Show Off

River took her first steps on Christmas Eve. It was so exciting for us because it really came out of the blue. I wasn't expecting her to walk for at least a few more months, then all of a sudden she let go of the coffee table and took 2 steps into my mom's arms. It was so sweet. Since then she's taken about 5 steps without falling...she's really become sort of a show-off with all of her grandparents and uncles around. I just wanted to share the good news with everyone, I hope you all had a great Christmas!

To Tide You Over

We will be in Utah on Tuesday! Here are some videos and pictures to get ya all anticipating our arrival.

I've been peddling these hats around to people I know to make some money for Christmas. It keeps me busy and I finally have a good excuse to crochet....River was starting to get a whole pile of homemade hats.

River loves Cameron's favorite childhood toy, an old Jack-in-the-Box. It is so funny to watch her when the clown pops out! Also, River loves to play with Cameron more than me because he comes up with all sorts of fun games, such as the 'buggy ride'. No fair!

A few days ago, River's friend Gabe came to play with us. It was a rainy day outside and they stood on the couch chatting and staring out the window. Then we had reading time. They were so cute together!

I Love the Pineapple Express

Yesterday it looked like this in Spokane.

Today, it looks like this. Notice the ray of sun and no snow in sight? It has been an absolutely gorgeous day.



And it is all thanks to this:

The Pineapple Express! It is a term that forecasters use to refer to the warm, moist air flow that originates from the subtropical waters around Hawaii where pineapples are typically grown. I swear I could smell pineapples when I woke up this morning...

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On to other news, this is the toy that couldn't wait until Christmas. A walker. Maybe it will help straighten out River's crooked right foot.

Until Christmas!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa White, who drove all the way up from Utah. We had fun showing them around Spokane and showing off River's new talents. We even went shopping on Black Friday, which was lots of fun. Grandma bought River an adorable bear snow-suit to bundle her up in. She loves it!

One of the nights Cameron had a soccer game, so we all went and watched him play goalie. He did really well and his team won 8-4. (He's the one in the green-shirt)

Isn't the suit great? Our own little bear cub.

Tag ta tagged tagged, tagged!

tagged.by.heather.
must.name.four.random.things.about.myself.


1-I love all things lime. Lime green is my favorite color, (not neon-lime-green, but the color of an actual lime, lime-green) I love: eating limes w/salt and key lime pie, lime body-spray, plastic limes in a bowl, limes on fabric or umbrellas, miniature lime trees, the limelight, the word sublime, lime rickies... you get the idea.




2- My parents named me after Sheena Easton, the country singer. But lots of people think it's funny to call me....




Xena: Warrior Princess, hit TV show







She-Rah, from Heman and the Masters of the Universe (redhead standing by Gleedal the bird-woman)
Sheena of the Jungle, comic book & 1980's movie

Strangely, all of these "Sheena's" are warrior-women who share a liking for leotards. Perhaps I missed my true calling in life.

3-I like reading a sentence that ends with a word that ends with a p. I especially like it when a sentence ends with the word 'ship'.




4-I really don't like starting my sentences with I. I really really really want to be on The Amazing Race.




The End. Finally.
I.tag.Angie.&.Arianne.
So.there.

I'm like the Paparazzi

sneaking up on people, snapping their picture and publishing it for everyone to see. Mwwwaaaaa ha ha ha ha.

Tub, Morning & Laundry Time (TM & LT)

This is how River looks after she gets out of the tub. She loves to escape her diaper by scampering up to the pillows and diving on them. She'll crawl in a circle around the bed and dive on the pillows over and over until we catch her to put her pj's on. She's also been know to pee at a certain corner of the bed, so it is a precarious situation!

Morning time is one of my favorite times to spend with River because she will actually cuddle with me a little. This is how she typically looks when she first wakes up, slightly confused and messy haired.

We don't have a washer/dryer in our apartment (it wasn't so bad before River was born....who knew that something so small could dirty so much laundry?!? ) so I take River for a ride in the laundry basket to the communal laundromat a few buildings down. Ain't it precious?

