Homecoming Fun

Hello everybody!  This past week was homecoming for Eastern and we have never done anything for homecoming (not even when Will actually went to Eastern).  But I thought Whitney was old enough that she might enjoy some of the festivities.  And I think Whitney did have a fun time.

There were a couple of people walking around campus on stilts.  Whitney kept pointing and gawking at them, so she must have been shocked that somebody could be so tall.

There was a clown making balloon animals that wanted to make one for Whitney.  She looks grumpy in the picture, but she actually really liked her doggy balloon.  Of course, it only lasted a couple of days because Whitney bit it and twisted it until it broke and popped.  Oh well.  Whitney thought the clown was pretty cool.

And Whitney got her very first taste of cotton candy.  She LOVED it.  I wasn't sure how she would do with the cotton candy, but she was able to get little pieces off of it and she only got a little sticky. Thankfully, a baby wipe cleaned her up real quick.   It is hard to see Whitney's face, but I promise that it is there. 

This is Swoop.  He is the eagle mascot for Eastern.  And a bunch of cheerleaders who did some dances to pump people up.  Whitney kept pointing to the bird and saying 'tweet tweet'.  We ended up in the front of the crowd and WHitney was able to high five Swoop.  Not everyone can say they have done that.  Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of her doing that.  Oh well.  The rest of the day she kept saying 'big bird'.  It was fun.

Friday night was the homecoming parade.  I have never been to a parade at night; it was too dark to get any pictures of the cars and floats, so this is a picture right after the parade.  Whitney is trying to show off the pretty necklaces and the blue elephant she got at the parade.  The students at the parade thought she was cute, so she was given extra candy.  So we can use it as Halloween candy.

Whitney wore pigtails for the first time today for church.  She looked so cute.  Unfortunately, Whitney liked pulling at her hair.  So we had to put the ponytails back in a couple of times.  The people at church thought she looked cute.  Maybe we can practice the pigtails and she will get use to not pulling at them.

It is a little hard to tell, but Whitney's face is covered in butter.  With our WIC checks, we have had a lot of fruits and vegetables lately.  So we have been eating corn on the cob, which Whitney loves.  I think she mostly likes the melted butter on the corn, but she ate a couple of real bites as well.

Whitney and Will like playing the gamecube.  And Whitney knows if her controller isn't really working.  So she and Will play supersmash bros. sometimes.  One day, Whitney got really tired while she was playing.  She almost fell asleep sitting up.  Now we have evidence that Whitney likes Nintendo.

  Finally, Whitney is becoming our big girl.  She tries to push her big stroller with her baby and the bear that aunt Erin knitted for her.  Unfortunately, she often gets the stroller stuck in corners and she needs our help getting her unstuck and she gets angry.  But she does like doing the pushing without any help.

So things are going great in Cheney.  We are getting excited for Halloween coming up soon.

Rainy Days

These past several days in Cheney have been quite rainy.  And it looks like it is going to be raining on and off for the next week, so we have been doing inside things.  Whitney is catching a bit of a cold, so I don't want to take her outside in the yucky weather.  But Whitney misses being outside and running around.

I don't know what the sad face is about.  Whitney was just fine.  And don't be mislead by the appearance of sunshine streaming through the window.  We have a big window in our living room and Whitney has learned how to climb from the heating vent to the window sill.  Sometimes she just seems to disappear and then we know she must be hiding behind the curtain.  We are trying to discourage the practice, for obvious safety reasons, but Whitney loves climbing.

My mom gave us a squash from their garden when they came to visit us for my birthday.  I have never eaten squash and wasn't sure what to do with it.

So I looked in one of our handy cookbooks and I found a beef and vegetable stew that looked promising.  Here Whitney gets a chance to do a little stirring; she always wants to be 'up' when we are cooking so she can look into the pots.  Will and I have both gotten use to holding her and cooking at the same time.  Whitney wasn't allowed to stir for very long though because she kept trying to take the wooden spoon out of the big pot which was just making a mess.

The stew turned out more like a thick soup, but it tasted pretty good.  So now I can add that to my list of things I can cook.  Am I the only one who has a standby of like 12 recipes that just get used over and over again?
Will gave me a teddy bear when we were newly married that has been sitting on my dresser drawers with some of my other special goodies I have collected over the years.  Whitney noticed this bear and has been wanting to play with it.  She calls it 'roar' because she knows that is what bears say.

