Whipple Family Blog

Teralyn had her first piano recital yesterday! Nicole Jensen (her piano teacher), Holly King, and Heather Connor all combined their students for a recital at the Connor's house. Well, it was great fun! All the kids did so well. I was really impressed. I have to say though that I think I was more nervous than Tera. She was so calm through the whole thing while I was just shaking in the chair. Yes, she did mess up on one of her songs, but she calmly started again and kept going. So, on the way to the recital I remembered my camera, but by then it was too late! I was pretty upset, but luckily my good friend Jenni was there to save the day! Here are some pictures that she took for us....

Christmas Eve day was actually really relaxing this year. We had everything ready, so we got to relax a little as a family. Then, that night we headed on over to our friends house, the Turpins, for a little fondue. We had cheese fondue for dinner and then chocolate for dessert. We loved it! We have done this a few years now because we are both family less during this time and every year we just have such a great time and eat so much! Our kids had a blast playing video games downstairs and so we had a great evening. We then acted out the Nativity (so sad that I forgot my camera!) and all the kids were so cute! We headed on home and our girls all climbed into bed with Tera (all on the top bunk) and excitedly went to sleep (at least I think they did). Bri and I watched Elf and laughed all evening while we prepared. The next morning we woke up before our girls (around 5:30), made some breakfast, put it in the oven, and then I went back to sleep (: . Bri finally woke the girls (and their m...

Some of our Christmas traditions... We love to go to the Symphony of Lights down by the hospital. Every year we pay the twenty bucks and let our kids get out of their seat belts and the have free rein in the car while we all enjoy the lights. Bri even lets them drive. Yes I know, crazy! But the kids love it and we really enjoy it too! Gingerbread houses. I know this is pretty much everyone's family tradition, but we started doing this about four years ago and have pictures from every year. One year my bro. who was on his mission here got to do it with us. Way fun! Anyway, we finally finished this tradition this morning. So, we all had quite the sugar high right before church. Christmas lights at the temple. I love this! Every year it is just the same, but the spirit is so strong and I love that my kids can also feel it. This year was really special to us. The live nativity scene was excellent and even brought tears to our eyes. I really wanted my little girls to understand the tru...

Okay, two things happened this last Wednesday that I just have to write about. One was that Raegan finally crawled! We were so excited. She has been scooting around on her tummy for quite some time now and just the day before, we were wondering if she was ever going to use her knees, but on Wednesday she did! Ashty and I got a cute video of her first little crawls.... That was the good news. The bad news was that that night Teralyn and I had gone to piano lessons and while we were driving home, we came to a roundabout off of Stephen's Road and a pickup truck didn't stop as he was coming into the roundabout and hit us on the back passenger side door. The window shattered all over the back seat and the door was smashed in, but Tera and I were just fine. The driver of the pickup truck said he didn't see us (I'm assuming he thought we were going to turn and not stay in the roundabout). He was actually really apologetic and we were just grateful that Tera wasn't on the o...

Every first Saturday in December Brian's work at the Applied Physics Laboratory has a family Christmas party. Every year we are sooo excited to go! This year they had Dora the Explorer and Boots walking around, they had all you can eat ice cream bars, a yummy lunch and dessert, Santa Claus, face painting, magic show and a one man circus show. Our kids love it and we do too. This year was a little crazy. There were so many people there, it was almost hard to walk around. Ashtyn even got lost once in all the people and by the time we found her so was crying. Thankfully we got there early though, so we saw the shows and then sat on Santa's lap when the second shows started. So, my girls have always been a little scared of Santa. I always just expect it. We stand in line the whole time and I make sure they know that they are going to be sitting on his lap and they seem fine about it, until we get there. Then they usually freak out a little. Well, this year was better. It was only A...

It's kind of a catch up week again. But, I am trying not to do a huge blog all in one day so I will do some over a few days instead. Every first Family Home Evening in December we go out to get our tree. We have gone to Home Depot every year, and this year we had thoughts of going to cut our own tree down, but as soon as we saw how cold it was, those thoughts were quickly washed away. So, we all headed down to Home Depot on the coldest night of the year so far. Well, because of the great weather, we were just about the only ones there! It made it great for picking out a great tree. After about forty five minutes of looking and turning down (oh, and making a potty trip in the middle), we finally decided on the fattest tree that we could find. We saw our friends from Columbia 2nd ward, the Laws, and they had come and gone before us. Oh well, we felt good about our fat little tree. A couple nights later we decorated our tree and it looks just like a family's tree with four little ...

Last Sunday I was released from the primary presidency after being in for five years!! And yes, I have loved every minute of it. Although I sometimes missed getting to know the sisters in the ward, I made some wonderful friends in the primary and loved being with and teaching those cute kids. When I first got in, I thought I would never get used to the two to three hour presidency meetings that we had every Wednesday, but after a while I learned to love them and they became almost my favorite part of my week (: . I have to say though that I definitely have mixed feelings about being released. On the one hand, I am really excited to get enriched in Sunday school and relief society (I know, that sounds weird, but it has been almost nine years since I have been in!). But on the other hand, I will miss the my friends who I have worked so closely with for so long and feeling the sweet simple spirit that you get in primary. So, about three days before I was released and before the calling wa...