Some decorating

A bunch of families in our ward decided to have a joint family home evening.  We met at the church to make gingerbread houses - well, technically, graham cracker houses.  It was fun to see all the creative designs for the houses.

 

Whitney was really interested at the beginning.  She liked handing me graham crackers and watching me magically stick them together with the frosting.

She even tried to help a little bit in the design.  We kept the house pretty simple.

Then came the fun part of picking out the candy.  Everyone brought candy to share, so there was a lot of variety.  One of the biggest hits was the reeses pieces we brought, so we will have to remember that for next year.  Whitney and Rachel both had fun eating the candy during the house making.

Everyone gets in on the house making action.  I made most of the house and then Will did the decorating.

Will pretends to take a bite of the finished house.  We didn't actually eat very much of our house, but we sure had fun making it.

We also got to do some decorating down in Pasco.  Whitney helps my mom make some gingerbread cookies.

She only actually decorated a couple before getting bored, but that's okay.  We had some gingerbread men and some karate men, so it was fun.

Birthday Celebrations

My family came into town on Saturday to be part of some birthday celebrations.  Since Will's and Rachel's birthdays are so close together, it just made sense to have one big party.  It was fun.

We tried to decorate the apartment a little bit.  The sign is kind of hard to read, but it says "Happy Birthday Rachel".  Will said he didn't need a sign for him.

We also blew up some balloons and let the girls play with them for awhile.  It was hard to get a good picture of balloon playing since the balloons (and the children) wouldn't hold still for very long.

Rachel takes a good long look at her present.  I don't think she knew what she was suppose to do with it.

But with a lot of help from mom, she got the hang of unwrapping.  Good thing too with Christmas right around the corner.  Thanks for the presents everyone.

Whitney apparently thought that Will needed help opening presents too.  She was oh so kind at pretty much opening most of them.  Such a nice girl.  Again, thanks for the birthday presents.

Will asked for cupcakes for his birthday; each one had two or three candles in it to get up to thirty.  Here Will is right about to blow them out.

Rachel got a special '1' candle.  It has little stars all over it because Whitney liked that one more than the one with polka dots.  Rachel was pretty interested at the funny shiny thing on her high tray, but there were no burns, so that was good.  Will helped her blow out that candle too.

And stuffing her face with the cupcake frosting.  Rachel loves frosting, but not the cupcake part as much.  Whitney only likes the cupcake part and not the frosting.  So with their powers combined, they can eat a cupcake.  I know she looks tired in the picture, but I think the flash just made her blink. 

Will also took a big bite of his cupcake so he could have frosting lips.  Aren't they cute?

And the frosting was finger lickin' good.  Rachel also really liked the bite size pieces of ice cream we gave her.  She was one happy, and slightly messy, little girl.

While I cleaned up Rachel and the kitchen, the men did the manly work of putting Whitney's new bed together.  Kylee supervised to make sure everything went as planned.  We found a twin size bed on Craigslist in Spokane, so Will and my dad went and got it and put it together.  It only required one trip to the hardware store to get the pieces that somehow went missing from Spokane to back home. 

Thank you guys for coming and helping get the bed and all that.  It was a fun birthday for everyone.

Santa is coming to town

We went to the tree lighting ceremony at the library last week.  It was fun for both the girls, especially when santa came along.  I took a couple pictures of our time.

It started snowing just lightly right before it was time to go, so we bundled up the girls really well.  I think they stayed plenty warm while we were outside.

This is the big tree outside the library right before they turned on the lights.

We got to have hot chocolate and cookies and listen to a youth choir sing Christmas carols while we waited for the tree to light up.  The hot chocolate really hit the spot on the cold night.

I'm afraid it isn't the best picture of the tree lit up.  But it was really pretty.  Whitney was pretty amazed by it and kept staring (I think Rachel was a bit indifferent, oh well).

Then santa came on the fire truck and all the kids crowded around him.  Whitney went up to him and got a candy cane, so she was happy.  Rachel also went up to santa, but he had run out of candy canes.  Sorry Rachel - maybe next year will be different.

A police officer read Christmas books in the library. 

A nice lady inside the library volunteered to take our picture next to the little tree in the library.  So it was a great beginning to the Christmas season.

I is for Indian

I was in charge of the letter I for alphabet days.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out things to do that start with I and then my dad came up with the idea while we were down in Pasco.  He said we could do Indians.  I know it is suppose to be Native Americans or American Indians, but we just focused on Indian because that starts with I.

We danced to One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians and we read a book about Indians so the kids would know what an Indian is.

Rachel got to do a little coloring too since Enoch wasn't there and I had an extra copy.  She sometimes does okay with coloring, but mostly she still prefers eating the crayons.

We made Indian headdresses.  The kids got to glue on feathers and string beads to make them.

I made Whitney's a little big at first, so I had to restaple it.  She kept telling me that it needed to be fixed.

We did a funny painting activity.  You color white paper with white crayon and then you lightly paint over it with a rock color.  The wax in the crayon is suppose to prevent the paint from hitting that part.  It sort of worked, but you had to color really really hard and the kids weren't good at doing that.  But it was suppose to be an Indian rock painting thing.  Oh well.  The kids enjoyed painting.

Then we made Indian corn for snack.  You take a graham cracker and break it in half the long way.  Then you cover it with nutella or chocolate frosting and put reeses pieces all over it.  It gets wrapped with a cupcake liner for the husk.  Whitney made a corn and didn't want to eat it.  So she just ate graham crackers.

We also had orange juice ice pops.  They didn't really have anything to do with Indians.  But it did start with I and the kids loved them. 
So I think the letter I was a success.

Turkey Time

What a great Thanksgiving we had down in Pasco.  I am grateful to have family so close by that we can visit for the holidays.  We had a good couple of days there this last weekend.

Thanksgiving morning the kids all made cookie turkeys.  You take a cookie and a mini reeses cup and a chocolate covered peanut and some candy corn and frosting and you got it.

It was easy enough that Whitney could mostly do it by herself.  But I was the supervisor to make sure no frosting got spilled.

Whitney holds up her turkey for everyone to see.  This is a girl who doesn't like getting her hands dirty - sort of.  So she was trying to hold it all tenderly, so I had to help.

Even Rachel made a turkey.  Unlike Whitney, Rachel likes to eat sweet things.  So I gave her fingerfuls of frosting throughout the turkey making process and she was pretty happy.  I think she wanted to eat more of the cookie though.

Here we all stand right by the turkey right before it was carved.  My mom uses a special turkey cooker and it does a good job. It was quite yummy.

Whitney pretended to dig into her food by stirring her jello for like twenty minutes.  I think she might have eaten a bite or two of the Thanksgiving feast.  But everyone else enjoyed the meal.

We played games after dinner.  We broke off into girls versus boys and came up with some hard words for the other team to draw.  Then the 'it' person had 60 seconds to draw something and have their team guess.  And we all played no mercy with really hard words - like white blood cell, or water chestnut, or Mitt Romney.  It was an intense game.

We did lots of other fun things while down in Pasco for a couple of days.  We played some video games.  Whitney loves taking turns.

Whitney got to play some ping pong with my dad.  With a lot of help from mom, she did pretty good.

And Rachel spent a lot of time practicing going up down the stairs.  We had a couple of close calls while we were there, but there were a lot of eyes to watch Rachel to make sure she didn't fall down. 
So it was really fun.  Thanks for letting us come visit you guys.