Happy Father's Day

A great Father's Day we had over here.  The girls enjoyed having a day to celebrate their dad.

See how much the girls enjoy their dad.  They are definitely daddy girls.  Will must really love them too to let them climb all over him.

I made a poster puzzle for Will and hid pieces all around the house.

Putting the pieces together.  It said "Happy Father's Day, My Handsome Prince."  The kids were only too happy to help find the pieces and help Will put the pieces together.

Getting to open presents.  This card made me chuckle.  It says "Today we celebrate dads" then inside says "tomorrow we go back to driving them crazy, better enjoy your day."   I thought it was funny and oh so appropriate with lots of little kids in the house.

Holding a few of the presents.  I gave Will different things throughout the week.  I think he liked his gifts.

After church we went down to Pasco.  I had let each kid pick a toy from the dollar store for grandpa and Megan picked this water stick pencil thing.  It was a big hit.  Everyone had to run away from grandpa.

Lots of other outside toys came out.  It was perfect weather.

I gave Will a croquet set for Father's Day.  We took it with us and played a game.  

And Father's Day ended with strawberry pie - an Anderson tradition.  So it was a great day.  

A Pasco Graduation

We have been sick with the flu lately and have mostly stayed inside at home.  But we did take a break from being homebound to go to my sister's graduation from high school.

The grads coming into the stadium.  I felt a little bad for them because it was like upper nineties outside and walking in those robes must have been pretty miserable.

Kaitlin was one (out of eight valedictorians) so she gave a little speech.  Congratulations Kaitlin!  It was great hearing your speech; she even managed to throw in a Book of Mormon verse.  Awesome.

I found Kaitlin first after graduation.  Look at all those ribbons she got to wear.

Everyone together and chatting.  Whitney only looks a little upset.  We weren't at 100% yet and everyone was too hot.  So there was some whining and more whining by the end.

Kaitlin had a lot of people show up to her graduation party.  It was at my parents' house.

Kaitlin picked a stick party - different kinds of shish kabobs.  My dad got the lucky job of grilling the whole time.  There also were sandwich kabobs and fruit and dessert ones.  All delicious.

Rachel shows off her fruit kabob.  Now if she would have only eaten very much of it.

During some down time, the girls got out the tent and played downstairs.  It was pretty fun.

And this leads to a funny story.  There was a quarter slice of partially child squished up pizza left from the dinner before graduation, so the girls wanted to feed it to the dog.  Zoey is very gentle, but Megan did not want to let go of the piece.  She let Zoey grab it, but then wouldn't let go.  Poor dog was all confused.  Finally I just fed it to the dog.  Anyway, it was kind of cute.

So that was a fun weekend.  It was good to see family.  Sorry to those we made sick.

Seeing Cousins

While we were in Utah, we were able to see some cousins that we hadn't seen in awhile.  That was fun.

Will has a cousin named Greg that he hasn't seen in awhile.  But Greg and Adrianna moved to Utah and we wanted to go visit them.  We had a good long visit.  Will use to be Greg's roommate, so they were able to talk about some old buddies they knew.  They have such a nice family.

Megan got to play with their baby.  Aren't they adorable together?

Will's sister, Emily, and the Guptil family arrived in Utah Sunday evening.  My kids were immediately interested in their cousins.  

It was, miraculously, a nice evening.  So the girls went outside and everyone ran around playing.

It was so fun watching them interact.  I wish we could live closer together so we could hang out as cousins more often.

Getting everyone on the couch.  It was quite a feat.

This picture was messed up with our camera dysfunction.  But it still shows our other cousin we got to see in Utah.  We went over to my sister's house and played games and had dinner.  Baby Tessa watched everyone (and tried really hard to play our games).

Obviously not a cousin, but a funny picture.  Megan loves animals and got a little too close to Erin's cat.  The cat decided that was unacceptable and started to run away as soon as the picture snapped.  Oh well.

Thanks for letting us visit.  We had a great time in Utah.

Temples and Friends

This was definitely Utah.  There are beautiful temples everywhere.  We were fortunate enough to get tickets to take everyone to the Payson Utah temple open house.  I was really excited that my girls would be able to see inside a temple.

 

Obviously, you cannot take pictures inside the temple.  But here we are after watching the little intro movie, making our way to the beautiful temple.  Megan loved the 'water' in the baptismal font and said "water" over and over for the rest of the tour.  Whitney remembers that there are more stairs inside the temple than pictures of Jesus.  Hmm...maybe we will have to try to take another tour when they are a little older.

There was a 'visitors center' tent set up outside the temple.  We are watching a video of when temples started dotting the earth.

Here is our family sitting in front of the temple.  It was beautiful outside.

The next day we were able to go into Salt Lake and spend some time with my high school friend, Micah, and her family.  They just moved to Utah a couple of months ago.  We haven't seen each other in awhile, so that was fun.  The kids liked looking at the reflection of the temple in the pool.

We went to a Disney store that is in the mall in Salt Lake.  There was a castle for the girls to play princess.  Whitney and Rachel like playing princess, as I am sure all girls do.

Then we spent some time at the park together until it started to rain and we figured we better go home.  Funny story about the park.  Megan had fallen asleep on the way to the park and the other girls had eaten their nutella sandwiches.  So we put Megan in the stroller and I just put the sandwich on her lap while I watched the other girls playing.  Then I saw a couple of dogs and one of them went right up to her and grabbed the sandwich from her lap, while she slept.  We all had a good laugh.  I hope the dog didn't get sick from the nutella.

                                         

I am glad that we had time to see some temples and hang out with friends while we were in Utah.

The Gardens

There are beautiful gardens at Thanksgiving Point.  There are like thirteen themed gardens.  I cannot remember all the names of the gardens, but they were fun to see.  It was a good thing we had Grandma Keeler around to tell us what kind of flowers we were looking at.

We stopped to smell lots of things.  Looks can be deceiving; some of the prettiest flowers and trees had no scent at all.

This was the Waterfall Gardens.  It was obviously man made, but still serene and peaceful.  I enjoy watching waterfalls.

I don't remember what this garden was called.  But the flowers were growing inside a merry-go-round.  Maybe that would solve our poor soil problem.  

Entering into the Secret Garden.  

I don't remember much of the movie, but everyone else said it sort of resembled the garden in the movie.  The girls enjoyed touching the cool water and then making hand prints.

We were able to see some beautiful Japanese lanterns and we saw a really beautiful bird while we were here.

This was my favorite garden, called The Light of The World.  There were amazing statues of Jesus.  Here is one with Jesus as a 'hen gathereth her chicks'.

Megan liked petting the chickens.  Does she know it is a statue, I am not sure.

This was the biggest statue.  It portrayed Jesus walking on the waves of the water "It is I, be not afraid."  It was a really touching piece.  There were quite a few other statues as well portraying different moments of Jesus' life. 

The rose garden smelled the most beautiful.  It also attracted the most bees.  We didn't stay here long because the girls were getting pretty tired after all this walking.

This was the girls favorite spot - viewing the Koi fish.  There were hundreds of brightly colored fish that would swim right at the surface (because people could buy fish food and feed them).  Grandpa Keeler gave each girl some fish food.  It was amazing to watch the fish vie for the most food.  And they were just as beautiful as all the flowers in the garden.

Walking through the gardens reminded me to be grateful for the creation.  All those colors and smells.  It was wonderful.