Random catching up

So we've been up to some fun things the past few weeks, but I never got around to dedicating a post to any one of those things, so here's a little montage. A few weeks ago, Chan played in the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce basketball tournament with the Pleasant Valley Potato team, and they won 1st place!

From L to R: Val Wahlen, Ryan Wahlen, Wade Wahlen, Austin George, Garrett Wahlen, Chan, Jody Phillips, and John Murdoch.
Also, we are lucky to have Chandler's Grandma Goodwin in Idaho. After many years in Phoenix she is back in Blackfoot and living in the Gables, which is very nice. We are glad to be able to see her more often, our girls love to visit.

My sister Jill decided to come back to Idaho to do hair once a month or so and we were lucky to have her and Easty Beasty stay with us for a few days. We got to go see Hailey and her classroom. It was great to see her in her element. McKin and Halle loved doting on Easton, but he wasn't too sure what he thought of it. The girls got haircuts, here's little Hal for her first official haircut ever, she did so good!

Grandpa Wahlen came to see all the grandkids in action.

Halle found my mom's makeup drawer. I swear she has an internal radar leading her that stuff. Check out that face.

My Aunt Deb and my cousin Troy came from California to visit my Grandpa Kimball. It was great to see them. Troy lived with our family for about 2 years when I was around 6 and was a great big brother figure to me. I remember that when I missed the bus I got to ride to school with him in his sports car and he'd play his music real loud and I felt like the coolest 1st grader around. We were sad that his wife and kids couldn't come. He's great with kids, Quincy had a great time.

Hailey made her traditional holiday sugar cookies with my girls, they loved it as always. Thanks Boog!

Some other random things my kids have been doing and saying that are probably boring for everyone else but I like to have:

One night for Family Home Evening, we talked about the Word of Wisdom and the next morning when McKinley was picking out cereal she picked out Honey Bunches of Oats and she usually hates nuts, so I said "You know this has nuts in it right?" and she said "Well......does it have alchohol in it?" and I told her "No" and she said "Ok, then I'll have it."

McKinley's also been talking a lot about her driver's license. Everything that she wants to do but can't yet because she's too young, she thinks will happen when she gets her drivers license. For example....Me: "I need to make this part of the cookies, that's kind of a mom job." McKin "but when I get my drivers license then I can make cookies all by myself right?" She even told me that when Tanner gets home from his mission she'll probably get her drivers license. I have no idea where she gets this.

Finally, at state basketball my dad taught McKin how to call his cell phone by herself. Since then he gets at least a couple of calls everyday, and she has now learned my mom's number too. They swear they don't regret teaching her that but I'm sure the day will come.

Also, Quincy has started to snort when she gets really excited, a trait I'm sure she'll LOVE when she gets older! Good thing she's cute! She's such a happy baby who's always laughing and smiling, well not always.......but a good amount.

Easter Festivities

The fun began with coloring Easter Eggs on Wednesday night.Quincy didn't get to do much, but she had fun watching and looked pretty dang cute doing it. There seems to be some law in our household that all we can manage is completely goofball poses. Beleive it or not, these were the least goofy of about the 10 pics each that I tried to get of these crazy kids.Saturday Morning, we met Joni, Misti, Saddie, & Easton at Jensen's Grove for some CRAZY Easter Egg Hunting! McKinley & Saddie are getting ready for the big moment, the best picture we could get beleive it or not. We also tried desperately to get a picture of Halle and Easton (wouldn't that be a great pic to show if they got married some day?) but that was definitely not happening.

Quincy Lou waiting for the fun to begin McKin and Saddie going for it, no one should ever underestimate McKin's love of candy, it runs pretty deep.The girls with their hauls
After we returned our easter eggs, (that's right, we are in a recession I suppose, so we return the plastic eggs for reuse and keep the candy) we let the girls play on the toys for a while.

Sunday morning they found their Easter baskets, filled mostly with books. The Easter Bunny was very into learning this year, he must have hit the 2 for 1 sale at the Kindergarten Center Book Festival.

Sadly, we have 9 am church and in no version of reality does this leave us time to take pictures of my darling girls in their dresses before we leave the house. So here's the pics of my kids in forward facing car seats in their Easter duds. We'll try to re-create it sometime.
After dinner, we got to have the Dunns or the "Bunns" as McKin calls them, over for dinner and we got to have Camdyn stay the night! The girls were so excited and hugging and jumping up and down.
And the best part of the Easter, my darling niece Camdyn snuggled up in a BYU Cougar blanket. Sorry Rich, it's all we had........he heHope everyone had a great Easter!

Happy Birthday Miss Halle!

