A Trip to Utah

We went to Utah last weekend to be part of a graduation and baby blessing.  The drive was long, but the kids did really well.  And we had a lot of fun being together with so much family around.  (The only bummer was that Will had to stay home and work).

We stayed at Erin and David's house in Lehi for the trip.  Here the girls get to paint their fingernails.

Whitney and all the kids really spent a lot of time in the playroom.  This is what I need when we buy a house so the toys can all stay upstairs.

Before Michael's graduation we had a little picnic.

At the graduation, Michael shaking hands with professors.

I like this picture of Michael and Allison and little baby Annabelle.

On Saturday we went with Kylee and Chas to look at some tiny houses they are considering buying.  The houses were less than 300 square feet but they had all the essentials.  Kind of interesting to look at them but there is no way our family could live in one right now.

This was after Annabelle's baby blessing.  There was a big dinner of Hawaiian haystacks that my mom and Allison's mom prepared.  It was yummy.

We took cousin pictures.  These are all of my parents' grandkids under one roof.

It wouldn't be a complete trip to Utah without visiting Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.  Here grandpa shows the kids a little science experiment with a balloon, a bottle cap, and a c.d. Adam was a little afraid of this for some reason.

We have such wonderful family.  I am so glad that we were able to make our Utah trip.  I wish we could have hung out with everyone even longer.

the rest of Easter

For some reason, Easter is a long ordeal for us, so here are some more pictures.  We did one of our Easter traditions of resurrection rolls, they are croissant rolls and you wrap a marshmallow inside and bake, and the marshmallow disappears!

Another part of shoe drama for Adam. Adam has not liked wearing shoes at all, and here is photographic evidence of him throwing his shoe away.  This time it was recovered, but since this time, one of said shoes has gone missing, and now Adam cannot wear them, very fishy.  

I think the kids attended 76 Easter hunts this year, here are some pictures from hunt number 45.  This was at our old ward in Umatilla.  

Here is Megan collecting some eggs

Hunt number 52 was at our friend's house the with two other girls in our current ward.  

This hunt only took about 25 seconds to find most of the eggs, so there was also some time looking for the last few tricky eggs.

the other thing that spring means is bubbles!  Will made a big bucket of big bubble juice and let kids pop them.  

Adam likes the juice and just wants to spill the bucket.  

Pictures from hunt number 63, at grandma's house, Adam is ready to go.

 Megan on the hunt

 Adam trying the treats, note that he did not bother to unwrap the candy.

 After all the hunts, the girls decided to do a "play" on grandma's trampoline.

That's it for Easter this year.  We will see if we can break our record of Easter egg hunts next year.  

Easter Part 1

I realized that I haven't updated in awhile.  We did a lot of fun Easter things in April.

We were in Pasco for general conference and we decided to dye Easter eggs while we were there.  Rachel wanted to show off her half glasses.

There was a big pile of eggs ready for dying.

We managed to not spill too much dye.  Maybe next year we won't even need to take off shirts.  But fingers remained very colorful for a couple of days.

Adam took a turn too.  He was fascinated by his egg once he saw it all pretty and orange.

The following Saturday we went back to the Tri-Cities for a big Easter celebration.  Unfortunately it was a really cold morning so there was extra complaining from the short people (and maybe some of the big people too).

The highlight of the event was we got to ride a train with the Easter bunny (and apparently his wife).  I thought that was pretty cool.

It warmed up a little bit so we went to the park after the Easter activity and played for about an hour.

There was a zipline that the kids took turns riding down.

And Grandma Keeler sent us a little Easter package.  Adam is wearing his new Easter bracelet and playing with his little egg finger puppet thing.  Thanks Grandma Keeler for the surprise.

Stay tuned for more Easter pictures in a few days.

In Rexburg

We spent a couple of days in Rexburg a couple of weeks ago.  It was a fun trip.

My sister Kylee and her husband Chas had their first child on Valentine's Day.  So we went to see the baby blessing.  Little Raine was so adorable.

And here is everyone after the blessing before people started going their separate ways.  I think everyone is looking at the camera too so that is pretty amazing.

We met in a park in Idaho Falls and had a picnic together on Saturday.

Adam loved going down the slide with Whitney.

If this looks like a baby in a toy store, you would be correct.  We went to an awesome toy store in Idaho Falls.  There were so many toys out that the kids could play with and enjoy while parents shopped.

The girls got into playing some music.  They made a cute band.

Then some of us went to a kids art museum.  There was a power outage right when we arrived but we stuck around and the lights came back on like twenty minutes later.

Here the kids all put on costumes and made videos using a green screen.  They played with this for a really long time.

I don't know how a big slide is really art, but the kids loved it.

And a lot of time was spent hanging out at Kylee and Chas' clubhouse.

You can see that Megan and her cousin Tessa had so much fun together.  They chased each other all over.  If Zach and Conner look too comfortable back there, never worry they were about to be jumped on and "trapped" by Whitney and Rachel.

So it was a really fun couple of days.  I think my kids did pretty good in the long car drives.  Thanks mom and dad for driving us and paying for the motel.  Now we are back at home and relaxing.

A Police Party

What a fun party we had yesterday.  Whitney turned seven years old and she decided that she wanted to have a police themed birthday party.  So I got on Pinterest to get some ideas.

We had a couple of small activities while we waited for all the guests.  Here the kids are decorating their goody bags.

They also got to color a police picture.

A cool thing about the party was that I had Will record 'police dispatch' messages on my cell phone.  So before any police case the kids would listen to the message to see what had happened.  Here the police dogs had been stolen.  The only clue was the letter 'K'.

The clue led them outside where they found a '9'.  Get it, K-9.  I don't know if the kids got it but I thought it was funny.  This clue led them all the way down the yard to the getaway truck that was carry little cute plastic dogs - one for each kid.

Another phone dispatch told the policemen to find the missing robbers who had stolen gold from the bank.  Will and I had hidden them around right before the party began.

Here the kids had to find the suspect fingerprint out of a paper of look alike fingerprints.

Another call came in and the kids had to do target practice.  We did a relay with nerf guns and some little targets painted onto boxes.

It was time for the pin the badge on the police man game.

And then the donuts were stolen and we had to find the suspect.  I used Apples to Apples pictures of people and gave out clues until the kids had narrowed it down to just one suspect.

After solving all the mysteries and stopping the bad guys, the kids got to make honorary police badges.

Then it was time for Whitney to open presents.  She got a lot of really great things.  So far she has opened quite a few things and has loved them all.

My mom was nice and made French bread pizza during the present opening.  The kids got to eat pizza and 'cop'corn  and soda'cop' and donuts.

And my dad was nice and watched this little guy during the party since Will and I were quite busy and Adam wanted to get into everything.

It was a fun party.  I am glad Whitney liked it but now I am happy that it is done.  I have until August before I have to plan another big party.