A Very Merry Christmas!

We had a fabulous Christmas in Pasco.

My mom has a lot of Christmas decorations but this Santa is one of the favorites.

Great Grandpa puts a bunch of presents on the table and people get to take turns picking one.  The youngest get to go first.  Hannah was a fan of her huge jar of cheese balls.

Look at this cute family.

Stockings are always first on Christmas morning.  This time my mom wrote nice letters for everyone and put them in the stockings.  That was a nice surprise.

Present time!!

Megan loved her new panda bear.  I think it is called Rosie but the name keeps changing.

These toys have already been well loved.  I think they have all been tasted - just to be sure. 

Yummy Christmas dinner.  Hannah was enjoying her second "first" Christmas.  Jell-o is a funny thing.

Later on Christmas we acted out the Nativity story.  Can you tell who everyone is?
It was a great Christmas.  Thanks to my parents for always hosting it.  We love you.

Pre-Christmas

Once again, I am a little behind.  Here are a couple pictures from pre-Christmas activities.

I took the kids to the library for their Christmas party.  Mrs. Clause came to read a story.  Hannah was not in the mood to sit in her lap.

They had some crafts for the kids.  Everyone loved making Fruit Loop necklaces ( I am still not sure how Christmas-y it was).

We decided as a family to go look at the beautiful Christmas lights around Hermiston.

I thought this on someone's garage was kind of cool.

We tried our hand at making gingerbread houses with graham crackers and frosting and lots of candy.  It tasted yummy but the houses kept breaking.  So I will need to have a new plan if we decide to do this again next year.

We went on a Journey to Bethlehem.  I always enjoy that.  Poor Adam got bit by a sheep though.

The reason for the season.

We went to grandma's house a couple of days before Christmas.  The kids really liked making ornaments.

And we went caroling to several houses.  So lots of fun traditions at Christmas time.

Children's Museum in Walla Walla

I have never been to the museum in Walla Walla.  It is a kids museum that has one free day a month.  I took the little kids there to spend the day with grandma and their cousin, Annabelle.

The favorite part of the whole museum was the water table and the dirt table.

Hannah loves anything that gets her messy.

Do you think she wanted to taste a little bit of the dirt?

This was a station where you could make a track for balls and watch them go.  The kids liked this.  I think all the adults liked this more.  No child was bonked during this demonstration.

Hannah liked the rock wall.  But thankfully too young to try to climb it.

She did try to climb the slide.  Thankfully, she didn't get far up that one either.

Adam in the light up peg room.

There were a lot of make believe areas.  Adam and I played cook for awhile.

He also made a good veterinarian. So the museum was fun.  Maybe I will try and go again this summer when the older kids can come.

And one more picture of Hannah.  It is almost her birthday.  She has been walking for about a month and has become really good at it.

Haunted Halloween

We had a great Halloween here in Hermiston.  Lots of fun and candy and more candy!

We went to the pumpkin patch for Family Home Evening.  The kids had fun picking one.  They have to be able to carry the one they pick.

Then we brought home all those pumpkins and spent a lot of time deseeding, carving, and then roasting the seeds.

Adam was proud of his Paw Patrol pumpkin.  He loves Paw Patrol even though he has only seen it a few times.

To honor the evening I decided to make pumpkin muffins for dinner.  I have never made pumpkin anything and wasn't sure how they would turn out.  They were not such a hit by my kids.  Hannah seemed to like hers though.

We decided to have a Halloween party at home and invite a few friends over.  Here is the mummy relay.  Poor Megan ended up completely covered with just one eye to see.

We also had a costume parade with judging and awards.

Decorating sugar cookies with Halloween frosting and candy.  It was a fun, simple party.

I took the kids to trunk or treat in Umatilla.  We thought this car was cute.

One of the Umatilla businesses did a haunted house theme.

And here we are dressed up for our ward's Halloween party.  Hannah was the lion.  It was hard to keep those ears on.

Adam is the munchkin.  Isn't he adorable?

Megan got to be the star of the movie - Dorothy.

Rachel was our scarecrow.

And Whitney got to be the tin man.

I wanted to be the good witch, but who has a dress like that laying around?  So I was the wicked witch. 

And Will was the Great Wizard of Oz.

We ate soup and then played the games.  This cupcake walk was fun. But one of our kids could not seem to get a cupcake.  I eventually just stole one after we had been there for like 20 minutes.

Trying to throw a ball to land into the cup and earn a prize.

Then here we are actually trick or treating.  Will stayed home with Hannah and passed out candy.  I took the other ones out around our neighborhood.  We got a lot of candy.

And for your pleasure I had to show you Hannah's halloween shirt.  "Don't Scare Me   I poop easily!"  We loved Halloween.  I hope everyone else enjoyed the holidays.

Harvest Festival

We went to our traditional Harvest Festival at The Living Room Church in the Tri-Cities.  It was fun.  And the kids love getting all the candy.

We started off playing the carnival games.  Adam kept coming back to this one.  I think he just really likes playing with water.

Hannah deciding if she wants to put her hand in the beans/grain.

We arrived right as the festival was beginning so we didn't have a long wait time for any of the games.  That was nice.

Hannah got to go on her very first pony ride.  She didn't cry but she didn't look super impressed either.

The kids all got their face painted.  Whitney's was the most elaborate. 

They had straw you could use to feed the goats.  Everyone thought that was really fun.

Getting lost in the straw maze.

They had a ton of little pumpkins.  Each kid got to pick one and then decorate it.  We let Hannah pick one (the first one she put her mouth on).

There is a little playground on the church grounds that the kids played on for like five minutes before one of the workers said we shouldn't play on it.

And we got an adorable family picture.  Hooray for Rocktober 2018!