Christmas at our House

Because we are moving on Monday and we didn't want to take the tree down and set it up again after we got to our new house, we celebrated Christmas this morning. Here are the girls in front of the Christmas Tree and presents.

I had to put this one in because Ashley's facial expression was just too cute. She was right in the middle of a burst of excitement.

Ashley is opening up her first present (It's probably one of two that she did any of the actual opening on. She didn't show much interest in the presents). Alyssa is also opening a present, but you can't see it.Here are the girls at the end of the morning. What a mess. Oh, and in case you are wondering, the pillow came inside one of the gifts and Alyssa was pretty excited about it. She started lining up all of the animals to go night night right after we took it out of the box. Thanks Gawbie and Grandpa.

Our Empty House

Entertainment is scarce for the girls since the movers hauled away the majority of our stuff on Friday. I wanted Alyssa to take a break from the TV(I won't even admit how much she watched Thursday and Friday while the moving company was here), so I gave her this box so she could use her imagination a little bit. She really wanted Ashley in there with her, so I put her in. There was enough room for Alyssa and Ashley, but the blanket was a little much.

Santa Claus

We were at the mall so Alyssa could burn some energy in the play area last week, so I took the girls to see Santa. Here is Ashley waiting in line.

Here is Alyssa waiting in line. She had a really hard time keeping her hands off of the ornaments on that tree behind her.

And here they are sitting on his lap. I let Alyssa sit there with him for a little while before I put Ashley there for a picture and he was very sweet with her. I don't think she said one word back, but he talked to her the whole time.

Home Sweet Home

We found a place to call home (at least for the next year). It is a beautiful 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house with 3200 sq. ft. of living space. There is also a nice sized backyard for our big dog to run around in. We are excited for the extra living space and already dreaming about the things we want to use to fill it (like a piano). Here are the pics.

The front of the house.

Ashley's bedroom.

Alyssa's bedroom
The kitchen/dining area. There is also a formal dining room that we haven't decided what to do with yet since we don't have a formal dinette set.

The backyard, complete with a little sledding hill for the girls.

There is also an unfinished basement which we may use for Casey during the winter.

Thanksgiving

We decided kind of last minute to drive out to Utah for Thanksgiving this year. We did the all night drive thing in order to let the girls sleep for a good part of the trip and keep our sanity

(it is a 16-17 hour drive from Des Moines to Alpine, UT). The girls did pretty well for the drive but got really whiny during the last 5 hours of the trip. Because of that, we decided to do the all night drive again for the return trip.

We were glad that we made the effort to go to Utah as Danny's brother, Bobby showed up unexpected and suprised everyone. He would have been the only person missing from the family. It was fun having everyone together for the second time this year. Because everyone was together Mom and Dad Wheeler hired a photographer. We took pictures in this park that had a really pretty covered bridge in it. Here are the cousins with Grandpa (minus Ashley) in front of the bridge.

Ashley turned out to be a real Grandpa's girl for the entire trip. She took better to him than anyone else.Alyssa's favorite person in the family was her cousin Breanna. She always wanted to play with and sit next to Breanna. Here they are together in the park.
After Thanksgiving dinner, which was delicious, most of the family went outside to play some football. Robbie and Alyssa played together while the adults were playing their own game. During the down time each day, we enjoyed Mom and Dad's newest toy- the Nintendo Wii. It was a lot more fun than I expected it to be and pretty realistic, especially on the big screen. Here is Danny doing some boxing with his brother, Brian.

On Thanksgiving morning, we drove up to Laura's brothers (Steve) house in Farmington (north of Salt Lake City). Mom and Dad Miner were in town as well as Jeff and Kim (Laura's other brother). We spent the morning visiting with them before heading back to Alpine to share Thanksgiving dinner with the Wheelers. It was nice to see our families since they are one of the things we are most grateful for.

We are still alive...

Sorry for the long break in updates. We have been busy the past couple of weeks. We took a trip to Utah for Thanksgiving (we will post some pictures soon) and Danny has accepted a job offer with his company that will move us to the St. Louis area (St. Charles to be exact) right after Christmas. As a result, we may not update as regularly as we have until we get settled there. We did have a nice Thanksgiving and we appreciate all that Gawbie and Grandpa did to make our stay so wonderful. We added a link to the website of the St. Charles Convention Center in case anyone wants to check it out.