Today my sweet little Halle Pal turns 2, can you beleive it? Halle is my little sweetheart, she almost always obeys, not all the time, she is only 2. She loves to help her mom clean, has good manners, run "fass" and has a great reportoire of "tricks" aka jumping up and down and halfway doing a somersault. She loves to give her sisters hugs everyone morning and say "good morning Dee, good morning Bubba!" (dee is McKin and Bubba is Quincy, how she got that, no one knows) Halle just goes with the flow and is happy and kind along the way and we love her to pieces. Today also marks the end of a 3 day birthday marathon.

I thought that for this birthday I would finally attempt to make a cake. That's right, I have 3 kids and this is the first birthday cake I haven't ordered from Wal-Mart. It turned out ok, although a little cheesy, but I don't know if was worth the stress. I was really freaking out about it for a few days before, we'll see how I feel come July.

We had a party with my family at my parents house on Sunday after conference, everyone was already together and my Grandpa Kimball isn't doing well and my mom needs to be with him so we brought the party to them. Halle loved her gifts, almost as much as McKinley did. Here she is blowing out her candles with a little help from McKin.
Continuing the birthday festivities, Monday night we took the girls to Monsters vs. Aliens, which they loved and Halle actually sat and watched. Today Halle got a couple more presents and was ready to party.Grandma and Grandpa Daw and the Dunns came over for pizza, cake, and ice cream. Here's Hall and Macki having a good time on the swing.
McKin and Camdyn thought they were pretty hot stuff in the Barbie Jeep!
It was a great couple of days. We love you Halle, don't ever change!

Hawaii

So we just got back from Hawaii and I'm ready to go back! However, we did miss our girls like crazy and a big mahalo to everyone who helped with our kids while we were gone.

We had a great time in Hawaii! Here's us right after we got off the plane in Hawaii, I look a little akward wearing boots in Hawaii but I had a hard time dressing for both Salt Lake and Honolulu, I quickly changed to flip flops. Bear with me on the number of photos, I had to choose out of 227 photos and that's considering that my camera got ruined by a wave with 2 days left. I went a little crazy I think.Waiting for the rental car Shuttle. We stayed at the Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore in Oahu and it was amazing! It was a 4 bedroom villa with everything you could think of and best of all, here was the view from our balcony!Me performing my Tour Director duties! Monday we headed to Haleiwa and thanks to Misti ate at the world's best burger place Kua'Aina
And here's the reason I will be doing some major dieting now. We got some famous Matsumoto's Shaved ice which totally lived up to it's reputation.We went and visited the Dole Plantation and took a train ride which was really interesting, and we had some great pineapple!The next morning we went to Waimea Bay and did some boogie boarding, here's Chan and Marc.
Garrett's pockets were so full of sand he had to dump them out a few times. so we took the sand Garrett dumped out of his pockets and buried Marc. Ha!

We got cleaned up and spent the rest of the day at the Polynesian Cultural center, here we are at the Canoe Show.Chan and I on the canoe tour

The Fam in "Fiji"Hailey, Garrett, Shannon, my Dad, and I got tricked into going on Stage and doing a polynesian dance. It was a little weird but I don't think we did too bad.

Chan and I at the Luau, you can't tell but there's a whole roasted pig behind us.Wednesday the boys and Jill went golfing and my Mom, Whitney, Hailey and I watched the surfers at Sunset Beach, did some shopping, got more Matsumoto's and met the boys to eat once again at Misti's burger place, yes.....it was that good.

After golfing we hung out on the beach, snorkeled, and tried to play a great trick on Marc while he was getting the snorkel stuff by digging a big hole underneath his beach towel but he didn't fall for it, dang it!

Thursday we went into Honolulu and went shopping, to Waikiki and Benihana for dinner. We saw this sign on the way so just in case you didn't know.....

Everyone at BenihanaFriday morning Chan, Marc, Garrett, and Jill went on the Hawaiian Shark Encounter where the take you out 3 miles in a boat and put you in a cage in the ocean while sharks swim around you which Chan thought was awesome, but the water was so rough that he was the only one out of the 13 people on the boat that didn't throw up. I felt so bad because they all looked horrible when they got back, but they still found it in themselves to take surf lessons that afternoon. Here's Chan getting ready to surf and that's as far as I got before a wave came unexpectedly high on shore and soaked my camera but he did awesome! He stood up and rode his very first wave the whole way in. Saturday we packed up and went to the swap meet at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu and got a lot of great crap! Then we went and visited Pearl Harbor and the Battleship Missouri Memorial which was really cool and moving to see. The rest of the trip was great, we played a ton of games, laughed so much it hurt, and ate REALLY well.

A BIG Mahalo to my wonderful Mom and Dad for taking us on this trip and being so generous! The memories we made will last a lifetime!