A Birthday Celebration

I know Whitney doesn't officially turn three until Tuesday, but we celebrated yesterday with my family.  And I think Whitney had a good time.

The two girls hung out on the couch with some stuffed animals until my family came.

There was a free kids concert in Spokane Saturday morning that we went to for Whitney's birthday.  I heard about the guy coming from the library - I guess they like sponsored him or something to fly out all the way from Chicago.

Some of us watching the guy play some music.  He sang goofy kids songs and played the banjo.

Whitney gets into it and does a little dancing.  She has a very serious face here, but I think she really did like the concert.  She kept doing small little smiles when she thought no one was paying attention.

Rachel really loved the concert and was full of smiles for all the dancing and singing.

Then we went out to lunch afterwards.  The buffet that was close to the concert hall was closed, so we stopped at a Dennys.  Whitney, of course, didn't want the mac and cheese we ordered for her.  But Rachel ate it and Whitney ate some extra grandpa pancakes.  Thanks for sharing the food.

We got back to Cheney and Whitney was so excited to open presents.  She reminded me of how Erin used to open presents so nicely.  Finally, we told her to just rip them open.

Getting a Dora the Explorer purse, which had $3 inside, so it was an extra good purse.

And opening the gift bag from grandma Keeler which had some cute clothes and some paint set things.  I'm telling you, this girl scored for her birthday.  She got clothes and a Mr. Potato head and some painting things and candy and books and movies. I think Conner was only a little jealous that she got to open so many presents.

Whitney picked donuts, instead of cake, for her birthday.  We got a big three and put it on her special donut.   She picked the one from the store with chocolate and sprinkles.  We tried for like five minutes to get her to blow out her candle, but she wouldn't do it.

She thought the donut was yummy.

And Rachel thought her donut was delicious.  She promptly stuffed her face with it.

It is hard to see clearly, but this was Whitney's birthday shirt.  It says 'Happy 3rd Birthday'.  Whitney decorated the bottom, but that was after the picture.  Now she wants to use the fabric markers on all her clothes.

We gave Rachel a new shirt too.  Look closely and try to figure out our exciting news.  Anyway, it was a good birthday.  Thanks for coming my family to make the birthday extra special.

T...T...and more T

I did the letter T for alphabet days and I think it was quite successful.  The girls both seemed to have a great time.  Here are a couple of the things we did.

The girls got to be trains.  They danced around to the Little Red Caboose song and they held just empty diaper boxes so they could be more like a couple of boxcars.

It did not take long for the train to break apart and become two loose boxcars, but the kids didn't care.  In fact, we had to do the song again because the kids really liked being trains.

Then we talked a little about temples and the girls glued on cotton balls to their temples.  Whitney is doing a good job of pushing down the cotton balls so they would stick to the glue.  (Mom was not allowed to help with this project).

We played a matching game of matching the tails to the animals.  I printed off a bunch of animals that have distinctive tails (like the horse and the fish and the pig and the peacock) and then I just drew the tails myself.  Whitney was really good at matching.

We built towers out of blocks.  Emma managed to make hers really high before the kids knocked them over. 

Finally, we just gave Rachel and Levi their own blocks so they would stop bugging their sisters' towers.  Not that that really worked because they still tried to knock over the taller towers.  But, at least we tried.

One thing the kids really loved was the triangle treasure hunt.  I cut out a bunch of triangles and sent the kids off to find the treasure from the clues written on the triangles.  Here they find a triangle underneath the rocking chair.

And finally we painted trees.  Both girls wanted to dip their hands into red paint for the tree trunk, but then they agreed to use green for the rest of the painting.  Whitney's tree came together quite nicely.

We had two things for snack - tigers and turtles.  I cut orange pieces and the kids drizzled melted chocolate on top to make the tigers.  

Here is a turtle made with pretzels, a rolo candy, a marshmallow, and a little frosting for the eyes.  The kids both loved their tigers and their turtles, so it was a success.

I think the kids really liked T.  And Whitney has been pointing T's out to me ever since, so at least I know she is learning something.

A Day in Spokane

We spent most of our day in Spokane last Saturday and it was a lot of fun.  My younger brother, Conner, is part of a DI group (I think DI stands for Destination Imagination and not Deseret Industries).  Anyway, this group has a big performance once a year where a bunch of schools send kids to perform.  They practice all year to get ready.

