Santa is Coming to Town

Not to our town, but down in the Tri-Cities.  We heard about a Christmas parade in front of the mall in the Tri-Cities that would have Santa come visit.  It seems a little early in the season, but we decided to go to let Whitney see Santa.

We went to the mall early because we weren't quite sure how busy the parade would be.  The girls loved looking at all the lights and wreaths and just playing for awhile.  They don't get to go to the mall very often, so it was a very exciting place for them.

The parade was outside.  Thankfully, it wasn't a very cold day.  Here we wait in front of some huge Christmas tree ornaments.

The girls favorite part was the candy.  Here are some elves handing out candy to the children.

I love this picture.  After the parade, some people came inside and were willing to take pictures with the kids.  Mrs. Claus was all too excited to hold baby Megan.

And Whitney gives a high five to a reindeer.  Rachel was a little afraid at first, but she got over that after seeing that Whitney was still okay. 

There were little activities for the kids to do after the parade.  This one was making a snowflake ornament.  They also got to color and make 'minion' food.  (From Despicable Me).  

Here Rachel is decorating a card to give to our country's servicemen.  I wrote a little message inside and then Rachel colored.  We sure do appreciate the work our servicemen do for our country.  Whitney didn't quite understand why they didn't get to keep the cards they made, so I tried to explain what the cards were for.  I am not sure they really understood, but oh well.  I hope the cards bring a little Christmas cheer to someone.

    Anyway, we didn't get any pictures of the girls with the big guy.  They were at least thirty bucks a pop.  But later I found out that you can get free pictures of your kids with Santa at our local WalMart next Saturday.  So we will probably do that.  The girls had a really fun trip.

The Various States of Megan

We haven't really done anything major lately.  The girls and Will are recovering from colds, so we mostly just hung out at home.  But here are a couple of random pictures of Megan in various states.

This is her discovery state.  Megan just learned how to put her fist into her mouth and suck on her fingers.  She really enjoys the taste of fingers apparently.
 

This is Megan's cool state.  Whitney and Rachel seem to think it is really funny to put a pair of sunglasses on this poor kid.  Thankfully, Megan doesn't seem to mind.

This is the partially undressed state.  This state happens every morning where clothes just get strewn on the floor as certain small children decide what they want to wear.

This is Megan's defensive state.  She likes to clench her fists and she looks about ready to bop somebody on the nose.

Obviously, this is the sad state.  We are lucky because Megan is usually pretty happy.  But when she wants to cry, she can cry like the best of them.

  

And every parents' favorite - the sleeping state.  They are so cute asleep.

This isn't a Megan state, but we all really liked Rachel's new shirt.  So I just had to put a picture of it on the blog.  Look at just how cute she is.

A Great Halloween

We had such a fun Halloween as a family.  Whitney really got into the holiday and was super excited for it to come.

What an Incredible looking family.  I thought we were all looking pretty darn cute.

We went to the Tri-Cities the weekend before Halloween for my mom's birthday.  There happened to be a couple of Halloween things going on in the community on the Saturday.  So here we are at the library.  Whitney is making a spider web.

We decorated cupcake haunted houses.  The girls loved making the house, but didn't really like eating them.  So Will was stuck eating two cupcakes, but I don't think he minded too much.

The girls show off their little toilet paper tube bats.  

Then we went to a moose lodge that was just down the street from the library.  Whereas the library had mostly crafts, the moose lodge had classic carnival games.  Whitney and Rachel especially loved fishing for miniature candy bars.

The cake walk was also a big hit.  Whitney kept wanting to play it, even after getting her cupcakes.

Megan couldn't really participate, but we did pretend to have her play the beanbag toss.  She was mostly just there to look cute and complete our Incredible family.  Bytheway, we won cutest costume contest at the moose lodge and got a little stuffed skeleton teddy bear, so that was neat.

Then we went to the pumpkin farm to get a couple of pumpkins.

Look at my cute scarecrow and pumpkin.  The girls love putting their heads into any kind of cutout.

This was probably the favorite of the day - a sandbox full of corn kernels.  Both girls had a blast dumping things and playing with the toys.

It is kind of hard to tell but Whitney is riding in the back of the train.  She was the only one on the train and told me she wanted to ride in the caboose.  It only made me a little nervous because the driver looked like he was only like twelve.  But she was really happy with the train ride.

We went through the hay maze and didn't get really lost. Hooray for little mazes with little children.

We waited to get back to Umatilla to carve our pumpkins.  Whitney picked a smiley face for her pumpkin and the other one became the 'I' for the Incredibles.  Anyway, we had a great Halloween and now the girls are happy to have lots of candy to eat.

Megan's Baby Blessing

We did Megan's baby blessing the week after general conference.  It is wonderful that Will holds the priesthood so he could do the blessing for her.

Look at how cute Megan is in her little dress.  She gave us some smiles for the camera.  You can kind of tell the she is smiling in these pictures.  The blessing was really beautiful.  Megan was blessed to have a growing body and to have the spirit and to be able to share it with others.  She was also blessed to be a good influence for her family and that one day she would marry in the temple and have her own family.  So it was a really special baby blessing.  My family was able to come from the Tri-Cities to be part of it and that was also nice.  Anyway, that is what has been happening in Umatilla.

Getting Ready for Halloween

We wanted to do some fun things to get in the spirit of Halloween.  Whitney has been getting steadily more excited for the big day, asking me every day if it was Halloween yet.  We have been having lots of fun preparing for it.

I got this pumpkin idea from the Friend magazine.  You take a toilet paper tube and wrap orange paper around it and then you take orange strips and tape them on both sides.  So it looks like a pumpkin.  It was pretty neat; the girls were proud of their pumpkins.  

We went to library story time and the girls got to color a picture of leaves and glue them onto trees.  Rachel mostly missed the tree and put the leaves under, seemed very fall like to me.

We went on a walk to collect some leaves.  Just going around the block one time gave us tons of leaves of different varieties.  Afterwards, we made leaf things.  Whitney made a leaf man; does it look like a person to you?

Rachel decided to just color her leaf.

I checked out lots of Halloween books from the library and we have been reading a couple a day.  For being such a small library, they have a good Halloween book collection.

And finally came the traditional making Halloween cookies.  I made a bunch of sugar cookies for the ladies I visit teach.  The girls wanted to help with the frosting.

Whitney did a good job decorating hers.  So it has been fun getting ready for Halloween,