60 Degrees on Thursday, Snow Today

Well it finally happened. We got our first real snowstorm today. It's probably only an inch or two, but it actually stuck on the ground. We laughed a little bit on the way to and from church as we kept passing cars. We used to hate people that drove like that in the snow in Des Moines and now we have turned into those kind of drivers here in St. Louis. Now we will be interested to see how long it stays on the ground.
On Thursday, the sun was out and it was 60 degrees, so I took the girls for a walk around the park and then let them play. Alyssa loved playing at a new park, Ashley loved the swings, and I loved the exercise. We all loved getting some fresh air and being around other people. The park was quite busy. We were sad when the temps dropped the next day and we couldn't do it again. We did the McDonalds playland instead. Alyssa and Ashley still loved it, but it wasn't quite as refreshing for me.
I forgot to bring my camera to the park, so I didn't get any pictures.

Here's one for Ashley

We wanted to post the professional pictures that we got done of Ashley when she turned one. I thought they turned out cute considering she didn't want to smile for the lady taking the pictures. Here is the one that she is smiling in.

This is more what she looked like for most of the photo shoot.

Here is the last one that we ordered.

She is such a sweetie and is picking up on new words. She is mostly just getting good at imitating us. I never posted her stats from her one year check-up. I was actually suprised. I thought whe was heavier then they weighed her in at. She was 22 lbs 5 oz and 30 inches long.

She hasn't been feeling well the last couple of days and we can't figure out if she is teething or suffering from a cold.

A Bunch of Random Thoughts

I don't have any pictures to post this week, but I wanted to post something so that all of our faithful readers don't get bored with us. We are doing well and still adjusting to our new surroundings. This has been especially hard for Alyssa who seemed to start her "terrible twos" when she turned three. We've had fun cleaning crayons, dry erase markers, and diaper cream off of the walls and furniture. It's also been fun trying to get her dressed every day, change her diaper, take a professional picture with her sister (we were unsuccessful on this one), go to the doctor for her yearly check-up, eat anything besides fruit snacks and sweets, and go to bed. She wants to be independent, but can't do a lot of things still and gets frustrated a lot. As a result, she takes a lot out on her poor little sister when our backs are turned. Don't get me wrong, she is very sweet and we love her to death, we just can't wait for this phase to pass.
We still haven't really made any friends which makes me miss all of my friends in Des Moines a lot for both my sake and Alyssa's. I've been keeping myself busy scrapbooking a lot and trying to figure out how to keep this huge house clean.
We did take the girls to Chuck E. Cheese's this week and they loved it, especially Alyssa. Ashley was amazed by all of the flashing lights and kids.
Sorry for the venting session, we really do love it here, we're just experiencing the normal feelings and experiences a move brings. Soon enough, this will feel like home to us.

Ashley Turns One

Our little girl turned one on Saturday and we can't believe it has been a year. We tried to celebrate by taking her and Alyssa to Chuck E Cheese. We changed our mind when we got there and the line was out the door and the parking lot had at least 100 cars in it. We then headed to another place that is similar to Chuck E Cheese's and it also had a super long line. Then we went to a McDonalds with an indoor play place and the girls were just as happy. We keep forgetting that there are a lot more people around here. Here is Ashley enjoying the toddler slide.

After dinner and some playtime for the girls, we went home and let Ashley open her presents. She, of course, didn't do much opening with her big sister around, but she had fun playing with some of the presents after they were opened. Her she is with the pile of presents.

And here is the one picture we got of her almost showing interest in the wrapping paper.

One of her gifts was this little chair, so we got a picture of the two girls in their chairs.

I've seen a lot of people do fun cake's for their one year olds lately, so I got brave and tried it out. It helped that I had some time to kill that day since Danny was working all day. Here is the finished product.

Alyssa was so excited about the Elmo cake that she wanted to dig right in as soon as I showed it to her. So to avoid a fit from her, we gave her a piece of this cake before we put the whole thing in front of Ashley to let her dig in. She mostly just picked at the frosting and made a mess of her face and eyes.
We are so blessed to have our little Ashley girl in our lives and we look forward to many more years of fun with her. We love you Ashley.

We have a Three Year Old!!!

We had the unique opportunity this year to give Alyssa a real birthday this year since we celebrated Christmas early. We didn't even mention that it was Christmas to her and she loved having her own special day. We let her choose all of the meals, the frosting for her cake, what kind of ice cream she wanted, and we even let her put the candles on her cake. She loved every minute of the whole day. Below is a picture of her in front of the loot.

She loved all of the presents, but she got a really big smile about the Dora Card and movie that she got from her Aunt Shannon.
She was nice enough to share some of the wrapping paper with Ashley.

Here she is after she blew out the candles on her cake.

We love our little Alyssa and feel so blessed for these past three years we have had with her.

Fun with boxes

Here are some pictures of the fun that the girls had with all of the boxes during the move.

Don't we all wish we were flexible enough to fit in a box like that. Alyssa could sit in one and fold herself in half so that we could close the top.

I love both of their faces in this one.
They are starting to play really well together and we are glad that they are friends and at least have eachother during this time of big change.

We are connected again

We finally have internet connections again and are so happy. It's amazing how much we rely on it now. Anyways, that is the reason for the drought in updates. Anyways, we made it to Missouri and the move was fairly uneventful. On the day we left Des Moines there was 3-4 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature was 1 degree F. By the time we got to O'Fallon, the temperature was around 15 and that was at 8 pm. A couple of days later it felt like spring with temps in the high sixties. My point being that weather wise we couldn't be happier. We do realize that 70 degrees in the end of December probably isn't normal, but in Des Moines I'm pretty sure it is unheard of.
We love it here so far. It took us a good 4 days of solid work to make this house feel like our home, but we are finally moved in and settled. We even got invited to a New Years Eve party and had a chance to meet a few really nice couples from our ward. We are still in shock that there are so many convienences so close by- Walmart, Target, Grocery Stores, and just about anything else you could imagine within a couple of miles of our house. 5 minutes to Church, 20 to the Temple, I could go on, but I won't bore you.
Basically we are happy and we think we will like it here a lot once we make some friends and start getting involved in fun activities.
We will post some pictures soon, but probably not today.