The SPILLING Gene

spill: "to allow to run or fall from a container, especially, unintentionally."

gene: "the unit of heredity transmitted in the chromosome that controls the development of hereditary character."

Every meal we had while at Yorke's house was delicious ....and action packed. Anyone who has ever been in the Whitley household for more than two meals can tell you that Kristie has been labeled. She is our family spiller!! All the kids in our family had the usual ups and downs with spilled milk, but Kristie always seemed to win the prize. Although she was an almost perfect child, she earned a reputation for spilling that remains with us today. Every single time we went camping Kristie would spill a can of soda pop. So, anytime we have a spill we say with a smile, "The spirit of Kristie is here!" I am here to report today that the spilling gene is so strong along her lines and that at EVERY meal we ate in her house for 5 whole days, there was a spill.....and some meals had multiple spills!! We are happy that the Whitley genes are strong in the little Yorke boys. Happy Spilling.....!!!!!

Pre-Easter--Part 2

Here is the end result of our Easter egg dying in the hotel room. Don't the eggs look pretty??
Here's Brian and the green dye again. Most of his eggs got the "green treatment." You can see how close the bed was to the table....our little blanket is covering the corner! Aaron wasn't very interested in the whole thing, but he had fun running around inside the room.

Here are the boys after the egg hunt at the park. I video taped the actual hunt, so there are no pictures to blog. This was in the very late afternoon, early evening hours. It was almost HOT while we were there!
I think that building in the background is the hotel we stayed at for the day/night. It was close to the park.

Pre-Easter Fun

While we were in North Carolina we decided to color some Easter Eggs and have a little Easter Egg hunt with the boys. On Wednesday we rented a room at a hotel so we could take the boys swimming. Before we went swimming, we covered the desk in the room with a tablecloth that we brought from Kristie's house. Kristie and I mixed the dye in the bathroom and gently carried the full cups to the table. (The odor in our hotel room was that of vinegar for a little while thereafter!) The room was not very big, and the bedspreads on the beds were white, so this activity made Grandma a little nervous. I covered the bed nearest the egg-dye table with lots of blankets brought from home (just in case something spilled or some little colored fingers touched the bed). Then the boys (and Auntie M) had fun coloring the eggs. Brian's favorite color was green (we had a LOT of green eggs!). We did have one spill, but had brought some rags to wipe things up, and it only spilled on the table, so it was not a problem.

After coloring the eggs, we headed to the indoor pool while our eggs dried. In the late afternoon we took the eggs and some filled plastic eggs to the park and had a traditional Easter egg hunt. Wednesday was busy day. Although our trip was short, we packed a lot of action into it!

Our Friends Came Bearing Gifts

Tonight we had a very nice treat. About 20 minutes after the missionaries left (they were here for dinner)....Stephanie and Leah dropped by. They surprised Melissa with a gift of a fluffy down coat to wear on those cold winter days at BYU-Idaho! It is a very cozy and warm coat with lots and lots of pockets inside and out ..... and Leah got one just like it, so they will be twins :) How nice of them to think of her! Leah and Melissa have been best of friends ever since they were wee little girls. It will be an adjustment for Melissa next year blazing the trail at college on her own, but now every time she slips on her coat she will think of Leah and also the good times she had in Young Women's with Stephanie, her leader and our friend.

Payback Time!

Okay Kristie, this is payback time. Here is Kristie being crazy while we were miniature golfing! She was pretending to be a guitar player in the band. Rock music was blaring loud and clear at this place. We had the course almost to ourselves, and although she was acting silly, no one was around to see it but us (and now you!) Here is Melissa contemplating the exact angle to hit the ball. Kristie fixed the pretty hairstyle before we left the house. Maybe Kristie should have been a beautician.

Here are the final results of our exciting game!!

FHE in North Carolina

For the Family Home Evening activity on Monday night we went miniature golfing. The whole time we were in North Carolina they had unusually warm weather. It was a balmy night just perfect for playing golf. Weston and Brian had not done this before so it was quite exciting for them. Grandpa was the most serious golfer. He also had a lot of fun being Aaron's teacher. Watching him teach Aaron reminded me of the way he used to interact with our kids when they were little. It was sweet.
The boys just went ahead of us and took as many turns in a row as they wanted, then they reported to Grandma how many tries it took to hit the ball into the hole. I am not sure how accurate our scores were because at one point Brian told me several times that he got 110. I just wrote down a score that I thought might be close to the real thing!
Little Aaron had quite a lot of fun most of the night. He golfed and danced (Kristie's blog) and got to ride on Grandpa's shoulders some of the time. Near the end of the 18 holes he was getting tired and snuggled up close to Grandpa (below). It was heart warming.

Weston was in his element running from place to place. He was the lead-out golfer and seemed intent on getting the ball in the little cup while having the most fun!

MELISSA HAS BEEN ACCEPTED AT BYU-IDAHO!!!!

While we were gone to North Carolina the long awaited acceptance letter arrived in the mail. Today when I went to the post office to pick up the mail, there it sat in the heap....BYU-I in the top left hand corner. I took the letter with me when I went to school to pick Melissa up this afternoon....so she got her happy news in the car. You might be wondering about the picture. Well, Melissa is probably the only girl in the world who will have to tell her friends that she got a black eye for being accepted to the University of her choice! She was so excited to tell her Dad the good news when he came home from work, that she was practically jumping up and down. She read him the letter, then gave him a big squeezing hug! As he was heaping her with congratulations, he bent over to give her a kiss (which she thought was going to be a snort for some reason....could it be that he is often so silly?). She jerked her head down, hitting her face (high on her cheekbone near the eye) on the back of a nearby chair! I had already run to get the camera for a "Blogging" moment....but the scene before me just wasn't right. I put the camera away until we got her all situated with ice (to reduce the swelling)....then she was happy again....so I snapped this unusual acceptance picture.

