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!