New Years

Happy 2012 everybody!  We plan on having a great year here in Cheney.  Now I just need to remember to write 2012 on everything; somehow I always mess that up for the first month or so.  We had a really fun New Years with our family.  Will's parents were able to come into town for the weekend.  We wish they could have stayed longer, but it was fun seeing them.

Rachel and Whitney really love their Grandpa Keeler.  Whitney thought it was great fun having someone else read her a story - instead of boring old mom who always reads bedtime stories. 

We went to Turnbull Wildlife Refuge while they were here.  Unfortunately, in December there are no wildlife around, so we got to look at pretty wildlife habitat.  Will's parents were clever and told Whitney that all the animals were sleeping.  We will have to go back later when Whitney can see some animals.

So it was a really pretty little adventure.  I wish there had been any animals (even a bird to see), but that was not to be.  Oh well.  I don't think Whitney was too disappointed.  We still had a nice time looking around.

For New Years, we had a delicious cheese fondue party.  I have never made fondue, so Will's mom taught me how she makes it and it was tasty.  I will have to get her to write down the recipe for me.

I didn't know dipping crackers and broccoli into a cheese fondue would be so filling, but all of us were too full to do the chocolate fondue that we had planned.  ( Dont worry though because the chocolate was used the next day; we didn't let it go to waste).

We did Rachel's baby blessing on Sunday.  It was kind of last minute, but we wanted Will's parents to be able to attend.  The blessing was really beautiful; I am grateful that Will honors the priesthood so he could give the blessing. 

Here are pictures of our families after the blessing.  We took Rachel out of her dress so it couldn't get dirty. 

So we had a great New Years.  Thanks Will's parents for coming out to see us.  We had lots of fun together.  I hope we can see you guys again soon.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year.  I love that it fell on Sunday and we were able to hear Christmas messages and listen to beautiful music at church.  What a special way to really commemorate the birth of our Savior.  And, of course, there were lots of great presents to open after we got home from church.

Whitney was so excited to be given permission to rip.  She usually isn't allowed to rip paper or books or anything like that at home, so ripping the wrapping paper off the presents was a special treat.  Maybe we will have to wrap presents more often so Whitney can rip more.

There were only a couple of times when we had to stop Whitney from opening other peoples presents.  But she did get to open baby Rachel's gifts and some of mom and dad's as well.  I think that was her favorite part of Christmas.

Whitney enjoyed checking out the stockings.  She liked pulling out the treats and then putting them back in again so she could pull them back out.  It was pretty entertaining just watching her work.  The stocking is almost as big as Whitney, so she required a little assistance from Will to get the treats that were on the bottom. 

Here are all the kids on Christmas morning.

 Hooray for everybody being together.  It had been about a year since we were all together, so this was really fun.  In between opening presents we had some snacks - chips and dip and a veggie tray and crackers. 

After Christmas dinner we played some fun games.  I think everybody likes Apples to Apples.  Conner got a new game where you balance little chairs on top of each other; it sounds kind of weird, but it is actually pretty fun.  I was horrible at it though.  I just need more practice - lots and lots more practice.

Finally, since we had extra bodies, we asked Erin to take a family picture of the four of us.  This is our first picture all together.

Whitney has a little bit of red eye; my sister bought us photo shop though, so as soon as we get that all set up we will be able to fix up the pictures.  I am really excited about that because I like to take lots of pictures.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Christmas as well.  Lots of love to all of you from Cheney.

Pre-Christmas Traditions in Pasco

My family has a lot of fun traditions surrounding Christmas time.  We really just enjoy spending as much time together as possible, especially since everybody from Utah was able to come to Pasco as well this year.  That made this Christmas break extra fun.  There are too many pictures for just one blogpost.  So this will be the pre-Christmas pictures.  More will come later.

We made Christmas ornaments this year by taking empty ornaments and filling them with paint and swirling the paint around.  It is a fun project because you never know what it will look like at the end.  I asked Whitney what color she wanted to use and she said 'brown'.  I was able to convince her to also put some blue into the ornament.  Of course, the project took longer than the attention span of a toddler, so her ornament wasn't finished.  But that's okay.  There ended up being some really pretty ornaments made.

We also decorated some gingerbread men cookies.

The gingerbread man in the middle is Whitney's.  She really liked being able to choose whatever candy she wanted to place on it.

And Whitney does a little taste-testing of the frosting to make sure it wasn't poisonous or anything like that.  Once she tried the frosting, the cookie-decorating came to a stand-still.

