Christmas

Merry Christmas!! These are our Christmas Eve and Christmas pictures.

Playing with Grandpa Murray on Christmas Eve while we waited for the Trax to take us to Temple Square. So cute!

waiting for the lights to come on!
Opening stockings Christmas morning!
happiness that only cost pennies. balloons and rings from Santa.

this is what Whitney did as soon as she saw her new Dora sleeping bag from Natalie- flopped right down on it!

Katelyn with ponies from Aunt Melissa
Whitney squeezing her "boy boybee" (boy barbie) so tight!
playing in the tunnel from Grammy and Grandpa Jamie- they love it! Whitney goes crazy in there, it's hilarious.
We had a really good Christmas morning. Then we went to the Murray's for Christmas dinner and many hours of fun playing Wits and Wagers. One of my favorite things from the day was when Katelyn said in the Christmas dinner prayer that she was grateful she wasn't sick on Christmas. We had actually been praying for that the whole month, because last year she was sick on Christmas and it was really sad for us all that she couldn't be as excited and joyful. So our prayers were answered!

Also we had a quick post-Christmas visit from my parents as they brought Donny to Provo- we're so excited to have him close! The girls had a lot of fun with them too and I forgot to take pictures.

And I forgot to mention our favorite parts of this Christmas season: reading stories every night was SO fun, and the girls LOVED caroling and Whitney even learned a couple of songs all the way through.

I love the Christmas season and how much more often than usual I thought of Christ this month!

santa whitney

Christmas traditions and fun

Here's a peek at our December fun, not necessarily in order...

Whitney at the height of our snow this week! Eric was pretending to fall off the deck and Whitney went to save him.... and stepped right off and sunk right in up to her armpits! Later I was making a maze with the girls and snow was up to my thighs in some spots!

Whitney making her gingerbread house in what I like to call "jonathan style"- after my brother who used to just pile as much candy as possible on his plate!
Katelyn pointing to the smiley face on her creative house!

okay this was hilarious. playing Santa and his reindeer.

we had fun seeing the lights at Salem pond

Then we had a bunch of snow this week- this was on the beginning of the first day when we only had a few inches. We ended up with at least 2 feet! Here are the girls trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

We made a ramp again going down from our deck- perfect for little sledders. Oh and Whitney threw the snowball in her hand at Kate right after I took this picture!
making snow angels...
and acting out the Christmas story. This is the camel and the 2 wise men/astronauts. :) And yes I had just gave Eric a haircut. a buzz. the only thing he'll let me do to his hair. :)
good times.

more thanksgiving pics I stole from my sisters

me and eric at the beach, cute.

Melissa took this so-cute picture of my girls
Thanksgiving scripture skits- Whitney was a cricket and Melissa a seagull from the pioneer story, it was HILARIOUS.
All of us who were there- we miss you Derek and Jonathan!

Thanksgiving

So my sister Allison invited my whole family over for Thanksgiving this year, she is brave and awesome. We had so much fun spending 3 whole days together in her house in sunny Southern California! It was so funny, when we got off the freeway in her town there were flowers growing by the side of the road and they looked so pretty- I realized I hadn't see flowers growing in almost a month!

Anyway, we did SO many fun things and the girls had a blast with everyone. The food was great (all of the meals!) and we got to play lots of games and watch lots of great basketball and lots of heartbreaking football. We spent time outside each day enjoying the blessed sunshine. We siblings and spouses went to see Harry Potter 7 while Grammy and Grandpa Jamie watched the kids! It was a great vacation.

Here's Katelyn gobbling up apple peels while Jenae, Katrina and Phillip peeled apples for pies.