The skit they chose to do this year was impromptu, so here the lady is telling them some things they need to include in their skit (like the word turkey).

The DI Dudes preparing for their performance.

It was a clever little skit that was a rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but it was a polar bear and three penguins.

Conner is the one on the left; I am not quite sure what he is doing in this picture.

After the skit we went out to lunch at a buffet.  Just like at home, Rachel is dutifully eating her bread and Whitney is in the background ignoring the food to look at other things.

She did come back though and let me get a picture.  We went back to Conner's DI thing after lunch but we weren't allowed to watch the next part the kids did.  The kids aren't even allowed to talk about it afterwards.   But I guess they did really well because their group got first place in the awards ceremony.  Congratulations Conner and your group.  Thanks for letting us come watch.

While in Spokane, we also went to the Other Mothers store that was having their monthly quarter sale.  The clothes were just in a huge pile to sort through, but I found a couple of things that would be good for Whitney.  And I got all these clothes for only 3.25.  Isn't that great?

Anyway, it was a busy Saturday, but also lots of fun.

Happy Valentines

We had a great Valentines Day.  I love that Will and I enjoy celebrating the holidays; it is such fun.  Here are some things we did.

We surprised Will by making heart cookies.  I gave Whitney some of her own dough and she had a fun time rolling it and pressing it down to make shapes.  She told me that she was making candy canes for Wallace - who came and ate them and thought they were good.

We used some food dye to make different colors of frosting.  Whitney got really into the frosting; literally, just the frosting and not the putting of the frosting onto the cookies.  She frosted one cookie and decided she was done and just wanted to lick the frosting.  Kind of funny for a girl who didn't even like frosting not too long ago.

Then I made a treasure hunt for Will for after work.  I put this little heart note on our front door.

Will, with the help of ever diligent Whitney, goes through his treasure hunt.

He taped the heart clues to himself as he went along; the big heart was on the plate of cookies.  I think Will liked the little game.

And I know Whitney liked the little game.  Here she enjoys the chocolate rose that was part of Will's candy. I think she commandeered most of the chocolate.

Will game me some lovely roses and a wire whisk and an iTunes gift card and some doritoes.  I also got Will a new card game called Ratuki that is pretty fun (but hard to play with small children).   

We took a family picture on Valentines Day.  Look at those happy smiling faces wearing red and pink.  I think it turned out pretty well.

We went out to eat for dinner and just brought the girls to the Mongolian grill with us.  Both of them decided they liked the rice, but weren't big fans of anything else.  So it was a good Valentines Day.

Winter Adventures

Sorry it has been such a long time since posting.  Our girls have been sick for a little while and nobody has felt up to doing too much.  But here are a couple of pictures of some of our Cheney winter adventures.

We went to the park close to our house on Saturday.

Whitney loved going down the cold slide and made me go down it too.  

I thought it was freezing to be outside, but Whitney didn't seem to notice.

Rachel couldn't get over the big mound of snow that separated the sidewalk and the grass.  I was happy for that because she isn't very steady on ground that isn't smooth.  So poor Rachel just walked around and around trying to find a way to get to Whitney.

The real reason we went to the park was so Will could practice using his new boomerang.  He bought it on Amazon with some birthday bucks.  Unfortunately, the park has lots of trees and after a couple of tosses the boomerang landed in a tree.  Poor Will spent like an hour and a half getting the thing out.  We will just have to keep practicing.

Cheney had a very first winterfest this year.  Nothing like a party in the night time of the dead of winter.  Thankfully, we all bundled up and there were fires around the square and heaters to keep everyone warm.  

Whitney enjoyed some free cotton candy.

Here Whitney gets her face painted.

She, oddly, chose an owl.  The poor lady didn't really know how to make an owl, but it turned out pretty good.  There also was bowling and the library ladies were there reading stories and a lady made balloon animals.  So it was fun, if not quite cold.

And here are a couple of random pictures from Cheney.

  

Whitney and Emma dress like queens for the letter 'Q'.  For this time, it was good that Jess moved away because I don't think he would have liked to be a queen.

Rachel enjoying some ice cream.  We tried to give her bites, but she insisted on feeding herself.  Here she holds the spoon upside down and very slowly scoops some up.  I'm not sure how much actually made it into her mouth.  But she didn't seem to care.

Whitney and Rachel both played peek-a-boo under the blanket for a good ten minutes.  Go girls go.  So there is a little update on our lives.