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.