Merry Christmas

The holiday season is always busy, but ours seemed to be even busier this year. I don't know why. In all of the holiday rush, we failed to get Christmas Cards out this year. We decided that since we didn't have a nice picture to send out anyways, it wasn't worth the stress and the cost of stamps. So here is our Christmas Card for 2011.

If you have been following our blog regularly, then you already know what has happened in the Life(lives) of the Wheelers this year. But here is a quick summary in case you forgot.

We started off the year in O'Fallon, MO, anticipating our move to Utah. We had found out the previous month that we would be transferring for a job and that the move would most likely happen in March or April. The first months of the year were spent waiting, and waiting, and waiting. We also answered many a question with "I don't know" as people were curious to know when we were leaving and if we had found a home. Needless to say it was a pretty frustrating time. We took a trip out to Utah to find a home in March, and the move finally happened during the last week of April.

We got to Utah just in time for me to enjoy two days of Women's Conference at BYU with my mom and sisters. While I was relaxing and having fun, Danny was overseeing the movers as our stuff arrived at the new home. By the time I got done with Women's Conference, a good part of the unpacking had already been done. He mostly left the kitchen boxes for me to do, which I finished in a couple of days of hard work.

Due to our new location, we had quite a few visitors come and stay with us this year. There were also a couple that didn't stay, but we still got to see them. We absolutely love living somewhere where we can see family and friends so much more often. I even enjoyed being the shuttle service to the airport for my two nieces at BYU.

Danny spent a good amount of time traveling this year. It seemed that he was taking nearly 1 trip every month from the time we moved in until Thanksgiving. We were fortunate to be able to join him on some of these trips. We went to Phoenix in July and Florida in September. We did three days in a row of amusement parks while we were in Florida which pretty much wiped us out. The girls had a blast which made it all worth it.

In the quieter months, we enjoyed time at home and time exploring our surroundings. In August, we took a day trip up to Lagoon, an amusement park north of Salt Lake City. The girls enjoyed doing that too, even if though there were quite a few rides that they were too short to go on. Alyssa started Kindergarten this year and I have been able to go and help out in her classroom once a week, which I love. She loves school and all of the new friends she has made. Ashley does a neighborhood preschool one day a week that rotates from house to house. I teach it about once every two months and she gets to go to preschool with all of her friends from Nursery. We are all looking forward to the new year and finally having her out of nursery(she towers over most of the kids in there). We hosted Thanksgiving dinner here at our house and we are enjoying a quiet Christmas at home. We hope that this post finds you all well.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Visitors

 On the evening before Alyssa's Kindergarten Devotional, our friends from Missouri got into a town. They will be moving here shortly after Christmas so the trip was made so that they could find a home to live in when they move. It was so fun to see them again. It was especially fun to see these three together again.

 They didn't waste any time returning to their old habits. Within a day, they were acting like siblings again(loving each other one minute and then fighting the next).

Since we have moved, they have had an addition to their family. Alyssa loved having a baby around. 

We had so much fun with them during their visit and we can't wait to have them living close by again.

Alyssa's Kindergarten Devotional

At Alyssa's school, each of the grades has the opportunity to present a devotional. The Kindergarteners get to do the Devotional in December. They sang songs, recited scriptures, and took turns saying their parts in the microphone-telling the Christmas Story. It was so cute to see those little kids up there, and they did such a great job with all of their parts. The spirit was so strong in that room as they talked about the birth of Jesus Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. I was glad that Alyssa got to be a part of it and that we got to watch it. Here is a picture of Alyssa with her class right before the program started. She is on the front row on the very left side.

As part of the program they sang a song about angels that came down from heaven and played their different instruments instead of singing. The kids were all tested to see which ones had the rhythm and abilities to be able to play. Alyssa was chosen to play the drum. It was a duet with one other boy. I've been trying to post the video of it all week, but it isn't working. She really got into her drum playing.  It's funny because I had heard her drumming around the house to the phrase "strawberries and whipped cream" for the past couple of months, but I didn't realize why she was doing it. I even heard her trying to teach Ashley how to do it. After hearing her play the drum to that song, I finally understood because the beat fit exactly.