Here's Whitney and Eric "playing badminton"- Whitney got SO excited each time they hit the ball- I mean the shuttlecock? Badminton is Donny's new favorite sport and Eric took a badminton class at BYU and loved it, so he was really excited that Donny brought his net!
While others had turns playing, the girls had races around the court.
We also went to the beach! Here's Katelyn with her cute name.
Whitney loved the waves of course!
The young ones- Jenae, Natalie, Whitney and Katelyn got in the water. Us wise older folk did not.
Oh and these young ones braved the waves too a little- Donny, Melissa, and Phillip!
We also found a cute short tree, like Whitney. The Whitney tree.
And a tall skinny tree. The Katelyn tree.
And that's all my pictures. Thank you again to the MacKays for hosting!

last fall pics

Since we have had snow on the ground for a couple of weeks now, I thought I'd finally post the last of our fall pictures. Here are the girls in the leaf pile!

and Whitney totally buried
and the girls burying Eric :)
Oh and here's my latest hobby- making fabric flowers with layers of silky cloth with melted edges! So fun. I've made hair clips, necklaces, and flowers to pin on shirts. Here's a couple of my favorites.
and my new work-in-progress fun hairstyle.

the reason for the season

It was Christmas time, and a little girl named Katelyn was 4 ½ years old and just starting to learn how to read. One day she was in the kitchen, trying to figure out the saying on a decorative plate her mom had put up. She sounded out “We”, her mom helped her with “believe”, and she got “in”. Then on the last word she said “sss” and “aah”, then her face lit up and she exclaimed “Savior!”

Her mom was surprised, then a little embarrassed, and with great love for her daughter she said “Wow, you’re right, that is what we believe in. It should say Savior, but really it says “Santa”. ‘We believe in Santa’.”

Katelyn replied “Maybe we could make a new plate that says ‘We believe in the Savior’.”

Her mom smiled and said, “that’s a good idea,” and was grateful for the reminder of the reason for the season.

At long last, the Halloween post!

This year Katelyn decided to be a princess with the costume from our costume box and Whitney was an elephant with Kate's old costume. No buying or making costumes, AWESOME. Since we live in Utah we went trick-or-treating on Saturday, along with everyone else. :) Sadly it was a stormy day. We tried to go out between big downpours, but of course we ended up caught in one and had to take shelter in a friend's home while Eric ran home and got the car to pick us up. We waited a while and had better luck on our second try. :)

Here is Whitney on Halloween morning! I had made orange-colored banana muffins for breakfast, and accidentally left the food coloring on the counter. Then I went upstairs with katelyn to put her hair in rag curlers for her princess look. 20 minutes later I realized Whitney was eerily silent and I thought she was in the kitchen. I called down "Whitney are you making a mess?" She said "yes!" and I said "with what?" I couldn't think of what she could be getting into that would really be a problem, but then she said "black" and I was very puzzled, went to check and she was happily squirting food coloring, like half of each little bottle into her juice, on her muffin, and all over the counter. And it was black! Her hands and face were fine by later that day but she still had a few green splotches on her tummy the next morning when she took a bath. Silly.

Katelyn the princess
the princess and the elephant at our neighbor's house
Right before it started raining!
The day after Halloween we went to Walmart and found this little number (pajamas!) for only $8! So we can see why they waited until after Halloween to put it out- everyone would have bought these instead of paying $25 for a Woody costume! Katelyn was in heaven.

Bayou Cougars

Last night Eric and I went to the BYU basketball game, and apparently talked to the girls a lot about it.

This morning. Eric's watching English Premier League soccer. Whitney sits on his lap to watch and says "Bwauyoo cogars are da bet! Cause dey are my country!" in a sing-song voice. Translation: BYU Cougars are the best! Cause they are my country!"

So we have a little bit of confusion going on- but hey. We love the Cougars about as much as the USA, right?

going voting

So Tuesday morning I told the girls that later we were I had to go vote. Whitney asked if she could come with me and I said "sure, we're all going." Several times throughout the morning when we talked about what else we were doing that day, Whitney said "mom I wanna go voting with you." and I was like "of course" but I kept thinking it was a little odd that she was so concerned about not being left behind.

