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!