the happenings

We took a quick trip up to Pasco again this weekend to see one of Courtney's Friends from School. Micah was down with her family and we got to see her new baby Adalicia

the next day a new Pasco Library Branch was opening, and so they were having a party, so we showed up and go to see some of the sights. here we are eating snacks

Here are singers that were performing from the local music school

A visit from Dora the Explorer , and the kids almost looked at her!!

There was a lady doing balloon animals and, and she was giving out some really fancy ones, just as we got to the front of a long and slow moving line, she saw that her line was long, and she started going out very simple balloons to all the kids. so we were one person away from being able to get a Elmo balloon, so instead the girls got flower ones

Inside the library in the kids section there was a big mushroom to sit next to, and then several little mushroom stools for kids to sit on

Rachel started being very excited to wear her shoes wile we were there, but would start wearing them on her hands. she was very proud of herself, but did not like walking around with her feet up in the air.  

Courtney was enjoying some animal crackers in peanut butter until the kids decided that looked good, so they Courtney had to make sure they did not touch anything after that. but they did all have fun dipping animal crackers and getting their hands all peanutbutteriffic.  

And not to be out done, Will decided to make a "tent" out of Whitney's blanket, at first we told stories, but then we needed to play break the ice, and Rachel had to play with us.  As much as we like Courtney, we are glad she did not join us in the tent, because it would have been very crowded in there

Visiting the McNary Dam

There doesn't seem to be a lot to do in Umatilla, but we do have the McNary Dam really close to where we live.  We decided to go visit it yesterday just to see.

Here we are at the top of the mountain.  You can see the dam in the background.  Everyone was happy to be out of the house for a little while.

There was a sign on top of the trail with a map and told of some information of things to look at in the area.

While we were looking at the sign, Whitney took off running down the trail.  It isn't very steep or dangerous, but we didn't want her getting lost or anything.  So Will had to run to chase her down.  You have to look hard to see them down the trail.  Rachel and I went partly down the trail while we waited.

Going down is much easier than coming back up the hill.  Whitney got a ride on Will's shoulders back up the mountain.

We drove down to the Oregon Fish View Room.  Whitney was really excited to see some fish.

Here everyone peers into the windows waiting for fish to come by.

I guess April really isn't the best month to see lots of fish - the chart says May is a lot better.  But we did see two fish in like the fifteen minutes we were there.  This one little fish got stuck in the corner, so Whitney got to watch him for awhile and she even gave him a name.

Anyway, we missed seeing the visitor center since it had just barely closed.  But that just means we will have to go back another day.  It was a fun little visit.

A Happy Easter and a Happy Move

Wow, it has been insane these past two weeks with the packing and the cleaning and then the unpacking.  But we are officially moved into our new house in Umatilla.  And so far we like it pretty well.  We also celebrated Easter in between all the craziness; it was good for the girls to be able to relax a little bit.  I feel like they have been a little ignored lately.  But no more now that the move is done.  Here are some pictures from the move and from our Easter in Pasco.

Look at this handsome man I had packing boxes - what a guy.  He always was willing to pack boxes, or the equally important job of distracting children so I could pack boxes, after coming home from work.

Our living room became the storage for all our boxes.  We were pretty cramped in there those last couple of days before the move.

And, look, you can see the floor.  We spent several hours cleaning Thursday evening and Friday morning.  It is amazing how much dirt and dust can settle without even knowing it until everything is taken out.

And this is our new house in Umatilla.  It has three bedrooms, so we are using one to hold extra children clothes and food storage.

And we have a backyard.  I am so happy that we have a fenced backyard that the children can play in.  Umatilla has nicer weather than Cheney, so we go outside to play pretty much everyday.  It seems like a decent house in a decent neighborhood.

We came back to Pasco for Easter to spend time with family.  Rachel spent a little time dying Easter eggs, but she doesn't like getting her hands dirty.  So she actually spent most of her time just playing in a cup full of water.

Whitney was the egg dying queen.  She, by far, did more than the rest of us.  She never wanted to keep the eggs in the dye for longer or color on any of them, so she managed to crank out quite a few.

We all made resurrection cookies for Family Home Evening before Easter.  Whitney is a good cookie helper.