Here are a couple more pictures of her durning the program. She has really bad red eye in all of the pictures that I took.

Pumpkins in December?

I feel like I have really neglected my blog lately. I just haven't really pulled out the camera, even though we have done some camera worthy things. I finally decided that since it is December it is probably time to move on past the Halloween posts. So I took all of the pictures I had on my camera and am turning them into the post that you are seeing today.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. We hosted it here at our new home for some of Danny's family. We had his parents and his grandparents over. We also got to have my niece Brigitte here with us for a few days since she is going to BYU and her family lives in Connecticut. I took pictures before people arrived for dinner, but I didn't pull out the camera much after that. I was pleased with how the table turned out.

 And here is the kids table(just Alyssa and Ashley).

 After dinner, we each got to put three feathers on the turkey for the things that we are most thankful for. Alyssa got to glue and place them on the turkey.

 Great Grandpa's birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year, so we got to celebrate that after dinner with cake, pie, presents, and a game about Great Grandpa.

 On the Friday after Thanksgiving, we pulled out all of our Christmas decorations and decorated our house. We were glad to have Brigitte around to help us. That night, we headed up to Salt Lake to go to the Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Grand America Hotel. They had a little scavenger hunt for the kids which won them each a cookie in the end. They also had pictures with Santa, but we didn't want to pay for them or wait in the line, so we got a picture with this fake Santa instead.

 Alyssa liked those little cupcake/candycane things so she wanted a picture with them. They were right next to a candy shop.

After the Grand America, we rode the tracks over to Temple Square. Unfortunately before we made it there, the cold temperatures made it hard for one of the little ones to delay going potty and she had an accident. We tried to find a store that could sell us a change of clothing close by, but we were unsuccessful. We took the tracks back to our car with the promise of returning to see the lights on another night.

Pumpkins

I let the girls pick their pumpkins out at Cornbelly's this year. Alyssa wanted the biggest one she could find and Ashley wanted the smallest one she could find. I don't know why. Since I knew they were going to want to paint them when we got home, I let Ashley pick out two.

Alyssa named her pumpkin "Facey Pasey" since she drew like 4 different faces on it.  

 I hadn't planned on carving them, but Danny suggested it to the girls when he saw them and then the girls were set on carving them. We carved them on the Saturday before Halloween and cooked the pumpkin seeds for them to try. Alyssa kept saying "this is gross" when I had her scoop out her pumpkin. Once I loosened all of the insides from the sides of the pumpkin, she was pretty good about scooping it out. Ashley didn't want any part of that. Alyssa wanted to carve it herself but after her first attempt with the knife, I decided that was a really bad idea. I took the knife away from her and handed her a smaller carving tool instead. Alyssa didn't like the seeds and Ashley loved them because they were a means of getting large amounts of salt into her(she loves salt). I didn't take a picture while we were carving the pumpkins because I had pumpkin guts covering my arms up to my elbow and Danny wasn't around to take the picture while we were working on them. I did snap this picture of the girls as we were getting ready to leave to go Trick or treating that night. The smaller pumpkin came from the Lehi Rec Center Party. Alyssa designed the faces almost exactly the same.

Trick or treating was a big hit with these girls. We started it off in downtown Provo around 3:30 and then headed home for a quick dinner before going out into our neighborhood. They spent a good amount of time running up and down driveways. We came home pretty worn out and with a large amount of loot. Now to get rid of it without eating it myself and letting them chew too much with their cavity prone teeth.

Costume Activities

During the week leading up to Halloween, the girls had many opportunities to wear their costumes. The first opportunity was to Ashley's preschool on the Wednesday before Halloween. Here is Ashley with her preschool class on that morning.

