A Very, Merry Unbirthday to...Alyssa

I hadn't seen "Alice in Wonderland" since I was a kid and about a month ago, Alyssa saw a little bit of it at her cousin, Robbie's, house. We checked it out from the library shortly after getting back home. She watched it three or four times that week and it gave me an idea. Most people who know Alyssa, know that she was born on Christmas. We wanted to have a birthday party for her for her 4th birthday and ended up not doing it because most of her friends were out of town. Knowing that we would probably want to do it again for her 5th birthday and not wanting to run the risk of not having friends in town, we decided that we would throw her an Unbirthday Party instead. Here is the invitation.

I had to do a bit of research to remember some of the different things from Alice in Wonderland that we could use. I also got some help from fellow bloggers(who I don't know) who had also thrown unbirthday parties for their kids. I mixed everything together and this is what we ended up with. After coming into the house in their dress ups, the kids took a trip down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Wonderland was our living room decorated with lots of balloons and streamers with a few things from the movie - The Chestire Cat, which was used for "Pin the Smile on the Cat," Face cards taped to the wall, googly-eyed flowers, etc.

Here are Alyssa and Ashley with the first guest to arrive - Emily.

Once most of the guests had arrived, we played a couple of games of Musical Chairs. There were only 3 or 4 of the girls that could finish the game without getting distracted.

I had planned on having different hats for the girls to put on for the tea party, but decided to let them decorate some foam visors with stickers instead (our hat collection doesn't stay very big due to the girls standing on the hats and breaking them shortly after they get put into our dress-up box). After hat decorating we started the tea party. We served cupcakes and cookies.

By the way, these were the best cupcakes that I have EVER made. I have to include that because I was so proud of myself. We also served them juice and colored water to drink.

Here are the girls enjoying the tea party.

After the tea party, we watched Alyssa open her presents. Here is the group of girls just before starting.

Alyssa loved all of her gifts and has been quite busy the past couple of days moving from one toy to the next. Here are the girls after the presents were all opened.

At this point, we played "Pin the Smile on the Chestire Cat" and handed them each a candy prize after the game was over. Then they played "Ring Around the Rosies" and "London Bridge is Falling Down." We handed them goodie bags as parents began to arrive to pick them up.

In my opinion the party was a success. Alyssa asked to have another one for her birthday in December. The girls all seemed to have a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun planning it and buying all of the supplies. My only regrets were that none of the boys we invited came (we purposely went with a theme that was for boys and girls) and that it was such a pain to find somewhere that sold latex helium balloons. When we did find a place it was much more expensive then we expected. You can imagine how mad we were when two of them popped within 5 minutes of getting home. We had to quickly cut all of the strings short enough to be out of reach of the kids. On the other hand, the ones that didn't pop and haven't been used to give us Chimpmunk voices for the girls are still afloat in our living room so they have, at least, lasted awhile.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

On Tuesday night, we had an outing at the local minor league baseball game for Danny's work. The girls wanted to go to a baseball game this summer, so it was a good opportunity to go. For $5 each, we got a ticket, a hot dog/chips/drink combo, and a baseball which we thought was a pretty good deal. Our seats weren't too bad either.That is the dugout for our team right behind Danny. Of course, with such a small ball park there isn't really a bad seat. Danny even caught a foul ball, which he was pretty proud of. After the food and drinks were all gone, the girls had trouble sitting, so Danny took them down a few rows to be right in the action.

Then we bought them some cotton candy. That kept them happy for awhile.

After the cotton candy, I took them for a long walk to the other side of the stadium. That was when Danny caught the ball, so we didn't even get to see it. We ended up leaving shortly after we got back from our walk. It was around the end of the sixth inning and way past bedtime for the girls. Alyssa wanted to get a picture here, before heading out.

I think they had a lot of fun and were glad that we took them. We have free ticket vouchers to go back sometime in the next two weeks if we want to(we got them from the summer Library reading program for the girls). We are trying to decide when would be a good night to go.

