....Mission and Vacation...

First and foremost.

Cameron's parents received their mission call to the Washington D.C. Temple Mission! The best part is, Washington D.C. is only a quick 7.5 hour jaunt from Buffalo. We just have to drive through Pennsylvania and Maryland and we're there!

The D.C. Temple is absolutely gorgeous. When we were engaged, Cameron and I saw this temple on a military field trip. It was really breathtaking. I can't wait to see it again.

Second.

My Mom and Dad flew into Buffalo to see us! River already misses them. She got spoiled silly with candy-corn, a new dolly and fancy new pink boots. ;) Not to mention reading through River's entire book collection three times. Hey, what are grandparents for?

Anyway, we did tons of fun stuff.

We went to Niagara Falls.

And to Palmyra, The Sacred Grove, the Smith Farm and Hill Cumorah. My parents came at the perfect time to see all the beautiful fall colors of New York.

We also went to a pumpkin festival and to the mall to decorate Halloween cookies. If you look at the middle picture carefully you can see the 'pumpkin' that River picked for herself. It's actually a tiny yellow squash! She wouldn't let it go, and kept saying 'no. my pumpkin!'-'River's pumpkin!' , so the nice farmer man let her have it for free.

We dressed River up and met some friends at the mall festivities. Look at their cute costumes....

Parker is a soccer dude, McKenzie is a biker chick and River is a country bumpkin. While River got to scribble a face on a pumpkin and even got a 'Halloween Cat' painted on her arm, her favorite part was decorating the giant sugar cookie with Grandpa.

And by request. The newest addition to 'Wheels on the Bus'. I guess Cameron was feeling left out.

And animals noises. I love the 'baby sounds' face! (by the by, River is saying 'cat' in sign language while she says meow....just in case you were wondering what she was doing.)

Who is supercool? Explora Dora!

I've been trying to think of a super cool Halloween costume for River. Skunk? A bag of wonder bread? Fleur Delacour ? Or perhaps the more traditional Mummy? All I'd need is toilet paper, after all. Then it hit me. Who is cooler than Dora the Explorer? No one, that's who. And River adores Dora. It may be the only cartoon she can watch without getting scared.

However.


Turns out the Dora costume looks more like a 6 year old Go-Go dancer. Sorry Riv. The wig is just too weird. Not to mention the fabricated shoes. Yikes.

Back to the drawing board.

Feel the Dora Love.

The Birthday Surprise

APRiL 4th, 2009

Yip Yip Yip

My little brother (who is, as you can see, not so little) earned himself a 4-year, full ride scholarship playing free safety for SUU football. Just when all his hard work and dedication is paying off, I have to live 3000 miles away, of all the rotten luck! While my family is tailgating and enjoying each other's company, I'm listening to the game via the radio. BOOO! But, I love it! Blake is playing so well. Still, I'm stuck scrutinizing every comment made by the radio announcers, and analyzing every picture my mom sends me. In this picture, for example, I am assuming that Blake is running fast. Very fast. So fast in fact, that in a moment he will catch up to his opponent and knock the poor fellow right out of his socks.

In this picture Blake is obviously thinking, "Aw Mom, would you quit taking my picture already? I wish my super cool sister where here to take pictures instead."

And that guy Blake just tackled? Toast. With jam. Ah, and there is a flag on the play. That could mean something. See how observant I am? I just don't know what it was for since I live 3000 miles away!
These next two pictures are my favorite! I chuckle just looking at the top one. Blake has him by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants,...kinda like he's throwing a drunk guy out of a saloon or something. Or a dad throwing his kid in the pool. It's just funny.
And the bottom one here. Blake is on the far left, all 200 lbs of him. Call me crazy, but I would not want to be running towards something like that.

Tyrell, no matter how sneaky you are, we can all see you are using the 'smile or I'll disembowel you' kung-fu move on Blake. Hey, it worked. Ps. would you update your blog already?! please?

Isn't my Mom's long hair so great? I adore it! Just lovely.



