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.