some good news

It seems that all my siblings have some good news to share so I thought I'd share some of my own. After a very brief stint of working at Wal Mart in the far north of Spokane (2-3 walmarts away) I received a social work job at outreach services in Spokane, the office is located in downtown Spokane and will pay considerably better and give more hours that wal mart would. I will be working with individuals to help them deal with medicare and medicaid to help them to pay their medical bills. I am scheduled to start on the 8th of november. so that is my good news moment.

Getting bigger

Hi everyone. We just have some cute, kind of random, pictures of Whitney. People at church say she is getting so big and looking more and more like Courtney. What do you think? Here she is all dressed up for church. I love putting little dresses on her and little things in her hair. I don't know what I will do if we have a boy next and cannot dress him up.



Here she is trying to fill daddy's shoes. Whitney seemed to kind of like being in Will's big shoes. One day she will be big enough to not need us holding her up.



Will has a couple of favorite toys that he has owned since before we were married. One of them is this little block man that can move all around. All young children who have seen it just fall in love with this toy. Apparently, Whitney has as well.



But now she is making a break for it. Whitney can now put herself from sitting up to the crawling position and then she goes flat on her tummy. She moves backwards and in circles, but not forward yet. I have had to get her out of a trap or two when she gets her feet stuck somewhere.



Eating books and sleeves are some of Whitney's favorite past times. There are so many actual toys to chew on and even a teether, but why would we want to chew on them when there is a sleeve readily available? What part of this doesn't make sense?





Here Whitney gets up close and personal with the camera. She was sitting up at the beginning of the photo shoot, but the camera was just too tempting for a little girl.



Now Will and I love to play Yahtzee. It is one of our favorite games. During this video, I am counting to see how many rolls it would take to get a Yahtzee. And it was bad, but Whitney thinks I am just hilarious. Take a look.







After all that playing and laughing, Whitney was just zonked. She rubs her eyes constantly when she is tired.



So that is all for us. I hope that everyone is doing well. Will is now working at Walmart to help pay the bills until he can find a cool social work job. He had two interviews this last week; we should be hearing back from them soon. I really hope he gets one of these jobs. Okay, see you later.

Last Summer times

I am afraid we haven't been as diligent as we should be when updating this blog. But we took a few pictures of the last times of Summer. It is just now starting to get chilly. So I feel pretty fortunate that Summer lasted so long here in Cheney. Bring on the soup and sweatshirts; I am ready for a little cooler temperatures.





Here are two pictures from our last picnic of the season. Will and I have always loved packing a picnic lunch and going to a park to enjoy the warmth; Whitney has now become a joyful part of that equation. And if Whitney is reading her book upside down, so be it.

We got a cute shirt that seemed to be good for Whitney, at least how we see her.



Whitney is our little princess in training. She already yells at us if we don't give her what she wants. We will be in trouble when the terrible twos arrive.



Here Will and Whitney read Cinderella together on the bed right before bedtime. Whitney really loves books and will stare at the pictures for long periods of time before getting bored. Goodnight my beautiful baby.





We finally decided to try to get Whitney's hair out of her eyes because it seems to bother her and I know that it would bother me. She seemed to like being pushed by Will in the box.



We threw Will's pajama top onto Whitney and she immediately tried to eat it. Not that we didn't expect that from our almost seven month old baby. But then she started screaming like she didn't like the taste or something. I don't know what the deal was.



And sometimes you just have to laugh as your husband and your daughter both stick out their tongue together. I think Whitney inherited his tongue.

We went back to Pasco for Courtney's birthday and we had lots of fun. I have reached the ripe old age of 24. Unfortunately, our camera's battery died on the trip, so we don't have many pictures. Oh well.



Both of my sisters are in cross-country. I don't know why; I think they are crazy. But they claim to like running. Who would of thought? This is Kaitlin right before her big race.



And my dad is holding Whitney. Just ignore the random people in the background. I have no clue who they are.

We have been trying to take more videos of Whitney lately because she is growing so big so fast. Here is one that made both Will and I laugh hysterically yesterday after church. I promise no sugar was given to any babies in the making of this movie. She is naturally this hyper.

just a bit of an update

This week has been a busy one from the job perspective. On Tuesday I headed out to a job interview at a school for troubled youth located outside Bonners Ferry ID. I should hear back from them some time next week. On Wednesday I had several interviews for retail stores in the Spokane area, in case I have more trouble finding a social work job, then today (Thursday) I had a phone interview for a church job that could be in spokane, Fresno CA, Chicago IL or New York City NY. I should here back from a few other jobs this week, and we will let people know if we decide to pack up and move, but there is no news yet. Whitney is weighing in the 20th percentile which is a sizable improvement for her and we are excited. We'll keep you all posted on what we end up doing.

Trips around the world (outside of Cheney)

Will and I have never been camping since we have been married. I am not sure what has held us back; I think we mostly just didn't have all the things that we needed. But when we heard that our ward was having a camping trip at a church campsite, we really wanted to go. And then our good friends said we could camp with them in their huge tent. Will was only a little sad because he wanted to try out our tent for the first time, but I thought it was fun to be so close to some buddies. Our friends also have a little girl, so we knew that they wouldn't mind if Whitney made a little noise in the night. Anyway, we had a lot of fun. Lots of people from the ward showed up.



Here is our amazing campfire where we cooked hotdogs for dinner and, of course, had s'mores. I had forgotten just how good a perfect s'more is, with the marshmallow roasted to golden perfection. Or burnt black like one of mine turned out to be, but still good.



Whitney turned out to be a good little camper. Unfortunately, it was very cold. So we were all dressed up. Whitney was wearing so many layers that you can barely see her face. But that really is Whitney; I'm not just holding some random baby.



We got home and Whitney got a bath. She use to hate bathtime and now she just dislikes bathtime, so I think we are making progress. But she is all cute and clean in this picture and smelling like her lavender baby shampoo. We will have to keep her naked after bath pictures to use for her future dates, isn't that what parents do to embarrass their children?

We also took a trip to Cour-de-Lane, Idaho on a Saturday. The lake is absolutely beautiful there and the water wasn't freezing. So it turned out to be lots of fun to hang out for a couple of hours. We did a little window shopping and got an ice cream. But here we are at the lake.





Will gets a turn with Whitney in the water. And we took a couple of videos and Whitney is happy.



It was surprising that Whitney didn't mind having her feet dipped into the water. She even sort of liked it. But she had to have an outfit change afterward because she was soaking wet.

We walked around town and saw a big moose statue right there on the sidewalk. So we had to get a picture of Whitney on it; although I am not sure we were technically suppose to touch it. Oh well. Whitney is too light to make much of a difference.



And finally we went inside an awesome toy store that sold long ago classic toys and some really funny objects. We were almost tempted here to do some real shopping, versus just looking, but we stopped ourselves. One book caught our eye though. This one was just so funny. We might have to go back and get it one of these days.



Anyway, those are our trips lately. I know they might only sound sort of exciting to some of you adventurers out there, but they were pretty exciting for us homebodies in Cheney. Bye.