Where is Ashley/Alyssa

As I was reading the newspaper yesterday, I noticed Alyssa getting toys for Ashley one by one. After about five minutes, I soon realized that Ashley was getting burried alive so I quickly pulled her out.When I did that, Alyssa thought it would be fun to go where Ashley was. This is just about every toy we have in our basement.
The funny part is that she wanted to sit in there for a lot longer than I have ever seen her sit in one place. She thought it was pretty cool being stuck in the middle of all of her toys.

Ashley Claps

Alyssa checked out a book with a CD to go along with it this week at the Library. The CD had some children's songs on it. One of the songs was "If You're Happy and You Know It." We put it on for Alyssa one morning and out of nowhere, Ashley, stopped what she was doing and started clapping her hands. It was the first time that we had seen her even try to do it. Everytime she hears that song she does the same thing. It's so cute. We only wish we had sound on the video to help you hear how well she claps.

Winter Time

I thought this one was just too cute not to post. We pulled out Alyssa's winter hat and gloves from last winter and she wanted to put them on right away. Unfortunately, that excitement wore off quickly and now that it is cold enough to wear them, she doesn't want to anymore. We'll see if that changes.

Mommy's Little Helper

Alyssa loves to help us do just about anything. It's nice now that she is getting to the point where she helps a little more than she hurts. The pictures show her helping to unload the dishwasher, but she also likes to help make any meals, sweep, do laundry, clean, and take care of Ashley. We know that it probably won't happen, but we are hoping that she wants to help out this much when she is older too.

A Moment to Brag

Like any other parents, we want to take a moment to show off how smart we think Alyssa is. We bought this puzzle of the United States a while back at the dollar spot in Target, and when we first got it, Alyssa wasn't even close to knowing how to do it. To avoid having the puzzle pieces all over the floor all of the time, we put it up high and only did it with Alyssa when we had the time and energy to sit with her. I think that doing that made her want to do it more often than she would have had it been with her other puzzles. As a result, she got very good at doing it and now we don't even have to help her. We think it is amazing that she can do it all by herself. What do you think?

And here she is in action.

Ashley is Mobile

Ashley is really getting around lately. Here is a video of her crawling.

And here is another video of her other form of movement...scooting.

Our Little Lady

One of the other preschool moms had some make-up samples that she wanted to get rid of at preschool last week so I looked through them and chose some eye shadow and some dark pink lipstick (I know, totally not my style). I stuck them in Alyssa's bag and forgot about them in the ordeal of getting Alyssa to leave all of her friends. Later that day, I put a movie on for Alyssa and went upstairs to work on the computer during Ashley's nap. I came down later to find this...

As you can see from Alyssa's face, at first I was horrified. I thought that there would be lipstick on everything in the room. After I quickly surveyed the room and discovered that the furnature and walls were lipstick free, I had a good laugh and Alyssa joined in.
She then told me that she put it on girl too (that is what she calls all of her dolls that aren't babies). I looked around for the doll that she was talking about and had another good laugh.

Beggars Night

As some of you may know, here in Iowa they have what they call Beggars Night. I think that it is the same in most of the midwest, but I'm not sure. Beggars Night is the night that they do trick or treating in the neighborhood and it is usually the night before Halloween. Another thing that we thought was strange at first is that the kids are supposed to tell a joke before getting their candy. Not all kids do it, but the older ones do. We were lucky to get Alyssa to say "Trick or Treat" and "Thank You" especially at the right time. We had Beggars Night on the 30th and our Ward Trunk or Treat on the 31st. Below is a picture of the girls in their costumes.

When we were across the street from this house Alyssa was so excited to go and see the big pumpkin Man. I know the picture is dark, but these people went all out. Not only did they have a bunch of Halloween decorations outside, but they also made a haunted house in their garage for kids to go through. We skipped out on that since Alyssa is starting to get scared of things. In the picture below, Danny is lifting Alyssa up to touch the pumpkin face. You can't really see them though unless you make the picture full size.

Here are Daddy and Daughter after picking up candy at the house behind them. The street that we took Alyssa to had a lot of really good candy. We hardly had to get rid of any of it. We were very happy about that. And if you are wondering why we didn't give out candy, it is because we waited around all night on the first Beggars Night that we lived in our house and we only got 1 trick or treater. It's just in a bad location. We did give out candy at the Ward Trunk or Treat.

