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.