The Magic House

Instead of taking a family vacation this year, we decided that we would use Danny's vacation days to visit all the kid friendly things to do in St. Louis. One of the places that we've heard a lot of people talk about is The Magic House. So Danny took yesterday off of work and we went to the Magic House. We decided to get a membership since it would have cost us half the price of a membership just to go once. Here are the pictures of just some of the exibits at The Magic House. I wanted to point out that in the picture below, Alyssa drew the face on the chalkboard person behind her and she was working on coloring shoes when I took this shot.

Alyssa loved this one. There was some piping on the wall behind them that blew air through it and they could shove the scarves and balls into the pipes and watch them shoot through.

I took this picture of Ashley as she was running around. She mostly just wanted to run the opposite way of where we wanted her to go, the whole time we were there. But that is normal for her anywhere we go these days.

They had replicas of the oval office, a courtroom, and the press conference podium (sorry, I don't know the official name). Alyssa probably didn't understand how cool it would be to sit at a desk just like the Presidents desk, but she did think it was pretty neat to talk in this microphone.

And I did manage to get her to sit in the Judges Chair, but she wouldn't put on the dress-up robes that they had there.
This was probably Ashley's favorite part. It was in a construction zone area. They had little hard hats and goggles that they could wear (we didn't even try to get Ashley to wear them, but Alyssa wore the hat for a little while). This area had rocks that the kids could pick up with shovels and put into the fake cement mixer or wheelbarrows. Ashley mostly just wanted to pick the rocks up and throw them on the ground.

This is how Alyssa chose to go from one floor of the building to the next. It worked great going down, but not so well going up. It's hard to tell in the picture, but it looks kind of like a beanstalk with leaves sticking out and the kids could climb from one leaf to the next to either go up or down. The staircase for adults spiraled around the outside of this.

It was a pretty cool place. We wish that our kids would have been a little better behaved so we could have enjoyed it even more. I am glad that we got the pass so that I can take them back when it isn't quite so busy. Especially since in the two hours that we were there, we only saw half of what is inside there.

Casey's Birthday

Normally we wouldn't celebrate our dog's birthday, but things change when you have an excited three year old. Somehow she found out that Casey's birthday was after Father's Day and it stuck with her. And we really wouldn't have made a cake if Alyssa's half birthday didn't fall two days later. So we had a birthday celebration this week for Casey's birthday and Alyssa's half birthday (in case anyone is wondering why we would care about Alyssa's half birthday, I just want to remind you that she was born on Christmas and eventually, we will probably switch to always celebrating her birthday around the end of June). So here is the cake that Alyssa helped me make.
And here is the birthday dog. He just turned three, by the way.

I don't get in the pictures very often, but here is one with me and the birthday "kids."

And we even let Casey enjoy a piece of his cake, if you can call swallowing it whole, enjoying it.

Alyssa even got to open some presents thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Miner. Unfortunately, we couldn't convince her to wait until our party to open the gifts, so we don't have pictures, but she loved the presents. Thanks again, Grandma and Grandpa.

Bye Bye Curls

Well, the heat wave we have been in, combined with the fight of combing out Alyssa's curls finally pushed us to do the unthinkable. We cut them off on Friday. Here is the before picture just to give you an idea how much we cut off.

It was quite a challenge getting it cut. We had planned on taking her to one of those childrens hair salons since there was one close by that we knew of. We just thought she would be more excited about getting it cut if she got to do it in a fun place by a professional. Unfortunately, the one we knew of had closed down and the next closest one was a 20 minute drive away. So we decided to try to cut it ourselves and then take her in to a salon if it looked terrible. Here are the curls on the floor.It was hard to cut the hair of an unwilling three year old. Danny had to hold her in his lap and distract her while I attempted to cut between wiggles. This would have been much easier if her hair was wet, or even combed. I did the best I could under the circumstances and we tried to fix anything I missed after she took a bath. Here is the result.

I meant to get a picture or it after it had dried later that night, but I forgot. Here is one that we took the following day with her and Ashley. I was happy to see that the curl was still there even at the shorter length which is a good thing since the bottom is probably not very straight.
We think that it probably feels much better for her and even though it has to be combed every day now, it is not such a time consuming task anymore.