So we go to the polling place, I vote while the girls play on some chairs, a lady gives them candy, we're all happy. We go to leave and Whitney starts whining "I wanted to go voting mom" and I'm like "sorry, you just got to come with me, you can vote when your 18." She starts whining more and getting frustrated so I tried to explain "all I did was push some buttons, it wasn't that exciting, do you want my sticker?" But now she's crying and refusing to leave, fortunately by now we were in the entry area separated from the rest of the building as she keeps repeating insistently "I want to go voting!" Katelyn and I left her inside and tried the "walk away and pretend like you're leaving" trick to no avail. Halfway to the car we decide to go back and get her and just carry her screaming out to the car, when a nice old lady who looked very concerned and probably thought I was a terrible mother opens the door and Whitney comes running out crying for me. It was then that it hit me- she thought we were going BOATING. Boating, not Voting. No wonder she was so excited about it! Poor girl. I tried to explain that we were not at a lake and it's too cold and Grandpa's in Japan and Uncle Kurtis is in Idaho so there's no one to drive the boat.... obviously she was beyond reason at that point and cried for the next 10 minutes because she didn't get to go "voting". And because I made her get buckled in her car seat.

Pretty sad and funny mistake for a cute 2-year-old!

Pre-Halloween Fun!

We made this awesome halloween haunted gingerbread house from Grandma Murray when Melissa was here- we LOVED spending time with her by the way!

Then a week later we made sugar cookies- here are Whitney's sprinkle-hands!

our plates of cookies

The girls went to a friend's princess/fairy party, they were so cute. They also went to a Halloween party Katrina and Phillip had for their nieces and nephews, it was SO cute and I wish I had a picture of the orange-fruit salad jack-o-lanterns!
we made these sweet ghost decorations, thank you Family Fun magazine!
love Halloween right now.

whitney's race video

Whitney and Katelyn ran in the BYU Homecoming kids races, it's 200 meters for 1-4 year-olds. It was just as awesome as we knew it would be!! Katelyn did great, see next post, even though she runs faster than that when we're just playing in the backyard. She took 4th place! So she just missed a medal. :) But in the official results they have her as 7th, because as you can see from our video evidence, 3 girls passed her in the finish chute and the people in charge didn't even notice! Rude. Eric was so mad, he's the one who stayed with her during the race, but didn't go through the finish line with her. Good thing she didn't really take 3rd or we would have had to fight for her medal! haha.

Then little Whitney, you'll see in this video how she stops, breathing all hard, just to rest, then stops to point out a hot air balloon, totally trips and falls on her face, classic Whitney, then jumps back up and keeps going. My personal favorite is her funny big steps the last few meters. She was the CUTEST, SO excited about "my race" for weeks beforehand. We weren't going to have her do it but she wanted to SO BAD! She took second-to-last place and it was so fun! (and the video is blurry, taken with our old broken camera)

This is a new family tradition by the way :) If only we could get Eric to run the 5k with me....

Okay sad. the video will not upload after 4 tries. :(

kate's race

we have a separate video of Whitney. coming soon.

weekend in St. George

We went to see my whole family and lots of extended relatives at my great-grandma's 90th birthday party in St. George a couple of weeks ago! It was a surprise party, so awesome. Here's Whitney and her only boy cousin Caleb, they are going to be great friends.

Katelyn, Natalie and Whitney singing "I am a Child of God" they were so cute and hilarious! Katelyn held it together while Whitney made up some words and Natalie and Whitney wiggled all around.... classic.
And here they are, the 5-generation pictures I've been DYING for! Katelyn with her Great-Grandmom, Mom, Great-great-grammy, and Grammy.
Whitney with her Great-grandmom, Mom, Great-great grammy, and Grammy!

me, my 5 siblings who were there (obviously Derek and Jonathan couldn't come 'cause they're on missions.....) and our great-grandma (Grammy)!

me and my 4 sisters after we sang in the "talent show"- we did the star-spangled banner verse 1 and 3 in 4 parts. cool.
the girls with Natalie at the St. George Temple. Sadly, this is the best one I got!
me and Whit. now every time we sing "I love to see the temple" she says "we went there!"
I didn't get any pictures of us all swimming on Saturday night, it was really fun! And we discovered that Whitney looks JUST like my grandmom when she was little- I love that we can see those similarities through the generations!