Welcome Baby Megan

We are happy to announce the arrival of Megan Rose Keeler.  She was born August 28th at 8:20 pm at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Hermiston, Oregon.

This is her first picture ever.  The doctors laid her on me right after she was born and started cleaning her off.

Megan was 6 pounds 1 ounce, so much smaller than my other two girls.  But the doctors warned me that she would be little based on the ultrasounds.  Megan was 19 1/2 inches long, and has a working set of lungs.

Megan gets her first bath from the nurse.  I was still too numb from the epidural to see much, but I don't think Megan liked her bath too much.

And a fresh clean baby with a cute shirt that the hospital provided.  It says "I Got My First Hug from Good Shepherd Medical Center".  She looks so cute all cleaned up.

Mom and Dad both get longer turns to really hold and love new little baby Megan.  It was great to finally get to meet her and hold her and tell her how much we love her.  

Because of poor previous nursing experiences, we decided to just bottle feed Megan.  Will gave her the first bottle.  She wasn't too impressed with it and would only drink a little and then spit it back out.  By the end of our hospital stay, Megan was a much better eater and the food would stay down.  So hooray about that because she is too little to be unwilling to eat anything.

My mom and the rest of my family have been wonderful at watching the girls while we stayed in the hospital.  My mom brought Whitney and Rachel down Thursday morning to meet their new little sister.  Whitney loved holding her "all by myself" and didn't want any help.  She took lots of short turns holding Megan.  Rachel was more interested in running around the room and touching the new things.

So this is technically our first family picture.  We will try and get another one here soon with me not in a hospital gown.  Whitney now says there are five people in our family; she likes to lift her hold hand.

Here is Megan ready to go home.  She is so little that she is practically swimming in her 0-3 month outfit.  Thanks for joining our family little girl and making us a whole handful.  We sure love you already and are excited to get to know you even more.

Some Funny Pictures

Umatilla Parade and Fair

This last week was the Umatilla County parade and fair.  We had a good time at both events.  The parade was a little long and the fair was a little warm, but the girls really enjoyed themselves.

Waiting for the parade to begin.  We only got a little lost trying to figure out where the parade was in Hermiston, so we were fortunate to find a space in the shade before the parade officially began.

The Hermiston High marching band did a good job. 

There were a lot of horses in this parade.  Whitney told me before we left that she wanted to see horses, so her wish came true.  Here is a Native American lady riding a horse.  I really liked her authentic outfit, so I had to get a picture.

Hermiston is known for its watermelon.  Naturally, there was a big watermelon slice going down the street.  There even were two groups giving out free watermelon, but we weren't lucky enough to get one of those.

Whitney gets to shake hands with the frog that was wandering around the parade.

There actually were really good treats at this parade.  Not only did we get a bucket load of candy, we got these gigantic otterpops, some Tillamook cheese, cookies.  So it was a fun parade, but it was two hours long.  Whitney and Rachel were pretty tired by the end of it; Whitney was even saying that we had enough candy and she didn't want to run after more.  

My family is going to be in Utah during their fair, so they came to our fair instead.  Whitney and Rachel are holding grandma's hands walking into the fair.

This was "The Cutest Show on Earth", just ask the flyers.  Kids could dress up and be part of the show, but we got there too late to do anything but just watch.

Whitney liked the magic show.  She kept talking about it afterwards, reminding me of the things she saw.  I think she was a little nervous that the girl on the stage was really going to get her arm chopped off, she kept covering her face.

The girls loved touching the animals.  Here they touch a huge sheep.  There also were pigs and cows and horses and rabbits and all kinds of fun farm animals. 

We looked at some cute displays.  The girls are examining a 'bug' in this one, but there also were some pretty quilts and really good photographs.
So it was fun.  The girls had a good time at both events.  

A Fun Visit

We had such a great visit last weekend with Will's parents.  It was really fun seeing them and being able to just hang out together for awhile.  Here are some pictures from their visit.

The kids really loved grandma and grandpa immediately.  Whitney let grandma do her hair (which she never lets me do) and there were lots of high fives all around.

Grandpa and Grandma Keeler were good sports about playing Don't Break the Ice and doing lots of puzzles over and over again.  Whitney wanted grandpa to help her do puzzles.

We went to Walla Walla on Saturday to go to the annual onion festival.  I have never been to an onion festival but this one was fun.  There was a kids section that had carnival games for the kids to play.

The carnival games were like the regular games you see at a festival, but you used an onion, instead of a ball.  So Whitney loved playing basketball and Rachel is loving the football game.  She would just go up and put the onion straight in the hole.

Whitney and Rachel both got to decorate an onion.  There were big onions and all kinds of fun decorating things.  Rachel just loved putting pom poms all over hers; Whitney's looked more like a face.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but we are an onion family.

And it isn't a festival without yummy treats.  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Keeler who bought yummy snow cones and donuts.  And, of course, we had a bloomin' onion at the onion festival.  The food was all delicious.

We made a fast stop to the Whitman mission while in Walla Walla.  The girls loved playing with the toys; Rachel is giving love to her little doll.

Whitney and grandpa stop to read some books.

Rachel was very content to sit with grandma and play games.  I was amazed at how well Rachel did with grandma and grandpa because she has become very shy lately, but she was really attached to them right away.  That made me happy.  Anyway, we had a very nice visit.  I wish we could see them more often, but we will take any time we can get.  Thanks for coming over Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.  We hope to see you again soon.

A Happy Fourth

We had a good Fourth of July.  Some of my family came from the Tri-Cities to hang with us.  There was a big party in Hermiston that we went to for the celebrations.

We tried to put the girls in patriotic clothes for the holiday, but then they wouldn't show off their outfits for the camera.

We went to Butte park which has a water play park next to it.  It took Rachel a long time to decide the water wasn't poison.

There were a couple of bounce houses for the children to play on.

This one was Whitney's favorite because she got to climb a little rock wall to get to the top of the slide.

And Whitney got to meet Stretch.  He was even able to give her a high five, which I was impressed by.

We went back to the water park when it got too hot and Rachel decided she liked getting wet.

There was also entertainment at the park.  We got to hear some singers and watch this magician/ventriloquest.  Rachel and Whitney loved the bunny puppet.

Whitney sticks her head out of the slide.  It is a really fun playground.

And, of course, there were fireworks.  The show was spectacular and you couldn't get much closer to them than we were.  So it was a good way to celebrate our nation's freedom.