Praise for the Stillman-


"SUU freshman safety Blake Fenn is among the nation's leaders in interceptions and tackles per game. "


"Safety Blake Fenn had an outstanding debut in his first collegiate game at Air Force. Pressed into full-time duty after senior Troy Osbourn left the game with an injury, the redshirt freshman from Roosevelt, Utah (Union HS) led the team with 16 tackles, 11 of them solo. Fenn followed that performance with seven tackles and an interception vs. Adams State."

Ps. Blake, if you are reading this and are embarrassed, good! It's my way of cheering you on. So there.





TheWheels on the Bus


( INTERPRETATION: The monster on the bus says "Cooookies, Coookie, Cookies" all through the town. The baby on the bus says "waa, waa, waa" all through the town. The mommy on the bus says "Shh, shh shh" all through the town. The wheels on the bus go "round and round" , the aliens on the bus go "yip, yip, yip". A fire. (it was just a candle, don't worry.))

(she can sing this straight through, without prompting, if the camera is not pointed at her.)

The BatCave - aka The Devil's Lair - aka River's Room

Welcome to the Cave of Wonders. This is were the mysterious R. White spends the majority of her time; dabbling in paints, building spectacular block towers, playing ring-around-the-rosie, feeding her baby doll and the like.

Here we have the re-cycled toy box. This used to be mine when I was a little girl, ya all! My dad and grandpa made it. With their own two hands. Er, four hands.... I painted it pink and added velcro animals.

Will You Survive Niagara's FURY?

Niagara Falls was absolutely breathtaking. Did you know it's one of the 7 Wonders of the World? It is. We even got to don blue ponchos and ride the Maid of the Mist, a boat that takes you to the base of the falls to get sprayed with massive amounts of water vapor. It was great! We also went to the famous Butterfly Conservatory. Cameron became instantly famous when a huge butterfly landed right on his forehead. I must admit, I would have freaked out if it landed on me! Check out the woman in the background. She is thinking, "Man, that guy is cool. He's like the butterfly whisperer or something."

We even saw a street performer on stilts. He's the guy circled in yellow. Not the best picture, eh? And I'm smirking, cuz I wanted a picture with the guy, but Cameron didn't want to go any closer.

Also, River is getting her canines in, so she's chewing on everything.

Palmyra / Pagent/ Big Bum

So today River hit my bum and said 'Big bum!' What a proud moment. I was in tears, for laughing. There may have been real tears too. But forget all that. Pretend that she said 'small bum' just to make me happy. I may have a big bum, but I smile better than River in pictures. Just look at these in Palmyra. This is how River smiles if you tell her to smile. You have to catch her smiling, but you can't actually ask her to smile. My brother Tyrell has at least a years worth of pictures, when he was this age, with the same face. You can't see their eyes at all, it's so cute! A couple of weeks ago we went with our stake to the Hill Cumorah Pagent in Palmyra, NY. It was pretty impressive. We went early to see the Palmyra Temple (the temple we use), and to hike Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove.

My favorite part was the Sacred Grove. It was absolutly peaceful with the sun filtering lazily through the trees. I want to go back. River's favorite part was the car keys. She loves keys all of a sudden. She has to 'unlock' the back door everytime we go out, and 'unlock' the trunk and car door. If Cameron or I unlock the car before she has chance to try it, she is furious. The upside is that, in the first video, the keys entertained her for at least 30 minutes while we were waiting for the pagent to start.

We Did It, We Did It, We Did It, Yay!

We now live in an undisclosed city in New York! Can you believe it? We miss everyone more just imagining the vast miles between us. Uggh! We've been here about a month and have already seen a lot of fun stuff. Stay tuned for posts on Palmyra, Niagara Falls and Tyrell's wedding! Now, on to our apartment.



This is our new apartment. Brick, lots of flowers.



These are the signs around our apartment. It may be my favorite thing about our new place. It shows character. Don't Feed Rats? What rats? EEEk!

River is definitely adjusting to the move. The first video is of our parking lot, wherein River and Cameron are playing airplane. The second video is Rivers' new favorite past time of kissing things. Stuffed animals, lawn mowers. You name it, she's kissed it. And she has to have all of her owies kissed better now too. "Kiss better, mommy?"

pop quiz: does anyone knoe where I got the title for this post?