That same evening, our Ward had a Halloween Party. Both girls got to dress up. The party consisted of dinner, a costume parade, and then a treasure hunt. They had fun, but Ashley and both parents were pretty worn out by the time we got home.

Two nights later, I took them to a Halloween Party at the Lehi Rec Center. They went all out in decorating the place for the night. Three of the pictures below were taken before we even went through the doors.  

 The 4th was taken after we had gotten their faces painted and their balloon creations made. Alyssa chose a purple swan and Ashley chose a yellow and green flower.

They also got to play a few games(the ones that had short lines that I was willing to let them wait in), listen to a story, go trick or treating, pick out a few free pumpkins to take home, and grab a helium balloon to take home as we were leaving. They also offered a spook alley and dinner with a movie playing(one of the Shrek movies). We decided to skip out on those two things as the girls were too scared to go in the spook alley and we had already eaten before we got there. I thought it was a good event for them and super cheap for all of the things they got to do. I was very glad that we got there right at opening though because within an hour of opening, everything had lines that were too long to wait in and I wouldn't have been as willing to let them do all that they got to do.

Witches, Witches, and More Witches

Another thing that we ventured out to do this Halloween season was Witchfest at Gardner Village in West Jordan. It is an outdoor, cutesy shopping area and they put all kinds of witch displays out during the month of October. Shannon talked us into going with her and the girls had more fun than I expected them to have. Alyssa loved trying on the different witch hats.

 They both had fun posing in front of the different witch displays. That hula hooping witch was kind of fun. You can't tell from the picture but she moved to make it look like she was hula hooping.

 There were a couple of non-witch displays too, like this creepy looking one.

 These two witches were playing baseball with a third witch that didn't fit in the picture. The girls loved this one.

 We went during the day, so it wasn't crowded at all. In the evening they have a lot more activities going on so I'm sure it gets a lot more crowded then. It is a fun little shopping area with a lot of unique stores. The girls especially loved the candy store where I let them each pick out a candy. It was a fun afternoon.

Cornbelly's

I love this time of year. I don't know why, but when Halloween comes around I feel the need to take my kids to everything that the city and local area has to offer. The first thing that we ventured out to do this year was a corn maze/ pumpkin patch/ play land called Cornbelly's. Aunt Shannon came along so that we could go during the day and I could have a little bit of help with the girls. I forgot my camera, so I used my phone to snap a few photos. We were there from like 1-5pm and we were all worn out by the time we got home. Here are some of the things that we got to do there. 

 They had a little hayride that went around the outside of the corn maze. We got a little peak from the hayride at the Haunted Corn Maze that they offer in the evening. The ride was bumpy and the girls had fun pulling the hay out of the bale that they were sitting on. In the picture below, I noticed that you can see the big 'ol pile of horse poop that we had to sit by before the tractor started moving. Yuck!

They had an area that they called Princess Play land. They had a stage set up and some princess/prince dress up clothes to put on. Alyssa loved that. Ashley didn't want to put a dress on. Below is Cinderella's carriage to the ball. It is really hard to see the girls in this picture, but they are sitting in the seats inside the carriage. 



This corn crib was also part of the princess play land. Both girls played in it quite a bit. Ashley mostly wanted to throw the corn kernels. Alyssa wanted to bury herself in it. I wish I could have found an angle to take this picture from that didn't have that sun spot in the background.



 They had a few different train rides that the kids could go on. This one was called the cow train. They loved it because I let them go without any adults with they (mostly because there was no way I would have fit into that tiny cow car).

 We also watched pig races, played on numerous play sets, the girls enjoyed the inflatables, we went through the corn maze, but ended up cutting through the corn when Alyssa was done walking through it (we had lost Ashley and Shannon early on in the maze). We also spent a good amount of time in the section that has all of the haunted stuff during the night. I couldn't imagine what it would be like when it actually had scary people inside of it. It was a fun afternoon and well worth the money that I paid for it. Can't wait to take them again next year.

