Cousin Time

This was a really fun weekend.  My sister Erin and her daughter flew down from Utah.  We had a great time catching up.  And the cousins had a great time too.

We went down to Pasco and spent the first day at grandma's house.  Megan and Tessa were so adorable together.

They liked to play with the toy food and they did some coloring.  I think some of the coloring even landed on the paper.  Thankfully, the markers were washable.

And Tessa got to meet Adam.  She was really gentle with the baby.  Adam seemed pretty interested in Tessa too.

On Friday. we took the kids to the bounce house place.  Will was still at work, but Erin and I were able to keep everyone pretty corralled.  This rope swing has become more of a hit as my girls have grown older. 

This little slide has a toy car to go down.  Megan couldn't always wait for the car to get back to the top.

More playing.

It's pajama time.  Everyone looks all comfortable and happy.  It was such a fun visit.  Stay tuned for part two in a couple of days.

Birthday and Park Fun

Now that we are more settled into our house, we can start exploring and having more family fun.

For Whitney's birthday, she asked to go to McDonalds and eat some chicken nuggets.  This is technically Burger King, but close enough.  They had fun playing on the toys and then going to see the free movie at the library.

Also for Whitney's birthday, we went and saw Conner's performance with his home school group.  They were in a competition and won first place.  Good job Conner!

The next day my family came over after church.  Whitney was super excited to open presents.  This is a cool Scooby Doo puzzle.

And blowing out the candles.  I cannot believe that my baby is six years old.  How did that happen?  So I think Whitney had a fun birthday.  We are going to do a Scooby Doo party for her but not until April.

It was a beautiful day - perfect for going to the park that is now just down the street.

Adam wasn't too sure about this being out in the open air business.  Better get use to it baby because free parks are my bread and butter all Summer.

I told the girls to roll down the big hill.  Whitney was the only one who could do this well.  Rachel kind of got the hang of it.  Megan mostly went sideways.

And for your viewing pleasure,our adorable smiley baby.

He has gotten pretty good at holding up his head.  He hasn't rolled over yet, but he is getting closer.  

I just moved him into 6-9 month clothes, so he is growing.  

I love being a mom.

Valentine's Day

  So I know it has been a long time since we have posted.  Unfortunately, our new place in Hermiston didn't have the Internet.  I guess somebody had purposely cut the wires, so we had to wait awhile for Century Link to come fix it.  This is belated but here are some Valentine's pictures.

The Relief Society was in charge of the ward Valentine's dinner.  It turned out really well.  So that was good because it was a bit stressful on top of everything else with moving.  We asked the young men to serve the dinner and the young women to babysit.

Everyone enjoyed the salad, fruit, garlic bread and fettucine alfredo.  We had little cheesecake shooters for dessert.  

And we played some games.  I wanted to get everyone involved so this was a table competition.  People had to match 'I love you' to different languages.  Will helped lead his table to victory and earned themselves some treats.

And we played a couple of minute to win it style games.  I volunteered four couples.  They first had to try to get some candy hearts out of a bowl while each only using one chopstick.  The next game they had two minutes to try to stack as many candy hearts as possible (still only using chopsticks).  It was fun to watch.

Because I bought all the balloons as table centerpiece decorations, I figured I got to take them home.  The girls LOVED, LOVED these balloons.  They "fed them" and "tucked them in at night" and all kinds of good stuff.  Now I know a nice cheap present to get them.

The next morning was Valentine's Day.  Whitney was very eager to open her presents.  Here she is getting a little frog Valentine's cup.  For some reason, they all love drinking from straws.

Rachel shows off some candy that she got from Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.  Thanks for the goodies.

And Adam shows off how cute he is for Valentine's Day.  Some of his 3-6 month clothes are already getting too tight on him.  I love his chubby cheeks.

After church, we noticed that one of the balloons was losing some of helium, so Will sucked some in and talked all funny and the girls got a huge kick out of it.

It is kind of hard to tell from this picture but this is what I had the kids give to their dad.  I dressed them all up Valentine's like and took a cute picture of them.  Then I had them each help paint a heart shaped picture frame.  Adam had lots of help.  I think Will liked the picture; he took it to work so he could see it there.

   Anyway, it was a great Valentine's Day.  I love the day of love.

NEWS

It all began like an ordinary Wednesday...

Then I noticed a person putting an envelope on our door. I didn't think much about it.  I knew it was from the rental company and I figured it was just a reminder that our lease was coming to an end soon and we needed to re-sign for another year.  But then I opened the envelope and it said that we needed to be out of our house in two months. I guess the owner wants to fix up this old house and get it ready for sale. :(
   So now we are on the search for a new place to live.  Will still has one more year before getting his social work license.  We don't want to buy anything for just a year (the wise old Internet said it was only financially profitable to buy a house if you can live there for 5 years).  So we are looking for another house to rent.  I really don't want to live in an apartment if we can help it.  I have gotten use to having a yard.  That limits our options but I am praying that we find a good place that will be good for our family.  We will keep you updated on any address changes.

Family Expo

So I remember going to something called the Family Affair as a kid.  We always thought it was awesome because you got to see animals and make gak and all the fun kid things.  And there was always a fire house where kids can enter and learn about fire prevention and fire safety.  Anyway, I heard about the Family Expo down in Pasco last weekend and we decided to go.  The kids had a blast.

This is the biggest tire ever.  The girls only look a little upset about being inside the tire because we stopped their coloring.  There was a lot of coloring at this event,

We ran into the Michelin marshmallow man.  There were a lot of people dressed up.  Technically, we could have dressed up the kids.  But that was too much work when coming from Umatilla.

The girls playing inside a little toy castle.  Only Megan fell for the toy food and tried to take a bite of the apple.

Still inside the castle.

This is homemade playdough that was super soft and edible.  It also smelled wonderful - watermelon, lemon, root beer.  It cost a lot of money though and we actually have a lot of playdough.  But the kids still thought it was fun.  (And I don't think Megan ate any of it).

So the huge trac center was filled with booths that had informational pamphlets for adults and fun activities for the kids to do.  I know it was all a ploy to get us to buy things or sign up for things, but we just kept telling people that we lived all the way in Umatilla and it would be too far to sign up for things. 

The girls made a yoda mask.  Will went and saw the new Star Wars movie after the family expo.  I think he had fun.

Lots and lots of princesses.  I think Elsa was happy to be holding a baby.

Spinning for prizes.  The girls got lots of candy and stickers and toothbrushes and small toys.  Whitney even won a shirt and she was very excited about that.

And we looked at this neat model train for awhile.  We were there for about 2 1/2 hours and still didn't get to see everything, but everyone was getting a little tired and grouchy.  So we decided to make a pit stop to Grandma's house.  Anyway, it was a fun day.