I am still working on trying to get Whitney to smile for the camera.  It isn't like she is unhappy or anything, she just stares at the camera with a blank face.  But at least she is holding still, which doesn't happen all the time.  Often, our pictures look blurry or have half a head because Whitney is running towards or away from me.

It is a little hard to tell, but Whitney's shirt says "My smiles keep me out of trouble".  I think it is cute and probably a little too true.  When Whitney smiles, I just love her to pieces and remember how great it is to have a beautiful daughter - even though she sometimes tells me she is a boy and not a girl.

I hope this video works.  We are all doing well in Cheney.  We are hoping for the rain to end soon though so we can start taking walks outside again, but at least rain is better than snow.  Bye!

LOVE...and a bag clip

This past weekend was great with general conference.  I love hearing our prophet speak and the other church leaders.  I thought there were some really great talks.  But despite how much I loved conference and the spirit that was felt while watching, that wasn't my favorite thing that happened this weekend.  On Saturday, Whitney said "I love mom" for the first time.  That made me so happy.  I know that she doesn't really understand what she is saying, but I don't care, it just made my heart melt.  Will and I say that we love Whitney all the time, but she would never say 'love' when we prompted her to.  So now I owe my thanks to a bag clip.  Will and Whitney were playing with a bag clip and Will would say something in a funny voice and Whitney would sometimes repeat it, if she was in the mood.  Will said "I love mom" and then Whitney did.  And it sounded like she really said it.  I was so excited.  We tried to get her to say "I love mom" on camera, but we haven't had luck yet.  So we will keep working on it.  Maybe soon she will really understand what love means.  Anyway, no pictures for this post.  I just wanted to write that I love being a mom and watching Whitney grow.  It is just amazing. 

Trip into Spokane

My family came into town this last Saturday for my birthday.  I got to open presents - yeah!  And then we went into Spokane to spend time doing some fun activities.  The only down side was Will had to work that afternoon, so he only got to spend half the day with us.  But we had a lot of fun together.
We went to Riverside State Park where they have mini-golfing.  Here are a couple of pictures of us.

Whitney was a pretty good little putter.  She loved running around the mini-golf course and placing the ball into all the little holes.  My mom was very nice and watched her while the rest of us did some golfing.  My dad was the ultimate golfing champion, but I came in second and was happy about that.

Whitney stands by the funny tiki man at the golf course.  It was hard getting clear shots of Whitney; she kept moving around to check out everything and didn't want to hold still long enough for pictures.  Oh well.  I'm glad she thought it was fun.
We walked around the park after mini-golfing.  It is a really huge park with lots of fun things for kids and adults.  Oktoberfest was going on that weekend, so we avoided that area with the people drinking, but the rest of the park was great.

Whitney checks out the huge water fountain area.  She loves playing in the water at home.  She wasn't too sure at first what she was suppose to do.

But then Whitney got really into it and got herself all wet.  We finally had to pull her away from the water because she was starting too shiver.  Thankfully, it was a really hot day and her clothes dried in no time.

Whitney and grandpa go down the red wagon slide.  There is a huge red wagon at the park that all the children love to go down.  Whitney was a little afraid to go down the slide by herself, but she was happy if someone was holding her.  My brother Conner liked going down the slide as well.

We weren't tall enough to put Whitney on top of the big wagon wheel; so she got to sit on the little cog.  Unfortunately, she refused to look at the camera.  I think she was more fascinated by all the children and small dogs that were running around the park.
Then we went to a great children's museum that is in the Riverside Mall across the street from the park.  I wasn't sure if it would be any good because museums in malls are usually pretty small, but this was one awesome.  I could have spent hours of fun here if I were a kid, or even now.  Some of the hands-on exhibits looked really fun.

Whitney's favorite place was this water table.  She met a new friend and they shared little water boats and ducks and whatnot.  I think Whitney mostly liked splashing and seeing the current take the duck away to the other side of the table.  You are suppose to use the walls to move the water currents in the direction you want and see how that affects the toys, but Whitney mostly just liked getting all wet.

I think one of Conner's favorite exhibits was these cars.  You could get them moving by steering and there was a little driving course that was suppose to teach driving safety.  Kids could hold stop signs or be school crossing guards.  Whitney really liked the cars as well, but she kept putting her feet on the ground and then the car wouldn't move very well.  So maybe when she is a little older she will learn to keep her feet up.