And here we are on Easter Sunday.  I tried to get a family picture, but there was just too much grumpiness.  Oh well.  Rachel was very good at collecting candy.  She would try to fit all the pieces into her hands, and would end up dropping a lot of them, so it was entertaining to watch her.  Most candy did make it into the candy bowl.

Whitney also did a good job collecting candy.  You can kind of see her full bucket in the picture.  I think only a couple of pieces were eaten during the finding.  

Anyway, now things are more settled.  We are still exploring Umatilla to see what is out there.  It's a pretty small town.  But Will really likes his new job so far, so that is really good.

Why we have Easter

Whitney has really been looking forward to Easter.  She has been telling me how excited she is to color eggs and look for candy.  We wanted to teach her and Rachel about why we really celebrate Easter.  Family Home Evening was the perfect time to do it.

We started off doing a puzzle I made.  Whitney loves ripping off the pieces to see what is underneath.

She has recognized the picture of Jesus forever.  I explained that Jesus is the real reason we have Easter.

Then we made resurrection rolls.  I learned about this recipe from primary, then I looked online and found it. The rolls are really yummy and show the concept behind the resurrection really well.

I explained to Whitney that the marshmallow was Jesus' body, then we dipped it into melted butter for the oils and cinnamon sugar for the spices that were used during the time of Jesus to help preserve the body.

Whitney was very good at dipping and then rolling the marshmallow into the crescent roll (which represents the linen blanket placed around the body).

We let Rachel take a turn doing a marshmallow too.  She was not too keen on the idea of putting her hands into the bowl of butter and bowl of cinnamon sugar.  Whitney was a great helper though and was sad when we were out of crescent rolls.

Whitney practiced saying sepulchre - or oven, where Jesus' body rested.

While we waited for the rolls to cook, we read some scriptures and watched a short movie about the resurrection.  

You could see when I cut into the roll that it was empty.  The marshmallow all melts into the bread - making it a yummy treat and a good example of the resurrection.  Then we all ate the rolls.  I am not sure how much Whitney really understood.  The resurrection is a pretty intense subject for a three year old.  But at least she knows that Jesus is the real reason for why we have Easter.

And a picture of Rachel just for fun.  She loves being naked.

The Exciting V

I was a little apprehensive about coming up with projects for the letter V, but the day turned out pretty well.  I think the kids even had fun and learned a little about the letter.

We started off watching a video about the letter V.  You can pretty much find any video about any letter from Sesame Street on Youtube.  Whitney thought the video was pretty funny.

I cut out a big and little letter V and then we took turns hiding them.  Each girl got to find one letter and then hide the letter they found.  Whitney needs to keep working on hiding something and then not telling me where she hid them because it was quite easy to find the letters with a little girl pointing the way.

We made a V collage.  When I started cutting pictures out of magazines, I thought it would just be a vegetable collage, but there weren't enough pictures.  So the kids got to glue on all kinds of V things - vacuum and vase and vest, etc.

Coloring the big letter V hiding in all the vegetables.

Then the girls got to stick stickers all over their vases.  Whitney wanted to be done after only two stickers, but I convinced her to put on a couple more.

I found some fake flowers at the dollar store; I wasn't sure what violets really looked like, so we went for violet colored flowers.  

Then we made a Valentines wreath by gluing hearts all over the rim of a paper plate.  The girls really like doing anything that involves glue lately.

So I am afraid I didn't get a good picture of our volcano.  I used the clay that Whitney got for her birthday, but I had never used clay before and didn't know quite how hard it was.  With a little water, the girls managed to use their fingers to dig a big hole in the middle.  And I decided that looked close enough to a volcano.  Then we did the whole baking soda/red-dyed vinegar trick to make the volcano erupt.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of all the fizzing, but it only lasted like five seconds and just didn't work.  Oh well.

For snack, we had a vegetable man.  Thanks to my mom for the idea.  We used a cucumber body, carrot arms, red pepper legs, a tomato head, and some lettuce shreds for hair.  The kids thought their little vegetable men were cool and enjoyed dipping everything into ranch dressing.  They also got to dip vanilla wafers into vanilla pudding.  So V was fun.  We are going to double up on letters for the next two weeks so we can finish the alphabet before we move.