A Beautiful Wedding!

Kylee and Chas were married on Friday, January 2nd, in the Columbia River Temple.  I am so glad that we were able to attend the sealing.  And thanks to Kaitlin, Zach, and Conner for helping watch my girls while we were in the temple.

The girls in their pretty yellow dresses that my mom made for them.  They waited in the church across the street from the temple.  I guess they did pretty good just eating snacks and watching a movie.  Aren't the dresses adorable?

Here Kylee and Chas leave the temple - a brand new married couple.  It is hard to tell, but Kylee is holding her lollipop bouquet.

And doing the dip.  Will and I practiced that before our wedding so we could do it well for pictures.  Now we are old pros. 

I wish I had thought to focus closer so the picture would show us better.  Oh well.  Here are Kylee and Chas with all of us siblings.  It was nice that all of us brothers and sisters could be there to support them.

It was very hard to get good pictures because it was freezing and the girls became really grumpy whenever we took off their coats.  But here is Kylee with her four nieces.  They were pretty good sports.

Now we are at the reception.  When you go in and sign the wedding book, they wanted pictures of each family. And they provided us with props.  The girls thought that was pretty neat.  I think it is a clever idea to include pictures for their wedding book.

This is their cake.  They decided to have a black cake to look like the shirts they made when Chas proposed.  It was a rainbow cake inside which was really pretty.

                                    

And they squished cake on each other...I mean, fed each other a piece of cake.  You can kind of see the black shirts in the background.

Kylee and Chas had a slideshow with pictures of them growing up.  Then they did some dancing.  Here Kylee and my dad did a dance.

The reception was fun.  A couple of my aunts and one uncle and my grandma all came for the wedding. They helped with getting everything ready.  The reception was carnival theme, so we got to eat yummy food.  My kids really enjoyed the cotton candy and popcorn.

At the end was a balloon release to wish the couple well.  Of course, my girls didn't want to let go of their balloons.  So here Whitney holds the heart balloon that she colored.

Anyway, congratulations to Kylee and Chas.  You guys make for a very cute couple.  Be sure to let us know if you need anything.

A Bridal Shower

It has been a long time since I have been to a bridal shower, so I was really happy when my mom asked me to help plan one for my sister.  My sister, Kaitlin, and I were put in charge of the games.

And here is the blushing bride, my sweet sister.  We had the bridal shower at our neighbor's house.  She made a couple of cute decorations for the party.  K and C for Kylee and Chas, and then the date of the wedding.  Isn't she creative?

Erin was in charge of the food and she did awesome.  The food was a big hit.  Here we are preparing everything.  We all pitched in to help make things, but she was the brains of the operation.  The caramel apple slices with different toppings was a real winner.

Here is the beginning of the shower.  We had everyone grab some ribbon (yellow because that was Kylee's color) and they had to talk about themselves the whole time wrapping the ribbon around their finger.  It was a fun way to get to know everyone and to see how everyone knew Kylee.  We also played a balloon game - the person who found the ring inside the balloon (instead of a crayon) was the winner.

We played pass the bridal bouquet to a left/right story.  I ended up winning the bouquet, but I gave the prize to Kylee because I didn't need any of the prizes.

We played the ask the groom game.  Kylee had to match Chas' answers or get a piece of bubblegum.  She did pretty good and only ended with like six pieces of gum.  She was able to blow a little bubble.

We stopped in the middle of the shower and ate some of the yummy food.

Another game we played was to make something out of toilet paper.  Everyone had to make something wedding related with however much toilet paper they had picked.

There were some real fun ones - flowers, and dresses, and a dove, and some veils.  Kylee got to pick the winner - a boutonniere sucker that Allison made.  Chas and Kylee used big lollipops for their bouquet and boutonniere.  Good job to everyone for being so creative. 

And it wouldn't be a bridal shower without some presents.

I loved this present idea and might steal it sometime.  There were separate boxes for 'Something Old', 'Something New', 'Something Borrowed', and 'Something Blue'.  

Anyway, the bridal shower was really fun.  I think Kylee had a good time too.  Congratulations Kylee!

New Year's Eve

We didn't do anything too crazy for New Year's Eve, just spent some time at home with my family.

Two of my aunts came for my sister's wedding.  They were here to celebrate New Year's Eve with us.  We played some fun Snake Oil game that my parents got for Christmas.  That game is really fun.  We also played some Telestrations.