Our Artist

Alyssa is becoming quite the artist lately. One day she told me not to look at the picture she was drawing because it was of me. She was drawing it for me "because she loves me." When she brought it to me I screamed like I was scared. I thought she was trying to scare me.

She asked me what was wrong and then started to explain why she drew certain things the way that she did. I don't think she liked my reaction because after a few minutes of explaining, she said "I'm going to go draw you a prettier one."

This is actually a third one because the second pretty one that she drew somehow got misplaced this week before I could get a picture of it.

She also drew a pretty good picture of our family.

One of her favorite things to draw besides her family is Dora. This is a fairy Dora who is celebrating her birthday (this was brought on by the big Birthday Dora premiere that was on a week ago). The orange thing on the bottom is a party blower.
We love all of her drawings and wish there was a way to keep them all.

Block Party at the St. Charles Convention Center

On Saturday, we went to a kids block party at Danny's work. They had games, inflatables, crafts, food, and the Gymbus. The Gymbus is a bus that you can rent out for parties that has all kinds of gymnastic-type stuff inside of it (monkey bars, a trampoline, a ball pit, bars to hang on, and a padded ramp intended to teach kids how to do a somersault). Here it is in the picture below.
Ashley loved the stuff outside of the bus more than the stuff inside. She went down this slide quite a bit. She also loved going over the vault (I think that is what it is called. There is a springy jump thing in front of a padded wall that the kids could run and jump over). Ashley liked standing on top of that wall and jumping off onto the padded floor and then doing a somersault.

Alyssa's favorite part was inside the bus. She also tried all of the inflatables. Ashley wouldn't even go on any except the one time she went down a big slide one.

With all of the fun stuff to do, Ashley was more interested in the candy she got from one of the booths. So we had to sit down and have a candy break. We came back here later to eat a snack from the concession stand too.

We went to this last year and the girls had a lot of fun. The nice thing about it is that it was free and open to the public. It is nice when Danny has things like this at his Convention Center.

Dance Class - Year 2

Alyssa has been signed up to start dance classes again. She actually did a short summer course, just for fun. It was only 6 weeks (she missed two of them because we were on vacation) and there wasn't a recital or anything at the end. Now she will start agian this week for the Fall session and she is so excited. We have this globe that is supposed to help kids learn about the different parts of the world and one of the things it does is play music from around the world. Alyssa started dancing to it one day and we thought it was so funny how she interpreted the different music into dance moves. These videos show her strutting her stuff.

She is so excited to go to dance class again.

Another Hot Air Balloon

The other day, Casey started barking. He usually barks at people and dogs when they walk by our backyard. However, this time he was barking a lot and for longer than normal. I looked through our blinds and got a little nervous when I saw that he was up on our deck barking. Danny was at work and I was worried that someone was in our backyard. I followed his line of view and saw this.
I called the kids over to see it. We all went out on the deck and watched it until it was out of site. The kids were pretty excited about it.

I didn't see it when it was close enough, but I figured from its position and the direction that it was heading that it must have flown right over our house. I guess that is why Casey was barking so much.

Family Fun at the Mall

Danny was working late on Friday night and I had noticed earlier in the week an advertisment for a Family Fun Night at our closest mall so I decided to check it out. We got there a little early so that I could do some shopping. (This past weekend also happened to be our tax-free weekend for clothing so we got Alyssa a pair of tennis shoes to wear to preschool.) It took us awhile to find where they were doing all of the activities. This is what helped us find where to go.

There was a fireman controling him, including making the dog talk. The girls loved it. Their first request was to get a balloon animal made. Alyssa chose a butterfly. Ashley chose a flower. After they had their balloons, they decorated a chocolate chip cookie with frosting and then they ate it. They grabbed some fireman hats off of a table full of goodies and then went to play with the firefighter dog again.

When Alyssa saw the other little girls painted face, she wanted to do that too. Unfortunately, by that time, the line was at least 20 kids long and there was only one person painting faces. I told her she would have to wait and do it another time. The girls thought it was pretty neat that all that fun stuff was at our mall and asked if we could do it all again sometime. I guess I'll have to watch and see when they do it again.

