Moving

Well, we have officially moved.  Our apartment looks like a wreck right now with boxes everywhere.  So we will post some pictures in a couple of days when everything is all cleaned up.  Both of us like the new place; it is cute and I am writing this blog post at home since we now have the Internet.  Hooray for that!  But we realized that our storage space is limited, so we have placed lots of boxes and things underneath our bed.  Maybe we will just get rid of some of the random junk we have acquired since being married four years ago.  How does the random stuff just pile up?  Whitney seems to be accommodating to the new place.  She likes to pull things out of the boxes and throw them on the floor - such bliss.  Anyway, we still live in Cheney and we are still alive.  I know it has been a little while since our last post.  I promise to put up some pictures soon.  Take care.

HOT DAYS

It has been very hot lately.  We try to avoid turning on the air conditioner for too long to lower the utility bill, but we also don’t want to swelter in our apartment.  So we have been using lots of fans.  And Whitney helps cool herself by playing with water.  This last weekend, Will found some little water guns for all of us.  We went outside to play with them.  Will and I had a fun time squirting each other, but Whitney couldn’t quite understand how to push the trigger.  Oh well.  She learned how to suck on it to get the water out and how to shake it vigorously.

The red water gun was Whitney’s.  While we were outside, we saw a couple of other children from our ward; Whitney was nice enough to share the water guns with the other babies.  And they all shared baby germs.

Whitney has become very independent; she doesn’t like us helping her eat or drink or anything anymore.  We had soup and French bread the other night for dinner and Whitney just helped herself to my piece.  She has such a small mouth though that she had a hard time getting any bread ripped off.

I have been getting a lot of cheerios from WIC and I often will snack on them throughout the day whenever I get hungry.  I guess Whitney decided she was hungry when I got myself a bowlful because she ran to the drawers to find a utensil to get herself some of the cereal.  Unfortunately, our spoons are too high, so Whitney grabbed a spatula instead and used it to dunk into the cereal.  Isn’t that clever?

Will showed Whitney how fun it is to jump in her crib and now she wants to do it all the time.  Whenever I go into the room to change Whitney’s diaper, she will sign ‘please’ to get into her crib to be allowed to jump around for a couple of minutes.  Hopefully, she doesn’t break through the springs or anything like that.  I am glad that she has something fun she likes to do.

A couple of days ago, Whitney got her first mud stain.  I knew it was bound to happen now that we take her outside a couple of times a day to play.  Whitney was running back and forth across some grass and tripped.  I taught her how to brush off the dirt on her hands into the grass (something I remember doing growing up).  I probably should have washed the jeans immediately to get out the mud because it didn’t all come off in the laundry.  But I think it’s just a sign than Whitney is growing up.

Where is Whitney?  Where is Whitney?  There she is, hiding underneath the box.  We get these big diaper boxes from WalMart and Whitney loves them.  Here Will and Whitney would peek at each other using the little holes on the sides of the box.

It never ceases to amaze me where Whitney can fall asleep.  I think she got that trait from her dad because Will always tells me that he can fall asleep anywhere and anyway.  Whitney was sleeping on the couch when she slowly slid closer and closer to the edge.  I actually thought she was getting up when she started dangling off the couch, but she was actually still asleep.  On Sunday, Will and I were both doing our own thing when we realized that it had gotten too quiet.  Whitney had cleared out a space in her toy chest and fallen asleep in there.  So Will moved her to the bed and he decided to take a Sunday afternoon nap with her.  Aren’t they cute?

Well, we are officially moving again.  We found another apartment in Cheney that is a little cheaper and will give us free laundry and free Internet.  So we are packing up on August 27^th.  Now comes the annoying part of packing box after box.  Thankfully, my family is coming down to help us that Saturday.  Hopefully, it won’t take too long.  So this might be the last blog post for awhile.  We are going to be very busy for the next couple of weeks.  I hope everyone is doing well.  We are here in Cheney.

BABY NEWS

So we are having a baby boy.  At least, the ultrasound technician says it is a 90% chance of a boy.  I guess he was too stubborn to open his legs well enough to be completely certain.  We are going to have to start buying some baby boy clothes.  I am excited to start looking around for some boy things.  Unfortunately, the technician also thinks the baby is a little younger than we originally thought.  She estimates the due date to be around December 20^th, instead of the ninth.  So we might be having a Christmas baby, but we will see what my doctor says in August.  Now we better start thinking of boy names.  We haven't been able to agree on any boy names yet.  Oh well.  We still have time.  So we are very excited for our growing family.

A quick trip

          Well, we have been busy visiting families this past weekend.  And it has been a lot of fun.  We always have a great time when we are able to get together.  It was a fast weekend with lots of driving, but Whitney got to meet her new cousin, Grant.

         On Saturday we went to Anna’s birthday party.  Anna is the daughter of Scott and Emily and she turns three in August, but we decided to celebrate her birthday early so we could all be together.

Here is Anna opening her presents.  She got some cute My Little Ponies toys which brought me back to my childhood when my sister and I would play with those for hours on end.

There were two little wading pools for the children to play in during the party.  I hadn’t packed Whitney’s swimming suit, so we just took off Whitney’s clothes to let her play in the pool.  Will and I were surprised that she liked the water so much because it was cold water and she has just barely started enjoying warm baths.  But Whitney got really angry whenever we tried to get her out of the water so we could do some other activities.

