Happy Birthday Whitney!

Today, my gorgeous youngest sister and sibling turns 14 years old! When I was her age, she wasn't even 1 yet! I'm scared to think what our family would be like without Whitney, she is the perfect youngest child! She is an amazing aunt to my girls and a great help. She is also a great friend to me, a talented dancer, smart, very popular with all her friends, and thankfully VERY innocent. When she was younger her excuse for everything was "Hello, I'm a pre-teen," but lately she's been turning into quite the teenager and it's fun to see her grow. Whitney lights up the room and brings fun everywhere she goes. We hope you have a great birthday Whit, love you!

Pumpkin Carving

For FHE last night, we carved pumpkins. We went out to Shoemaker's and picked out pumpkins from their large pumpkin patch (thanks for the idea Amber!) and then went home and carved pumpkins.

Quincy's Pumpkin

Halle's Pumpkin

McKinley's Pumpkin

It's been a while...

So it's been a little bit since I blogged so here's what we've been up to. We went to Aberdeen for Conference. Halle enjoyed a relaxing massage from her dad, while stuffing her face with crackers, what a life eh!It was followed up by a ride on my Dad's office chair given by Garrettand then some running around and more crackers.Halle REALLY didn't want to leave.Moving on, Halle had her first day of nursery, and Chan and I had the best day of church we've had in 18 months. She just marched right in and didn't shed one tear, just grateful to discover a huge room full of toys at church.

Quincy after church, I hope she'll stay like this for the next 16 months, but I don't think I'm that lucky. McKinley HATES to get her hair washed, she can't imagine anything worse that some inadvertent water getting in your eyes or ears, so she had a GREAT idea to get these goggles (usually used in potato harvest to keep dust out of your eyes) out of the dress up box so that she wouldn't get water in her face.Then she made this dinosaur mask at Preschool and decided to document it herself. She thought she was pretty scary stuff.
Finally, does this look familiar? Carrying one baby, pushing another, purse on the ground....wonder who this girl's been watching.

Oh, one more thing.. .last night McKinley announced out of the blue that she would be voting for Barack Obama. We're a divided household.

The Chipmunk Adventure

This weekend all the boys in my fam went to the BYU Game, so Whitney and my mom came down to hang out with my girls and me and my mom had a miraculous idea...we should rent The Chipmunk Adventure! This is the movie that as a kid we watched over and over and over. I had the lines, dances, songs, etc. all memorized. My family even still uses lines from this movie in everyday jargon. Whitney sadly missed the Chipmunk Adventure era and was glad to know where some of our weird sayings come from. Ah, if I only had a dime for every time I fought with my sisters over who got to be Brittany. Most of the time I won, I was the oldest.....and the coolest, just kidding!

Now McKinley is totally into it, she's watched it like 5 times since yesterday (it just snowed, ok!) , is delighting in replaying conversations from the movie with me ("Now you be Miss Miller mom"), and is walking around singing "we are the girls of rock and roll."

Some of you may have NO idea what I'm talking about, but for the Baker clan all I have to say is "I can still see the eyes, I can still see the eyes."

Farewell to Summer

I've never been a fan of the long Idaho winters, but now that I have children who adore playing outside with the neighbors (hence my house staying clean and me being able to accomplish a few things) I dread winter like the plague.

The nice fall part isn't so bad and then it's fun to have a little snow around Christmas, but by January 2nd I'm dying for it to be warm again, and by March I'm ready to scream. This is now what winter means for me and all Idaho moms pretty much:

• Your child's average amount of TV intake per day dramatically increases.
• I do try to encourage non-television related activities, however those usually involve mess making to some degree which is a downside.
• Your children will still want to play outside, so you'll take 1/2 hour to drag out the snow clothes, bundle them up and then they will play outside for 10 minutes and then come back in because they are cold.
• Any step out of the door for whatever reason takes twice as long, all the extra clothes and shoes and socks.

Here is some of the Pheasant Hollow neighborhood gang, as Chan calls them, in our backyard for one of the last summer play sessions of 2008.

Anna (the upside down one, this is usually how we see Anna!), Ogden, McKinley, Halle, Ellie, and Emma

McKin performing her dance for everyone (hmm..... McKinley performing, that's weird) and Halle and Ellie on the swing. Halle loves Ellie, she takes such good care of her.

So goodbye summer, don't be too long.

Quincy's Blessing

Sunday we blessed Quincy in our ward and then had everyone over for lunch. Those functions are always a little stressful, but great. Chandler gave a great blessing and Quincy looked adorable, of course.

On a side note - Halle LOVES her Aunt Hailey!

Garrett's a Senior, & Easton is 1... I CANNOT BELEIVE IT!

My youngest brother Garrett is a senior this year and last Friday night, we went to watch him in his last home football game. His team beat the other team 70-16 and are undefeated and ranked #1 in the state, so you might say they are doing well. It did make for a boring game though. Garrett is such a stud with such a fun personality, we love him!

G-Dub with the Folks
Buckwheat with the Daw FamHalle enjoying the game....kind ofWe love Aunt Whit
McKinley won a t-shirt from the cheerleaders and put it on, as you can see it fits her perfectly.Easton aka Easty Beasty, my little sister Jill's boy turned 1 yesterday, so after the game on Friday we had a little birthday party for Easton. I've never seen a kid so excited about cake in my life, he had almost 2 slices and then was licking the plate! It was pretty funny, we love our little beasty. My girls think he is the greatest thing! Hope you had a great birthday Easton!