Fall Festival

At the beginning of the month, Alyssa's school had a fundraising event called Fall Festival. It was basically an auction(both silent and live), but they also had dinner and a bake sale. They had kids activities set up also. One of the things they had was free face painting. I had always avoided face painting in the past because I wasn't willing to wait in line or pay for it. I gave in this time, mostly because we had worked our way through everything else and we still had some time to spare. Kids were cutting in line throughout our wait so it ended up taking twice as long as it should have, but the girls were so excited to have butterflies painted on their faces (Alyssa smeared hers less than 10 minutes after getting it painted on).

One of the things that their Grandpa(who works at the school) had told them about was the marshmallow guns that were for sale. By the time we had gotten there that night, they were already gone. So Danny looked up online how to make them and went to work. After they were made, he let them decorate their guns.

And the finished product. Danny and I had as much fun as the girls that afternoon shooting marshmallows at each other.

Up and Running

For anyone who has been checking our blog in the past few weeks for updates, I apologize. However, I have a good excuse for not updating. Our computer got a virus, actually over 2000 viruses as the Geek Squad confirmed for us. Therefore, we have been without Internet and even the use of our computer since the beginning of the month. We are so glad to be up and running again. Bear with me as I try to post updates of what has been happening with us in the past month. It may take a few days or even longer depending on how successful I am at getting some pictures off of my phone.

We are doing well. The girls are so excited for Halloween and all of the fun stuff we have going on leading up to that night. We have already done a couple of fun fall/Halloween outings. Alyssa is loving Kindergarten and all of the new things that she gets to learn. Mostly, she is excited to see her new friends that she has made. Ashley is enjoying her one-day-a-week preschool that I'm doing with some of the other Moms in my neighborhood. Both girls are taking gymnastics at our city Recreation Center and are loving it. We also try to fit in story time at the library once a week. I manage to get some kid-free exercise in almost every day and I volunteer in Alyssa's classroom once a week. With all of those different activities scheduled in, we stay pretty busy and have a pretty solid routine in place. Danny is enjoying his job and hiring new employees each month. He will get more and more busy the closer they get to the Grand Opening in April so we are enjoying the time we get to spend with him before then. We actually just enjoyed a four day break from both work and school. We didn't do anything exciting, but we enjoyed spending those days together. It was hard to see it end and to go back to school and work today.

I will get some pictures posted soon of some of the fun things we have been doing lately.

Our Orlando Trip Day 1: Disney's Magic Kingdom

Danny had a conference in Orlando this past week, so we decided to fly out there a few days before his conference started and have a family vacation. We decided to stay at La Quinta because they offered free breakfast and shuttle service to both Disney and Universal (the theme parks that we decided to go to.) It wasn't the nicest of hotels, but we didn't do much more than sleep in the hotel anyways, so it was sufficient for our needs. The shuttle service, however, could use some improvement but I'll save that story for later. Here the girls are waiting for the shuttle in the morning.
The Magic Kingdom only has two ways into the park from where we were. The monorail or the ferryboat. We decided to do the ferry in the morning and take the monorail back at the end of the day(we ended up doing the ferryboat at the end of the day because we were familiar with it and knew that we could walk onto it without folding our stroller up). Here are the girls on the ferry ready for a fun-filled day. (We have been talking about this trip since March so they were pretty excited to finally be at Disney World.)

Out of all the characters in the park, this was the only one that we actually waited in line to get a picture with. We actually tried to get one with the Little Mermaid too, but the line had closed already when we got there. We did the 45 minute wait to meet three princesses at Disneyland last year, so we didn't even give the girls that option. Danny had an app on his phone that gave us the wait times for all of the lines in the park and that one was consistantly 45 minutes or more. The girls do love the Peter Pan movie so they were excited about meeting him.

The first ride we went on was the cars in Tomorrowland. We ended up riding it twice because there was no wait. Here is Ashley driving her car.