There was a large bamboo house with play kitchen areas.  Here Whitney is checking out the plastic fish.  I don't know what she thought of them because she wouldn't hold them for very long.  Whitney did like the other plastic food though and kept trying to eat them.  Maybe she was getting hungry.

Here Conner shows Whitney how to dig with the crane.  There was a rock pit and you could move the crane around to pick up and dump the small rocks.   Conner was very patient at teaching Whitney the different things she could do, but I don't think Whitney was quite old enough to understand.  She wanted to just play with the small rocks.

There was an area for children under three that was perfect for Whitney.  It had a little slide and huge pillows and this little trampoline.  I didn't know it was a trampoline until Whitney threw out all the toys inside and started jumping.  She really likes jumping on anything that has even a slight bounce to it.  The nice thing was there was a little bench outside the area where parents could watch their kids and not have to go inside if they didn't want to.

My older brother, Michael, went to the Philippines on his mission and had to learn Tagalog.  My mom and I were both surprised to see this sign in the museum teaching some Tagalog words.  I wonder if they switch the languages every couple weeks or something, but it was just kind of random that out of all the thousands of world languages, this one happened to be up while we were at the museum.

The last thing we did before the museum closed was the lego wall.  Conner put up his name to see how long it would last.  I just helped find the right pieces in the right colors.  So this was a really great museum.  They had huge building blocks and dress-up clothes and an art area.  I liked that it catered to both younger and older children.  Conner and Whitney were both able to have fun there.
We were all really tired by the time we got back to Cheney.  We did a lot of walking, but we had so much fun in Spokane.  I am glad that some of my family was able to come up and celebrate with me (Although my birthday isn't technically until Thursday).  But next Saturday is conference and would be too crazy to come.  So we had a great time in Spokane.  It is really a fun place to visit, but probably a little too crowded to ever want to live there.

Whitney is covering the 'C', but you get the idea.  We had a really fun day together.  I have such a great family.

Been a little while

Well, it has been a while since we have updated, so we need to backtrack a bit.  Things are going well in Cheney.  Whitney just had her 18-month check-up and she is 23.5 pounds and 30 inches tall.  So she is a little on the short side when it comes to other 18-month-old children, but I think that just runs in the family and would be impossible to get away from.  Here is what we have been doing lately.  On Labor Day, we went to Fish Lake and had a picnic there.

Whitney really loved the water.  Here she just dips her ankles in as she gets use to it.

Getting a little deeper in the lake.

Finally, Whitney made it about knee-deep and she started splashing Will.  Will was the protector since we forgot to put any sunscreen on and we didn't want Whitney to get burned.  I went into the water as well, but didn't want to bring the camera too close, so there aren't pictures of me in there.  Whitney loved the water.  We finally took her out to dry off and if we let go of her for a minute she would race back to the lake.  And Fish Lake is well-named.  We saw lots of fish while we were in there.

After playing in the lake and eating our lunch, we went to check out the playground.  Whitney thought it was pretty fun.

She even got the hang of the slide, as long as Will didn't let go of her too soon.  It got pretty hot though by 1:30 and Whitney was getting tired, so we went home after that to just hang out for the rest of Will's holiday.  It was nice having a three-day weekend.

The lady who owns the house we are renting from loves to garden.  She told us we could pick things if we want some fresh fruits and veggies. 

One day she said there were some extra green beans up for grabs, so we went out there to pick some. Whitney was pretty fascinated by the green beans and thought it was great fun to snap them in half.  I'm not quite sure why, but she was happy.

I guess Whitney is so use to getting diaper changes that she decided her baby needed a diaper change.  So she grabbed the changing pad and a diaper from her room to bring out into the living room to change her baby.  Of course, that didn't really work and she was actually putting the diaper on the baby's head, but it was really funny.  I tried taking several pictures but none turned out very well since Whitney was moving too much.  Oh well, you get the point.  Maybe she will change her new brother's diapers in the future.  As long as we don't mind the new diaper going on his head.

Finally, here is a cute picture of Whitney with some of her toys.  She has her baby and the cow and you cannot see in the picture, but she is also holding a shu-shu dog that Emily and Scott gave us from Japan.  This is when Whitney is happiest.  She loves her stuffed animals.  I wonder if our boy will enjoy them as much as her.  Anyway, things are going well.  Bye!