Sisters

We left them watching TV together one day and came back a few minutes later to find this.
Alyssa has been putting her arm around Ashley a lot lately. It is very sweet.

Homeward Bound

Shannon and I left Utah on Saturday morning and drove to Parker, CO (in the Denver area). We stayed with my sister, Becky, and her family. The kids had a blast playing together, especially on their big trampoline. It was nice to have a day's break in between long drives, too. The kids didn't get much sleep, but they sure had fun together. Thanks, Becky and Jake, for letting us invade your house for a couple of days.

We left Parker around 6am on Monday morning and it was a long drive home. We ended up stopping for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus one bathroom break. Add to that at least an hour delay for an accident and the hour time change. We pulled into our garage shortly before 11pm local time. We all went straight to bed and unloaded the car the next morning. Danny flew in that day just before lunchtime. We were glad to be reuninted with him and to be home again after such a long time away.

We got to then enjoy having Shannon around for the rest of the week. Thanks again, Shannon, for helping us get home safely without Danny around. We also thank the Roe family for feeding our dog and for turning on our air before we got home so that we could walk into a cool house.

From LA to Utah

We left LA on Monday morning and made the short drive up I-15 to Hendersen, NV to stay with my sister Christy and her family. The temps were in the 100-teens somewhere when we got there, but she had arranged for us to go swim in her neighbors pool (which was fortunately in the shade of the house during the afternoon). The girls had a blast and I was glad that there were plenty of floaties around to keep us afloat in the deep end. Ashley even braved the waterslide on my lap. After the kids were all in bed that night, Danny, Christy, and I enjoyed a competitive game of Dr. Mario. We left the next morning and continued up I-15 to Alpine, Utah to visit with Gawbie and Grandpa Wheeler. The following pictures show Some of the activities of the week. The first is at the new Highland wading pool/splash park (which we nicknamed Highland Beach after seeing how busy it was). I know that their backs are to the camera, but I had to include it because these loving moments make my heart melt...

A ride on Grandpa's "tractor"...

A visit to a nearby discovery park with a fortress theme...

And dinner and dessert with Great Grandma and Grandpa Ginos.
Alyssa also had a fishing trip with Grandpa for which I don't have copies of pictures yet and a trip to the community pool with Aunt Shannon. And lets not forget the numerous trips down to the basement to play in Gawbie and Grandpa's playhouse. The adults also enjoyed watching Avatar in blue ray in their home theater. Danny and I had never seen it and thought that watching it in their theater would be the closest thing to seeing it in the movie theater. The special effects were amazing.
Here is one more picture that I had to include from the park just because the mountains and sky in the background look so cool. We sure miss those mountains.
We had a really great time staying with Gawbie and Grandpa and even though it was hot during the day for the duration of our stay, the mornings and evenings were very pleasant. Let me mention once again how much we miss having it cool off when the sun sets. Thanks, G+G for letting us come and visit and for your hospitality.
At this point of the trip, we said goodbye to Danny and sent him to Houston, TX for a work conference. We borrowed Aunt Shannon for a week to help us make the long drive back home.

From Lake Tahoe to Los Angeles

We left Lake Tahoe on Friday morning and drove down to LA to stay with Danny's brother, Brian, and his family for the weekend. We had a lot of fun with them. They have a 3 year old boy, Robbie, and the three kids played so well all weekend. We had fun at their favorite park one morning. Ashley played in the sand.

We got the three kids to stop for a few seconds and pose for a picture.

Mommy with her girls.

The kids played catch with a football.

They had fun chasing a butterfly. It was very cute.

Back at the house, the older kids helped Maryn make brownies.

Robbie and Ashley had fun running from "spiders" and laughing together. Just to quickly explain, Ashley saw a picture of a spider on something and kept running around yelling "Spiders!" Robbie must have thought it looked fun and joined in.

Ashley loved Robbie's car and spent most of her time at the house playing in it.

We also went out to dinner one night and the kids did very well.

We were glad that we worked this stop into our long vacation. It was fun seeing them and letting the kids play. Thanks again, Brian and Maryn, for having us.