Apartment-Living Woes

They are re-shingling our apartment complex and it is so noisy around here River isn't getting any sleep. They plugged their nail gun in right outside our apartment and every time they hammer in another shingle, the lights flicker. It is so frustrating to watch River's eyes slowly droop close only to pop back open with every jolt of the nail gun. I don't know about other kids, but River without a nap is not pretty! Yesterday, right when Riv finally fell asleep I had a construction worker pounding on my door asking me to flip the breaker because they had overloaded the circuits. And who woke up? River! And I finally realized that they were using our power, that we pay for. And they have been using the outlet right outside our door for weeks. That has to add up. So Cameron called our manager. I don't know what's going to happen but we better get a few bucks off our rent next month. Not to mention free rent for a month due to my lack of sanity. Yesterday one of the workers on our roof started singing, "Green Acres is the place to be!" at the top of his lungs. He kept it up all day, I'm surprised one of his fellow workers didn't throw him off the roof. Anyways, after nearly 5 years of apartment living I should be used to this sort of hassle. I can't wait until we have our own house and I can paint the walls red and have a garden in the yard. And I won't even complain about having to mow the lawn!

Oh yeah, this is for my parents who bought River this awesome ball-popper toy. She can turn it on by herself now and loves it when Cam plays it with her. As usual, she was a little distracted by the camera in this video,(she usually grabs the balls out of Cameron's mouth and throws them) but you get an idea of how much she loves the popper. And the other video is just kinda cute.

This is the Place. Utah!

Some pics of our trip to Utah. River was quite overwhelmed by all the strange people wanting to hold/play with her. The only people she would go to were my cousins Alison and Dallin. Looking at these pictures it may have something to do with their accessories. Dallin has a fun tie and Ali has a most interesting necklace.

Of course, she also loved being with her grandparents and being on the farm.

Dilemma

You see, I have this dilemma. I've been wanting to spruce up our blog, but whenever I add a cute background or change the colors, the title of our blog throws it all off. It clearly states that our blog is The White Pages. Not The Polka Dot Pages or The Prettily Textured Pages. Even though I've come up with a few great designs, they just don't fit. I was worrying about it one night while peeling a carrot for dinner and before I knew it I had whittled the carrot down to the size of a tooth-pick. It is starting to ruin my life! I mean, what's next? I buy margarine instead of butter?! Something must be done. Maybe I'll just change the title to something else. Like 'The White House'. Or 'Whitey Tighties.' Sigh. I think I'll just give in and leave the background white. You'll just have to forgive me for my apparent lack of creativity.

Happy Hallows Eve!

River and I went to a Halloween party this afternoon with a bunch of friends. River went as a bunny, some of the other kids were a lady bug, a chef, a frog, a witch, a superman, and of course a spiderman. (who was actually a girl with really long beautiful blond hair, she made a great spidey.)

I can't wait to see everyone elses' posts to see what costumes they chose for their kids (or dogs, ;) ).

High Fructose CORN Syrup

Well, it has finally happened. I over-dosed on candy corn. All these years I've been eating eating eating. I guess tonight I ate one candy corn too many. And the worst part? It was those gross brown candy corns that taste like fake chocolate, not the buttery yellow kind. So here I am, sitting in a high-fructose corn syrup induced stupor waiting for my body to kick out some insulin and save me from deadly ketosis.


All the mayhem started this afternoon when I got home from work to find Cameron waiting at the car door. He was hungry. As I climbed out of the car Cam started ticking food items off with his fingers "no bread, no eggs, no milk, no tortillas...nothing." He signified nothing by clenching his fist. As if to say, poof! all the food in our blimey house has blimey vanished. After digging through all the cupboards to no avail and with a firm promise that I would go shopping for dinner, Cam nuked a couple of hot-wings he found in the back of the freezer and left for school in the car. The only car. The shopping car. With a tremendous sigh, and knowing I would now only be able to buy the 'essentials', I lugged out the jogging stroller, plopped River in and set out for Rosaure's Grocery. I perused the aisles for a while and in the end, after some very careful thought on my part, the 'essentials' turned out to be a bag of chocolate candy corn and a giant sugar cookie shaped like a pumpkin. And that's it. Oh, and 3 apples. What can I say? At least the apples are Gala. And at least the candy corn is chocolate so I won't eat the whole bag. Just half of it. Which I already did. Eat, I mean. Half the bag. Drat those dang ketones.