Lego Wagon

We got this little lego wagon at a garage sale a few weeks ago and the girls have discovered the fun of getting rides around the house in it. I mostly took the pictures because Ashley looks so funny in it.
We stuff the bottom with a blanket and she just lays right down in it and lets us know she wants to go for a ride.

It looks uncomfortable, but she is so relaxed in there. And since we took pictures of Ashley, we had to get some of Alyssa too.

This is the way she goes for a ride and it works well as long as she leans forward. Otherwise, it tips back and she falls off. We are just glad that we have enough room in our house to do this inside.

Pig Roast

I meant to post this last week, but I never got around to it. We got invited to a pig roast a little over a week ago which included a homemade BBQ sauce contest. Danny was given some BBQ sauce from a Food & Wine event up in Des Moines last year. The Chef gave him three kinds: Super-pyro, pyro, and regular. We ate the regular a long time ago, but the other two have been sitting in our cupboard since we got them. They are just way too spicy. We decided to take our super-pyro one to the BBQ sauce contest not expecting to actually win anything from it. We mostly just wanted to get rid of it. Well, ours won and now we get to sport this in our house for the next year until they do the pig roast again.
We think it is kind of funny that we actually won cause seriously, the sauce is hot. It is burn-your mouth-for-20-minutes-after hot. And that's if you just try a little drop. The judges must have liked it spicy.

Where are Alyssa and Ashley?

Alyssa loves to play Hide and Seek. Ashley doesn't quite get the hide part unless someone helps her stay in her hiding place, but she does love one specific hiding place in the house. That hiding place is here.
The picture is a little blury, but the place I want to point out is the corner of the room behind the chair. Ashley loves to go back there, sit down, and usually bang her head on the wall. (I don't understand why kids like to bang their heads on things). This is usually the place the girls run when either Danny or I chase them.Maybe they like it, because we pretend to not be able to reach them back there. Who knows.

Random Cute Pics

This little girl has so much personality. She makes us laugh a lot with the many cute things that she does. She is really wanting to talk lately. Unfortunately, we don't understand most of what she says. Yesterday we went for a drive and she was just talking non stop and pointing out the window. We love our little Ashley.
Alyssa is growing up so fast. Her primary teacher tells me that she is so good in class and answers all of the questions that she asks. She even said the prayer in the opening exercises of primary last week. It's nice to see her get past that shyness barrier that I'm sure she gets from my side of the family. She loves to color and she says the cutest things sometimes. Last week Danny asked her one of those "Are you _____ , or what" questions and she says back to him without hesitation, "What." We love our Alyssa girl.

We especially love it when our two girls get along. Alyssa likes to boss Ashley around a little bit and even tries to pick her up and carry her away from things that she thinks Ashley shouldn't get into. Sometimes it is nice to have Alyssa stop Ashley from making a mess or playing in the toilet, but it usually makes Ashley pretty mad. Most of the time, they play pretty well together and run around the house together. We like to see them do things like this...

because that means that they love each other and are getting along well.

Pigtails

I took these pictures to try and show off the first pigtails ever that I put in Ashley's hair. Unfortunately, you can't even see them. Alyssa had so much hair by 17 months that you almost had to do it in order to keep it out of her face. I guess I should just enjoy not having to worry about Ashley's hair. The nice part was that she just sat on the bathroom counter and let me do her hair without even fighting it.
I included this picture because I love Alyssa's "I refuse to smile" expression. Ashley didn't want to sit still for the pictures, so I was tickling her and trying to get her to laugh. After I took this picture, Alyssa says to me "You need to get me so that I will smile too." So I did and took the picture above.

The Ice Cream Truck

About a month ago, the ice cream truck started visiting our neighborhood. The first time I heard it, it brought back so many childhood memories. I don't think they had ice cream trucks in Des Moines, so this was a totally new thing for Alyssa and Ashley. At first I was hesitant to tell Alyssa what kind of truck it was. She was still pretty excited about it coming even when she thought it was just a singing truck. When we finally told her why the truck sings and what it sells, she was even more excited. Then she started asking us for ice cream every time we heard it. Danny finally gave in this week and let her pick out an ice cream bar from the ice cream truck. Here they are waving it down.