Whitney even got a chance to take a whack at the treasure chest piñata.  The younger kids hit at it without any blindfolds and didn’t cause much damage, but one of the older boys was able to break it open so all the kids could get some candy and some jewels and gold coins. 

We were able to get several pictures of Whitney with her cousins during the party and after Grant’s baby blessing on Sunday.

The three little ones with their parents.

Whitney has always been fascinated by babies.  She loved having two very small baby cousins to play with.  Fortunately, no one’s eyes were poked or got any scratches or anything.  Whitney mostly just liked putting her face really close to their faces and giving them hugs and kisses.  We were prompting Whitney to be soft and she did pretty good.

Dana is a bug collector and he got out one of his big black bugs for Whitney to examine.  It was funny because Whitney seemed to like getting close to the bug herself and wanted to pick it up.  But if the bug started getting close to Whitney, she would get scared and want it off of her.  I don’t blame her though; if a bug that size started crawling up my legs, I would probably not like it as well.

I think Whitney was trying to climb over Angie, one of Scott’s sisters, but then decided to stay for a little while.  I am not sure why because usually she likes to be moving around too much and doesn’t want to just sit.  But maybe she wanted a little break.  So she just sat there for several minutes.

Here Whitney gives Grant a goodbye hug before we left Portland.

And we had to get a picture of all five of them before we left.  It is hard to get a picture of five small children, so we did our best to get them to look at the cameras.  Now Whitney can say she was together with all of her cousins.  And aren’t they all cute?

We went back to Pasco for several hours before making our way to Cheney.  This happened to be the same weekend that my brother Michael and his wife Allison were in Pasco for Michael’s ten year high school reunion.  Michael and Will graduated from high school the same year.  Unfortunately, the reunion didn’t actually take place when it was suppose to, but we were happy to see them anyway.  Whitney is with three of her aunts in my parent’s living room.

This also happened to be the night that my Uncle Andy, Whitney’s great-uncle, came riding in town on his motorcycle.  Whitney saw him at our family reunion when she was really little.  I think Andy was surprised at how big she had gotten.

So it was great being able to see everyone this past weekend.  I don’t know the next time we will be getting together, so we feel fortunate for all the opportunities we do get to hand out.  Thanks for being such a great family to us Keelers in Cheney.

Back in Pasco

We have had an adventurous couple of days with my family this past weekend.  Erin and David came up from Utah, so we decided to go down to Pasco at the same time so we could all be together.  We did a lot of really fun things together; it is great being able to spend time with loved ones.  Even if it is only for a couple of days.

One day we went on a hike up Badger Mountain.  I don’t know if it was just bringing around a sixteen-month-old or if it was being pregnant, or the combination of the two, but that was a challenging hike.  My mom and Whitney and I went up the easy side, but I think it was just the long side of the mountain.  We definitely took breaks along the way to get some water and rest a minute.

Here we all chill on the top of the mountain.  It was a pretty view from up there, so we stopped for a picnic lunch before heading back down.  I figure I got the exercise that a pregnant woman needs to count for at least a couple of days.

We also did a lot of hanging out at home.  With all of us working together, we were able to finish a 1000 piece puzzle in just those couple of days.  It was nice to be able to play a bunch of games and talk while working on the puzzle and just relax to enjoy each other’s company.

Whitney has always loved dogs, but dogs have not always loved Whitney.  She is usually very nice to them, but she is a little exuberant and that scares the dogs away.  Zoey is my family’s dog and Whitney was always wanting to make friends with her, but Zoey didn’t like Whitney.  My mom came up with the idea of having Whitney give a piece of bacon to Zoey as a special treat and after that Zoey and Whitney got along fine.

Conner has this little tractor that you can sit on and push the gas pedal and it drives around.  One day he was being a nice uncle and he pushed the gas pedal and ran around the driveway with Whitney.  Every time he wanted to stop, Whitney kept signing ‘more’ and ‘more’, so I think poor Conner got pretty tired while Whitney was really happy.

This is only Whitney’s second time on a trampoline and she made us all a little nervous because she liked running close to the edge.  Thankfully, three of my siblings were also on the trampoline and they kept her from getting too close and falling off.  I don’t remember why we took her shirt off, but it came back on soon after getting back inside the house.

Will came to Pasco after work on Friday and then on Saturday we all went to Levy Landing for the day.  It is this great park which has a cool shady area with trees and BBQs, but also a beach area with a little lake for playing in.  We set up some camping chairs and Whitney decided she needed to try each one to see which she liked best.

Here Whitney and Will are on the beach and playing under the dragon.  It was a cool dragon decoration thing that appeared to be partially sticking out on the beach.

This is all three of us by the dragon with Whitney on its head.  She captured the dragon and saved the princess and all that good stuff.

The water was quite refreshing.  It was a little cool, but it didn’t start getting really cold until you moved farther away from the beach.  The bottom of the water was covered in mud.  So our feet got facials or footsials or something.  Whitney seemed to like the water for a little while, until she tripped into it one too many times and decided that she didn’t want the water on her face.

We stopped for a BBQ lunch and then there was a mud fight.

I didn’t participate because I didn’t have on good clothes and I knew Whitney didn’t want to be part of it.  But everyone looked like they were having fun.  And everyone got really muddy.

Whitney said goodbye to everyone on Sunday.  We had to get back to Cheney so Will could go to work and so Erin and David could catch their plane on Monday.  Whitney gave everyone some great hugs.  What a fun couple of days.