowfall.  We waited for Will to return home from work and all enjoyed the yummy treat.

And some other non-snow pictures.  Whitney and Rachel decided to pile things on the baby.  Megan was the happy recipient of books, coats, balls, and other miscellaneous toys.

Megan has two favorite sitting spots.  The first is on top of the heating vent.  I guess she is like a cat who loves the warm spot.  She will actually remove anything from the area that might be blocking her and gets a big smile on her face as she sits.

Her other favorite spot is to climb onto the computer desk and sit on the keyboard.  She gets very angry when we pull her down.  It would be funny if I wasn't worried about her falling or breaking the computer.

Obviously, I need to find another good spot for her to sit.  Anyway, that is the happenings in Umatilla.

The best Part of Fall

My favoritest part of Fall is the leaves.  I remember playing in lots of leaves growing up.  We had a Ginko tree in our front yard that produced a lot of leaves.  Over these last two weeks, we have been collecting lots of leaves in our front yard. Lots and lots of leaves.  It was finally a nice Autumn day right after Halloween.  I wanted to take the kids outside to pass on the tradition of leaf jumping.

Whitney LOVED, LOVED raking.  She spent a lot of time raking.  I hope she will still love raking so much in the future when we want to give her that chore.  Now, Whitney has been asking us everyday if she can do more raking.

Rachel wanted to get into the action also.  She could not rake very well because the rake kept getting caught in the grass.  But oh well.  She thought it was fun and we ended up having to take turns with the rake.

After we got a big pile, it was time to jump in.  Whitney was the first one brave enough to step into the leaves.

I put Megan in the middle of the pile and she not impressed.  She started crying right away.

Rachel also got into the action of jumping in the leaves.

Whitney 'swims' in the pile.

Megan would get right on the outskirts of the pile and watch everyone else playing.  She still didn't like the leaves.

And getting buried under the leaves by daddy.  

Whitney and I had a leaf fight.  

Whitney got even more leaves on her during our leaf fight.  There was a lot of laughing, so it was fun.

I hope we have some more enjoyable Autumn weather.

A "Shiver Me Timbers" Halloween

I wanted to do a family themed Halloween this year, like being the Incredibles last year.  So we were going to be a s'more.  But that just didn't work out.  So we decided to just dress the kids.  But they sure were cute.

We had an old pirate outfit that Whitney wore two years ago but still fits the kids.  I found another pirate outfit at WalMart.

I wanted Megan to be a pirate also, but they didn't have any in her size.  So I decided to make her a shark (that, at least, chases pirates).

Shark attacks the couch.  Watch Out!

This is at the beginning of our trick-or-treating.  We went to a special trick-or-treating in the afternoon down Main street Hermiston.  You can tell this is at the beginning because Megan still kept her shark hood on.

Lots of the people giving out candy were dressed up, but I didn't get to take lots of pictures since I was too nervous about children getting lost.  There were thousands of kids.  It was pretty fun and the girls got lots of candy.

We went down to Pasco and the kids had another go at trick-or-treating.  They were already tuckered out from the afternoon, so we didn't stay out too long.

THere were lots of really cool decorated houses.  Whitney and Rachel were both a bit scared by some of the decorations, especially the ones that made noises.  They made me ring those doorbells.  All in all, a very successful Halloween.  Next year I will plan a family costume a little earlier.

Pre-Halloween

I have not been a good blogger lately.  I know that I should have posted this like a week ago.  But here are some of our pre-Halloween but getting ready for Halloween pictures.  We didn't do a lot this year, but the kids didn't seem to notice.

We went to the pumpkin patch that we went to last year and this year they were charging for everything.  That was depressing.  But going to just the pumpkin patch part was still free.  The boy in the middle is my brother Conner; he came along with us on our excursion.

Megan liked touching all the pumpkins.  This was a good one.

The real winner was the big corn box.  There were all kinds of toys for digging and dumping.  Megan liked playing in the corn also.  I don't think she ate too many.

We put up our Halloween crafts outside, instead of regular decorations that you have to buy.  The kids were really proud of their artwork.  Unfortunately, there were a couple of rain/wind storms in the week before Halloween.  So some of our artwork disappeared. 

Will took the girls to the primary program practice and then the Halloween carnival they have afterwards.  I wish that I could have gone, but I had Stake Auxiliary Training.  Oh well.  There is Rachel picking out a prize after playing a game.

I didn't get to actually see the mustaches, but the girls sure were excited to tell me about them.

Rachel decorates her candy bag.

We spent an afternoon doing pumpkins.  Whitney and Rachel both really liked pulling out the seeds and goop.

Whitney watches Will carve her pumpkin.

She ended up getting a ghost pumpkin.  I carved a face for Rachel's one.  Anyway, those are the pre-Halloween pictures.  Stay tuned for costume pictures in a couple of days.