Pumpkin Carving

We finally carved our pumpkins two nights before Halloween. I had bought a pumpkin carving set so we decided to carve rather than paint just to try it out. Alyssa even helped a little bit. Below, she is helping Daddy clean out the inside of the pumpkin.

Here are the finished products. We had to tape the designs on the pumpkins to start so you can see Alyssa wanted to continue with the taping fun on her own little pumpkins.Here is Danny's pumpkin which Alyssa helped clean out and remove the different parts that had been carved.
I was brave and attempted a little bit harder design. The result was a hand cramp and it took me twice as long. It was fun to get a lot of compliments on how cool it looked when we took them to the ward trunk or treat.

If you didn't notice from the pictures, Alyssa started in regular clothes and ended in PJs. That is because it was bath night and Ashley only lasted through the cleaning of the pumpkins. Therefore, we had to take a break to give them a bath and put Ashley to bed. That is why Ashley isn't in the family picture below.

Who knows why Alyssa can smile so well when we are in the picture with her, but not when she is in pictures alone or with Ashley.

Ashley discovers Casey

Ashley has really been getting around lately. She doesn't crawl on all fours yet, but she can move pretty quick with her army crawl. This morning, she crawled over to Casey. He must have looked like something that would be fun to grab. I don't think she realized that he could play with her. Here she is avoiding a good lick in the face.

Alyssa loves Casey and Ashley so she couldn't resist joining in on the fun even with her favorite Dora movie on.

I just loved this picture, so I had to include it. I love how Casey is bent down and looking at Ashley right in the face.

Our Pretty Princess

I had a really hard time finding a Halloween costume for Alyssa this year. Every time I would ask her what she wanted to be, she would tell me something different. We went looking at about 10 different stores one day and didn't end up getting anything because she kept telling me she wanted every costume I would show her. I finally decided that I would have to choose for her. My only worry was that she wouldn't wear the costume I choose. I ended up finding some Disney costumes at Target in the price range I was willing to pay, so I gave her the choice between Ariel, Belle, and Cinderella. She choose the Cinderella one so we got it. When we got home and tried it on, it was too big. I wasn't very happy about having to pin it up and still find accessories to go with it. Then I found the princess dress up clothes at Costco for not much more than I had paid for the Cinderella dress. The dress up set came with three different dresses plus accessories to go with them. I figured it was perfect because it would give Alyssa three choices to choose from and she could also choose her accessories. Plus, it came in a pretty box that we could add her other dress up clothes to after Halloween is over. Below, Alyssa is modeling the three dresses for everyone to see. This first one has matching purple slippers that are hard to see.

This one has matching gold slippers.

This one has a crown to go with it, but she didn't want to put that on. She is wearing a necklace, but it is hard to see.

Neewollah

Every year they have a free event for families at one of the outdoor shopping centers in West Des Moines called Neewollah (Halloween backwards if you are wondering). I took Alyssa to it last year and she loved it so we went again this year. We were fortunate to have Danny with us since he was working most of the day. Alyssa got to go trick or treating at all of the different stores. They also had a a wagon ride, face painting, coloring, and some games but we skipped most of it because we got there late. Here are the girls in their costumes.

They had a little miniature golf course set up which Alyssa has become pretty good at since we bought her her own little set of golf clubs. If you look closely in the picture, you can see the ball that she just hit through the hole.

Here is Ashley cheering her sister on.

Alyssa had fun and was so excited to eat candy after we got home. I think she was most excited about the cotton candy and her balloon.

Ashley is 9 months old

We took Ashley into JCPenny's to get her pictures taken when she turned 9 months old. She wasn't so sure about everything and we had a really hard time getting her to do anything but sit with a really serious looking face. It didn't help that the girl taking the pictures was new and just not as good as the girl that has always done our pictures there. Plus, they were having technical difficulties which only happened when we acutally did manage to get Ashley to smile. Below are the results of the photo shoot. (I'm obviously not very good at scanning since you can see white around all of the pictures. Sorry)

Here is one of her few smiles on camera.
Here is the full body shot that according to the lady showing me the pictures is good to show people who don't get to see Ashley in person very often (meaning pretty much anyone who reads our blog). Since it was October, I decided to get a few shots in her Halloween costume also.
Everyone that has seen her in her costume has commented on how cute she looks in it. I think it is her round face that makes it so cute.
Here are her stats:
20.6 lbs
28 3/4 inches