Every year my family goes to the Griggs All-Night Sale.  There are auctions for cheaper items and blue-light specials and fun things to do.  We always set up a table and chairs to play games.  This year, for the first time that anyone recalls, there was a Santa for the children.  So we took a couple of pictures with us and Santa.

Whitney loved  the little "reindeer"; which was a really cute baby goat.

I didn't think we would get a picture of Rachel sitting on Santa's lap this year because she was born so soon to Christmas.  But I am really happy that Santa showed up at Griggs so we could get a couple of pictures with him.

It was too cold to take baby Rachel ding-dong-ditching, so she and I stayed home.  But Will took Whitney with the rest of my family out to deliver some goodies to some families.  It is hard to tell in this bottom picture, but that is Will holding Whitney and coming back from a house after dropping off some treats.  Of course, we all enjoyed eating the extra treats after coming home.

Finally, here are two pictures of us getting ready for the Nativity Story.  Our family always acts it out every year and every year we just have a grand time.  My mom always tapes it for us.  Sometimes it gets a little crazy.

Will and Rachel and I ended up being Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus (I'll give you three guesses on who was who).  We didn't get any pictures of us, oh well.  Acting out the Nativity Story was still really fun. 

So we had lots of fun in Pasco.  Stay tuned for our next blog to see us on Christmas day.

A Baby Girl

Those who don't know, we had a 90% chance of having a baby boy.  So we had things all ready for a little boy.  But after being born, the nurse was cleaning up our baby and said she was a girl.  Boy were we shocked at the announcement.  But the shock wore off and we were very excited to welcome little Rachel Sue Keeler into our lives.

Isn't she beautiful?  I know that I am biased as Rachel's mom, but I think she is such a beautiful and precious baby daughter.  Here are a couple pictures of our family.

My mom brought Whitney to the hospital to meet her new little sister.  It is a good thing we had practiced saying 'Isaac' over and over with Whitney.  Oh well.  Now we can practice saying Rachel.  It was really cute seeing Whitney want to hold the baby.  She kept holding her arms out to get a turn at the baby.  Thank you so much to my mom and the rest of my family for watching Whitney for us.  That made everything a lot easier. 
  Finally, here is a picture of poor Rachel going home.  Remember that we thought we were having a boy.

Rachel seems to think the car seat is only okay if it is in motion.  Just sitting in the car seat is not acceptable.  I guess we will see how she does on a long car trip.  So we have a beautiful and wonderful new addition to our family.  It will take some adjustment to go from having one toddler to having two children, but it will be a good adjustment.  I hope everyone has happy holidays.

Birthday Bowling

So my family came up this last weekend for Will's birthday and we weren't sure what we wanted to do.  It was much too cold to do anything outside like we did with my birthday in September.  Then we got a coupon in the mail the day before my family came that gave a big discount for bowling at our local lanes in Cheney.  It came with eight shoe rentals, two family size pizzas, eight soft drinks, and bowling as much as you want for two hours for only seventy bucks.  So that is what we did and we had lots of fun.  I haven't been bowling in years and Whitney has never gone bowling, so we all just had a good time and didn't get too competitive.

Whitney got help pushing the ball down the lane.  My mom was great at helping her whenever Whitney's turn came up.  They used a special light bowling ball that the bowling manager had in the back that was good for Whitney and Conner.  Whitney really liked the machine that brings the balls back (whatever that machine is called) and we had to always watch to make sure she didn't squish her finger or bonk her head on it.

Whitney and I wait to see where the ball goes.  Whitney was pretty fascinated by watching the ball go down the lane to hit the pins.  Here are some more family members bowling.

So we all had a great time bowling.  I think my dad was the ultimate bowling champion.  Will and everyone else did pretty good as well.  I was lucky and got to use the lane with the bumpers; it's a little challenging bowling when you are quite pregnant.

There was a lot of fun hanging out in between turns.  We did a lot of high-fiving and cheering and pizza eating.  And there was only one Whitney escape.  She took off down the lane and I started chasing her before she could reach the pins but the lane was way too slippery and I was afraid of falling.  So my dad ran and caught the escape artist right before she got to the pins.  Altogether, I say we had a fun, successful bowling trip.

Happy 29th birthday Will!  I love you.

And just for fun.  Here is a little video of Whitney who was very excited to see herself on TV when we connected the new camera to the television.