What's in Weston's Pockets??

Weston is a loving and very typical little boy. He is also very inquisitive and observant. Not only that, but he has a "thing" for rocks and gems, just like his daddy. When we got to the Yorke's apartment we were greeted by three happy little boys and a spic and span apartment (Kristie had worked hard to make things nice for us.) However, within no time at all I observed very unique decorations in various locations all around the house. It seemed like little piles of rocks and other whatnots were tucked into the most unlikely places.....dresser tops, counter corners, by the toys, and under tables. Having had little boys myself once upon a time, I knew that these were the boys' "treasures." One afternoon when Weston came home from school he quickly emptied his pockets onto the kitchen table to show them to Grandma. He was very proud of his daily collection of oddly shaped rocks, smooth sticks, a cool beltlatch, a big round button, and some interesting teeny-tiny pebbles that looked like seeds. It reminded me of days gone by when my own boys had pockets stuffed with "treasures." I gave him a big hug and was glad I had a camera to capture this one pocketful of boy-stuff before helping him with his homework and listening to him read. In a twinkling of an eye he will be a young man and these days of pocket treasures will be traded for the smiles of giggling girls and then later, responsibility. I love my little Weston with his pockets bulging and his brain constantly churning. How could 7 years have passed so quickly?

Melissa's First Ski Trip

(Click on the first picture....this is Melissa going down the back slope...Mike took it from the air. I got this one out of order....sorry!)

As we drove into Tennessee on Thursday morning, we kept wondering, "Where are the mountains....where is the snow??" We finally did see The Great Smokey Mountains, but even though Kristie had warned us that they were much smaller than the mountains in the west ..... we just didn't get the hint. Once we were settled in, I struck up a conversation with a lady who was staying in a room at the hotel. She told me that they had been there for six days and hadn't seen a hint of snow anywhere on the mountains. I was getting worried.... it was 70 degrees that day and the resort was closing for the year on Sunday. At the front desk the official "ski report" indicated that the slopes were definitely open, so on Friday morning, we headed up the mountain. We drove into the parking lot of the ski resort and STILL had not seen a drop of snow. Melissa good naturedly commented that if there was no snow that she would be happy if she could just ice skate at the rink inside the resort (isn't she sweet?). We walked in and went up to a desk near the door. I asked, "Where is the snow?" The man barely looked up and then pointed to the back of the building and said in a very few words, "Out there." We looked at each other with quizzical looks and furrowed brows wondering...."Is this guy crazy?" We headed toward the back of the building to look out the windows. Well, the picture above is what we saw. There really and truly was a real slope of snow. It was a combination of real snow and man made snow. Melissa was so excited!

Here she is all ready for a day of skiing at Ober Gatlinburg in The Great Smokey Mountains. It was such a warm day that no coats were necessary. In fact, she didn't even want to wear the ski pants but the resort people said she should because when you fall the snow is wet and cold....so here she is all decked out in the "vintage" ski pants I had purchased just a few days before we left. She said they worked perfectly....she stayed nice and dry the whole day long.

There were only 5 people in her ski lesson class. Talk about private lessons! The lesson started just after 12 noon. The instructor was really nice. The lesson lasted about 45 minutes to an hour, then she was up and down the slopes all day long. Mike and I had a lot of fun taking pictures and video of her (she was so happy). Mike rode a special sightseeing sky lift and took some pictures from the air (the first picture). We struck up a friendship with a woman who had a 15 year old daughter who liked to snowboard every weekend and talked with her for several hours while we watched the girls. Do you notice that there was hardly anyone on the slopes skiing? During the busiest part of the day....probably from 3-5.....there were maybe 100 people there. The snow was good and slick according to the ski lift people. One ski lift operator asked Melissa how long she had been skiing and when she told them "Since noon," he was very surprised and impressed. She was going down the intermediate slopes already and doing very well. He told her, "I'm surprised you can do that slope without poles!" She told him, "Well, I was never taught with poles." According to her teacher, you only need the poles when you go down the hardest slope.

I took so many pictures of Melissa while she was skiing that she said, "I feel like I'm being attacked by the papparazi!" She didn't mind, though. She is used to her over zealous mother and her camera. She barely stopped skiing all day long except once when I had her come to a picnic table to eat a ham sandwich...then she was off again in a flash.

I'm so glad we were able to take Melissa to The Great Smokey Mountains to enjoy her very first day of skiing. I'm even more glad we were able to be there with her to see her joy at doing something new.

Here she is in the car after skiing for 8 long hours. Melissa was exhausted but happy. Her feet and legs were tight and tired but she was all smiles during dinner as she recounted every detail of her day!

We're Home!

After logging 2,390 miles on our faithful mini-van's odomoter, we have arrived home safe and sound. We had a great visit with the little grand-boys (and Kristie & Barth). We found baby Aaron is now a darling little toddler with many words and lots of kisses. We found Brian is a great horse-rider because he's always in the mood for a horsey ride. And... Weston still likes to read books, but this time he was reading TO grandma instead of listening to grandma read! I'm on the way out the door to church....will report more later.

"It's Vintage!"

I hesitate to tell my secrets to the whole wide world, but I have a thing for "vintage!" I get as much of a buzz buying beautiful things at thrift stores as other women get from spending their money on expensive labels or brand names. This weekend I bought this pretty dress and a huge assortment of like new sweaters for Melissa to wear when she goes off to college next year. She is used to "vintage" clothes because I saved many of Kristie's nice things. She gave us a fashion show last night when everyone was over for dinner.