Kleeopatra Ezabella Whipple was born on Feb 24, 2009 @ 4 am to my youngest brother David and Autumn. They are stationed in Ft. Carson, Co right now, and sadly we rarely see them. These are just some of the photos of my newest niece that arrived this week. I love all my nieces and nephews, but I wished they lived closer so we could see them more often. We are so blessed.......
These are my neices Vanessa(11yrs) and Alex(7yrs) who belong to my older sister Priscilla. I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with these neices of mine the past couple of days. We decided to head to the Cave Creek area to go exploring and these are some photos of our adventures throughout our day. We did some hiking and found a stream to wade their feet in. They loved getting their feet all muddy and collecting pretty rocks along the way. I love spending time with my neices and being able to make some crazy memories with them.
This past weekend on Saturday the Phoenix Heard Museum was having a hoop festival. We like going to these Native American events so we went as a family. We were able to visit the grounds of the museum and thats is where these photos were taken. In the first photo Frankie is happily sitting on a piece of petrified wood being displayed. He liked the softness of this rock and just had to sit on it for fun. The next photo is Sabrina also sitting on a piece of petrified wood, but is not to thrilled to have her picture taken on it. In the last photo is Ana using a grinder the Native Americans used to make cornbread and she is holding a big rock to crush the corn with. I like to take my kids to experience their culture every now and then to enhance their knowledge of Native American artifacts. Despite the heat, we all had alot of fun seeing the hoop dancers perform amazing tricks and make interesting hoop designs.
This is our good family friend Sgt Brinkerhoff who is currently serving in the Air Forces at Luke. He is being deployed to Iraq this week and we were invited to see him off at the airport this week. Along with being sad, but grateful for his service, we were able to join his family to say goodbye... Many of us have family members who serve in the military and we are so thankful for their time they give to our country.
This past weekend my kids had a four day weekend break from school, so we decided to take a trip up north to Snowflake. We traveled with our good friend Becky who luckily enough has her parents who live up there so we could stay with them. While on our way up we decided to play in the snow on the side of the road, but the snow was not soft at all. Despite the hard snow we managed to throw a few snowballs at each other and get cold enough to call it quits for the day. Becky's son Daniel loved the snow and followed Frankie everywhere he went. We were able to visit the LDS temple up on the hill too, and it is a magnificent sight to see. We had a such a good time up there that by the time we had to leave we were so sad to say goodbye to her parents who are like grandparents to my kiddos. Snowflake didn't even have that much snow either, which was a surprise to all of us. Anyway we had a great time together and can't wait to go back to visit when there is more snow on the ground to play in.
This year for our Christmas we decided to head to Safford, which is where my mom lives. My younger brother David was able to be there to visit too, so all the more fun with them. Christmas morning was filled with excitement of opening gifts and having David over for most of the morning. Later on in the day I took all seven children to Mt. Graham to play in the snow. Crazy? probably but we had a blast until they were so cold that they wanted to leave. The wind was blowing fierce, so that caused us to only stay for about an hour and half before we left down the mountain. For the rest of the afternoon they just jumped on the trampoline and watched movies while I rested and recooperated from our adventures. Least of all to say we enjoyed visiting with David's two young children Malaysia & David Jr. who we rarely see anyways and they had fun seeing all of us too. My kids were sad to say goodbye to their cousins by the end of the week, but had a great time together while it lasted. By the time we ended up leaving Safford it was snowing outside and it was a beautiful sight to see all the snow falling as we drove back to Phx.
Today we finally put up our tree and had fun together on a Sunday afternoon. Decided to get the camera out to take some silly pics of us while we were in the mood. Not the best ones, but thought we would share what we have so far. Now that Christmas is getting nearer my kids are getting into the spirit and love putting up their art projects made at school on the tree. So to all who have their trees up, well don't you just love all the homemade ornaments from your loved ones. I know I do when I see how proud they are of their creativity just hanging there for all to see. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.....
as you can see. There were so many floats that were amazing, but I posted just a few to give you an idea of what we were able to see last night. Happy Holidays.......
Our Thanksgiving Day was spent with friends and family nearby this year. The kids loved to help get the side dishes ready for our meal by peeling the eggshells for our potato salad. We started our day out by watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in the morning, which was so fun to see together with our friends Becky and Daniel. Later on we headed over to my sister's place to join their family feast. The kids played with their cousins there, and then walked over to the park to play flag football, while we cheered them on. So our day was so fun with those we loved....Hope everyone had a great turkey day.
For our family home evening night we headed over to Mesa to see the nativity displays inside the visitors center. These are just a few of the beautiful nativities they had from different countries around the world. They were amazing to see how many they had laid out around the room. The temple grounds are also decorated now in their Christmas lights and let me tell you it is a sight to see. My kids and I go see them several times during the holidays and its always fun to see every time we go. They also will be having their nightly concerts, which is such a special way to feel the awesome spirit on sacred grounds. So if any of you have a chance during this busy time a year to take your families to the nearest temple near you for an opportunity to remember our savior.
The past few days was ASU's homecoming week and we tried to show the spirit by attending their parade in Tempe. We caught the tons of candy they threw and we even got a couple of T-shirts to proudly own.
Frankie decided to be ninja, but switched to a fireman later on in the week. Ana was a diva girl which had me perplexed enough to wonder what that exactly meant, but she knew what it was. As for Sabrina and I we just dressed as ourselves, and were too lazy to be creative. My kids went trick-or-treating with little Daniel who was superman after changing his mind several times earlier. We had lots of fun to say the least, and hopefully they're not too sugared up to get them to bed now. Hope everyone had great Halloween this year with your little ones.
We were able to visit Aunt Lottie who dressed up as a dead corpse bride for her work and to pass out her goodies. I thought she was clever, but she was tired of wearing it by the time we arrived at her house. She designed it herself which doesn't surprise me with her superb sewing skills. She had vampire teeth that were awfully scary to see her smile with.
Here Sabrina and Ana had their faces painted silly for fun.
This is a special contribute to all of those who celebrated October birthdays. To name a few would be Mandy, myself, and cousin Sarah, and my mom Biz. The kids made this cake all by themselves, which turned out pretty delicious. We sang "Happy Birthday" and blew out the candles the kids put in an "h" form, which was creative I thought. Anyways, have a super month guys and just know we were thinking of all those who turned a year older or wiser as the case may be.
Yesterday little Joshua Dominic was born at Tucson Medical Center around 7:34 am. So my oldest sister Priscilla is now a first time gramma. She was so excited to hold her first grandbaby all day. He weighed an even 6 lbs and was 18 inches long. Her two youngest girls Vanessa and Alex came along thinking they could hold him, but were told disappointedly that they were not old enough to go into the unit to see the baby. They were so sad that they weren't able to go in, but were happy about being first time aunties. As you can tell by the photos that he is just so sweet and precious. I just loved holding him and now proud to be a first time great auntie...