The camera stayed in the bag most of the rest of the day as we were busy having fun. I did pull it out once in the afternoon to get a shot of each of the girls on the teacups.

We were inside of the gates when the park opened and got to watch the little street show that they must do at the beginning of every day. We chose to go on a day that the park was open until 9pm for the main street electrical parade followed with fireworks. The girls enjoyed every minute of the day(except the hot minutes where they had to walk). We did bring a stroller from home, but it was only a single stroller so there was always a fight between them about who go to ride. Danny and I usually ended up trading off carrying the other one. The favorite rides of the day were Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and the Peter Pan Ride(that was Alyssa's). Our only regret of the day was relying on our Hotel shuttle to pick us up. We were at the shuttle stop 20 minutes before pick up time and were told two different times to wait "10 minutes" for the next shuttle. We didn't end up getting on a shuttle until at least an hour after our pick up time (2 1/2 hours after the park had closed). Oh, and did I mention that both girls were asleep before we even got out of the park. Needless to say, we opted to drive our rental car and pay for parking on the next two days at Universal. The $15 was well worth the convenience of leaving the park when we were ready to leave.

Day 2 - Universal Studios Florida

On Day 2, we went to Universal Studios. We decided to do 2 Universal Parks and 1 Disney Park because it was a lot cheaper. Here the girls are in front of the rotating universal ball. We actually got a good shot on the first try.
Right away, the girls got to meet Dora and Diego.

They also got to meet Spongebob. They don't like Spongebob, but there wasn't a line to get a picture with him so we took advantage.

Universal Studios had a lot of play areas for the kids. One of them was called Feifel's playland. There was this ball pit there.(I haven't seen a ball pit in so long. Most places have gotten rid of them.) Feifel's playland also had a waterslide that you go down in a raft. They loved being able to do that by themselves.

Another playland was Curious George themed. It had this ball room that had hundreds of little foam balls that you could feed into different things and watch them shoot out. The girls both liked this cannon blaster. We spent over an hour of the day in this one room.

The girls were able to go on all but two of the rides. We took advantage of the play areas at the end of the day and let the girls play while we took turns going on the other two rides. Universal had single rider lines which made our wait times really short when we were going by ourselves. That was really nice. The girls had a lot of fun here, but when we asked them whether they liked Disney better or Universal Studios, their reply was Disney. We asked them why and Alyssa said that Disney didn't have any scary rides (like Jaws-where the shark attacks the boat we are sitting in and Disaster-where they made it seem like we were in a subway during an earthquake.)

Day 3- Universal Islands of Adventure

The girls are all geared up for the third day in a row of amusement park fun. This was taken in the hotel room before we left that morning.
Islands of Adventure was split into themed "islands." There different "islands" were marvel superheroes, toon-something, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Dr. Seuss land, and one more that had a Greek Mt. Olympus type look. This picture was obviously taken in Jurassic Park. There was a boat ride in this area of the park that was patterned after the tour in the movie that the girls said they liked. They admitted to us after we got on it for the second time that they didn't like it so much because it was scary.

I was the only one in the group excited about the Harry Potter island. It was kind of fun feeling like I stepped into the set of the movie.

I even got to try some butterbeer. So delicious.

The girls obviously loved Dr. Seuss land the most. Their favorite ride was the Cat in the Hat ride. They also enjoyed the "one fish..." ride and the "If I ran the Zoo" play area complete with water toys to soak themselves in (they played there while I went back to ride the Harry Potter ride alone).

They Caro-seuss-el was kind of fun too.

We had a lot of fun on our trip and we were so glad that we could take the girls to Orlando and watch them having so much fun. Besides the amusement parks, we also enjoyed swimming in the hotel pools and eating at fun places (like the McDonald's with the largest playland in the world). Florida was really hot and humid and we were happy to return to the dryer climate in Utah. It is also nice to get back into a routine again.