If you haven't played Telestrations, it is really funny.  The best part is showing off your book at the end.  You get to see what your first picture turns into after everyone draws.  And you only have 30 seconds to draw, so you get some really interesting pictures.  

Only about half of us made it to midnight.  Here we are waiting for the ball to drop with just a few seconds left to wait.  We didn't watch much of the festivities in New York because we spent all night playing games and laughing.

We got some little poppers that we took outside.  The poppers weren't very loud, but that was okay.

There were some little prizes inside the poppers - a paper crown, a joke, and some little toys.  The fun inside things were more exciting than the actual poppers.

And here are how the girls spent New Year's Eve.  We turned on a movie downstairs and the girls were both out.  They had not been getting very much sleep, so they were pretty tired.  Good night sweet girls.

It was a fun New Year's Eve with my family.  And I got my New Year's Eve kiss - that is what is really important.

A Very Merry Christmas (Part Two)

I have been quite busy lately and not home, but I figured that now I better finally finish posting about our fun Christmas with my family.

Will's family each gets one name to do for Christmas.  So we gave presents to the Guptil group (I hope you liked your gifts).  And we were given presents by Will's younger brother, Dave.  We decided to open Dave's presents before going down to Pasco.  Here, the girls help their dad open his presents.  Thanks for the Avatar movies.

Whitney and Rachel love their new stuffed puppies.  Rachel keeps insisting that hers is really a kitty.  Thanks for all the presents, Dave.  It was fun opening them and seeing the happy faces.

While down in Pasco, we made our traditional present for Jesus.  I taught the Relief Society sisters in my ward and we made presents for Jesus in our December activity.  I knew that I would be doing it with my family, which is one of my favorite Christmas traditions.  This year, I want to give out two copies of The Book of Mormon and I want to work on some of my personal history.

Here is our family on Christmas morning.  It took a couple of tries, but we got everyone looking forward and not completely covering their faces.

The beginning of the present opening.

Megan opening her little foam sword.  At first, Megan was a bit grumpy and only wanted to open like two presents.  But then when she saw there were things under the wrapping paper, she got into the spirit of gift-opening.

The girls also got swords and had lots of pretend sword fights with their uncle Conner.

Whitney has been asking for some dress-up clothes.  We didn't have very much variety.  But now we have a lot.  Thanks Mom and Dad.  Those will definitely be a hit.

My sister's little baby, five-month-old Tessa, learned how to open gifts.  She was quite good at it too.

And not from Christmas.  But this big ball lives at my parents house.  Megan wanted it upstairs.  She wanted lots of big things to come up the stairs and would cry when she got stuck at the bottom of the steps because she couldn't climb while holding them.  

Anyway, we had a great Christmas.  It was fun spending time with family and just being together.

Our Merry Christmas (Part 1)

As tradition, we went down to Pasco for Christmas.  A couple of my siblings traveled to be there also.  We were able to do lots of fun things together.

But first, Will asked me what we wanted to do for 'Christmas' morning breakfast, which we celebrated the Tuesday before Christmas.  We made funnel cake that tasted pretty good.  Unfortunately, we were running out of time, so I turned up the oil too high and burned the last couple.  Oh well.  There were still enough for everyone to enjoy.

The legendary Griggs sale.  We went down to Pasco when Will got home from work and after quickly eating, we went to Griggs. My mom was nice and stayed home with the kids.  Here we sit playing games while waiting for the next hourly raffle.

The next morning was tree decorating time.  The girls all thought that was pretty fun.

Megan did pretty well.  She only pulled down a couple of ornaments that had already been put on the tree.

Of course, Christmas means baking.  Whitney and Rachel got to help Grandma make the traditional Danish pastry for Christmas breakfast.

And Rachel got to help make Jell-O. 

We always act out the Nativity story on Christmas Eve.  I was the narrator, so not in the pictures. But Whitney and Rachel were sort of sheep or wise men, depending on their mood.

                                     

  

And it isn't Christmas time without a little ding dong ditching/caroling.  Whitney and Rachel were very willing participants in the ditching and running.

My mom rented a kids movie for the girls to watch on Christmas Eve (I think to help everyone stay downstairs).

Anyway, those are some pre-Christmas festivities.  It was a fun holiday.  I hope everyone else had a great Christmas.