Oh boy! Cameron just got home from class and he brought dinner with him. Real dinner. Not fake-chocolate-candy-corn-and-an-apple-on-the-side dinner. Tra.

AZ

My Grandma & Grandpa Hicken received their mission call to the Mesa Arizona Temple Visitors' Center! I just got back from Roosevelt this week, where I was attending their farewell. All of Grandma and Grandpa's kids and grand kids where able to come, it was really special.

Just look at us all. That's one really really ridiculously good-looking family.

Drill Weekend

Cameron had drill this weekend. For him it means getting up at 4:30 AM on Saturday and Sunday, (forced Sabbath labor doesn't seem fair somehow) completing a physical fitness test and slogging through many hours of drill, power-points and meetings.

For River and I it meant being stuck at home on a rainy weekend with NO CAR. Gasp! Needless to say we were both really happy to see Cameron when he got home. (if you enlarge this picture you can really see Rivers bottom tooth. Very funny.)

I can't get over how cute they are together...

Soap on a Roap. Slightly Used.

We recently rented Benny & Joon. It's good. It's filmed entirely in Spokane. It stars Johnny Depp.

Enough said. It was really fun to watch a movie filmed where we live because we kept saying, 'hey, I've been there!'

Watch it! I've tracked down the original trailer so you can judge for yourself if it's worth renting.

my favorite dialogue----

Joon: He can really cook, can't he?

Benny: Yeah, although for grilled cheese, I might use the wool setting.

Joon: That's what I told him.

Benny: Really? What did he use?

Joon: Rayon. Silk would have been too soggy. Cotton would have...

Benny: Would have burned it.

Joon: Right. Fortunately, he consulted me before giving it steam. I was four square against it.

River La Blueberry

So I crocheted a hat for River. First it turned out too small, and after unraveling quite a bit of it and starting over, it turned out too big. I thought, "oh well...too big is better than too little, at least I can get it on her head, right?" Right, except for the fact that, and little did I know this at the time, the yarn I was so lovingly spinning into a warm winter hattie was the exact same shade of purple as River's coat. So when we decided to go for a walk in the dreary weather and River excitedly (yes excitedly) donned her new hat and coat the resulting look was crushing...the dreaded and much despised blueberry. Yuucckk. Even River knows she looks like a blueberry.

Maybe if the hat wasn't so big, her head wouldn't look so round. And blueberry-ish.


Anyway, it looks slightly better without the matching purple coat and with the brim rolled up a bit. But really, what's the point of wearing a hat if you're not going to wear a coat? Hmm. Anybody have a good crochet coat pattern? Anyone?

Holy Honkin 'Uge Bull Elk and a little somthin' somthin'

My wonderfully rugged hunter of a brother never ceases to amaze me. Check out this bull elk he tagged, it is, as Dad would say, 'Uge. (you know huge w/out the 'h' ...hey at least he doesn't say lightling for lightening like some people we know ;) that's the basin for ya ) This is the only picture Blake was smiling in and not trying to act tough, well...he is tough I'd wager, but it's just that he's so handsome when he smiles. Speaking of handsome, girls check out that orange vest, hot. Blake is probably reading this and slapping his hand to his forehead while doing his trademark roll- of -the- eyes at the idiocy of his only sister whose sole job in life is to embarrass him whenever possible. Anyway, back to his handsomeness, doesn't he look dashing in this next picture? It takes a real man to hold a hoof like that.Dad and Stillman during skinnin' time. Dad's always trusty when it comes to skinnin' time. Or huntin' time or buglein' time, for that matter.



The elk's antlers are nearly as tall as Stilly...just imagine the size of the body on this thing! Good work Blakers.

Now for the little somthin' somethin'. Just a little tid-bit for all of River's grandparents, and because it is so cute I'm sure they'll all appreciate it. So here's to you Grandma and Grandpa White (your son is such a sweet dada!) Grandma and Grandpa Fenn, Great G&G Giles, Great G&G Fenn and Great G&G Hicken. Enjoy!