Here is Alyssa deciding what kind she wants.
And here she is showing it off to me.

I have no idea why neither of them are looking at the camera since they both knew I was taking the picture. Alyssa was even nice enough to share some of her ice cream with Ashley.

Our New Favorite Meal

Sometime around the time that we moved from Des Moines to St. Louis, I came across a Carne Asada rub at the Grocery store. I bought it because carne asada is Danny's favorite mexican food. I found a marinade that thankfully doesn't use beer and tried it out. I even made homemade tortillas to give the full effect. The result: SUCCESS! It was delicious. After trying it out a second time, we ran out of the rub. Without thinking anything of it, I tossed the container and started looking for it at the grocery store. The result: FAILURE! I couldn't remember where I got it. I couldn't even remember if I bought it before or after we moved. We were very sad. After searching for a month or so, I eventually forgot what the outside of the rub even looked like. We tried making our own rub, but it didn't have the right taste. So our next step was to find a carne asada rub online. Danny not only found a rub, but he found THE rub. It was the exact same one that we had used. We were so excited that we stocked up.
We decided to try another kind also that you can order online becase it is a lot cheaper (that is the bigger container, if you couldn't tell). We tried it all out yesterday. The result: SUCCESS again! The cheaper rub was even just as good. We are thrilled to have our homemade carne asada back. Just one of those things that those in the Southwest US don't have to worry about, but the rest of us have to find our own solutions for lack of a good mexican restaurant.

Not Meant For a Modeling Career

Grandma Bev bought these cute little dresses for Alyssa and Ashley for Christmas last year and I finally decided it was time to get a picture of them with the dresses on. Not such an easy task for a 3 yr old and 1 yr old. I posted every picture we took to give you an idea about how the photo shoot went.
Us: "Alyssa, just smile and look at the camera."
We throw Ashley on the step and take the picture just as our arms are out of the shot and Ashley is already in motion.
Us:"Alyssa, can you please just stand next to Ashley's rocking chair and look at us and smile."
We put Ashley in the chair, rock her a couple of times and remove our arms quickly and take the picture.

Us: "Ashley. Alyssa. Ashley, look at Daddy." (Click)

Danny:"Daddy's gonna get you." (click)

Danny:"Daddy's gonna get you." (Click).(They love that game, by the way).

Finally we decided to have Alyssa hold Ashley down for us.

Although these lap shots show the happiest faces, they kind of defeat the purpose of showing off the matching dresses.

Hence, the name of this post. I don't know how they manage to get 1-3 year olds to pose for professional photo shoots. I guess, we are just not professional photographers.

Here's Ashley

I had a couple of comments about how I left Ashley out of our posts last week, so I'm dedicating this post to her. She is quite a handful lately. All she wants to do is run and make a mess anywhere we go. You can imagine how fun that is when we are at church, or the library. Our home seems to constatly be a disaster zone because if I try to pick one thing up, she just goes and makes a mess in another part of the house. It makes us laugh sometimes how destructive she can be, but we love her. We took the girls to a place called Incredible Pizza on Saturday. It is similar to Chuck E. Cheese, just a lot more expensive. The food is a lot better though. Here is Ashley in the game room.
Like I said before, she likes to run and I spent the whole time chasing her around from one game to the next. Fortunately she is still too young to want to actually play the games. Her favorite was the miniature carousel.Everywhere we go, people comment on her white-blond curly hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. Since she loves to run around so much, one of her favorite games to play is run away from Mommy and Daddy. She seems to think "Come here" means run away faster. Because of Danny's reaction when she once called him "Mama"(Danny:"No, I'm Dada!") another one of her favorite games is to call us by the wrong name. She is a lot of fun and she really makes me laugh sometimes when I find myself chasing her in ridiculous places as she runs away and laughs at me.

New Crayons

After Alyssa wore the 24 crayons in her old box down to stubs, I finally decided it was time to get her some new ones. So I got her a box of like 64 this time and here she is using them for the first time.
She loves to use the crayons one by one and then line them all up so she knows which ones she has already used. And thanks to NickJr.com, we have an endless supply of things to color.