Catch Up

My camera stopped working properly for me about a month ago, so it has been hard to motivate myself to update our blog. Sorry for the long post, but here is what has been happening with us in the past month or so. We finished up our summer day trips with a trip up to Salt Lake City to go to Temple Square and City Creek. We mostly went to the church history museum, then walked through the temple grounds. Here is Alyssa showing some attitude in front of one of the statues.

 Alyssa started school during the last week of August. Here are a couple of pictures from the first day of school.

 

We went down to the Riverwoods a couple of weeks ago because they were having a Chalk Art festival. I thought the girls would love seeing the artists at work. Here are a couple of shots that Alyssa asked me to take of her. They must have been her favorites. 

 I think she liked the Tigger one because she is in the middle of practicing for a production of Winnie the Pooh at a little theater here in town. She loves theater and is looking forward to the upcoming play which will be the first week of November.
The leaves have been very beautiful up on the mountainside, so I took the girls for a hike up there. We talked Gawbie into coming along with us. These little girls were troopers, especially Alyssa, for what turned out to be a fairly difficult hike for even us adults. Here are some pictures we snapped at the top of the mountain.

 

 Last month was my grandmothers 93rd birthday so the assisted care facility she is in had a little birthday presentation for her. It was actually my aunt that did the presentation, but the facility provided cupcakes and ice cream afterwards. I was grateful to be able to go and am feeling more motivated to visit her more often now.

 The girls are excited for Halloween. Ashley wants to be a ladybug and Alyssa wants to be Sleeping Beauty. Now the hunt begins for the cheapest, nicest versions of those costumes.

Bugs Bugs Bugs!!!

 Anyone that has met Ashley, knows that she loves BUGS. She has loved the summer because she has been able to catch lots of bugs. Some of the most impressive have been the praying mantis she caught at the park...

the grasshopper she caught in our backyard...

 and the catapillar that she caught while we were on a walk on our trails(actually she caught like 25 catapillars over a three day period).

 She has also caught numerous rolly pollys, worms, slugs, snails, beetles, and even flys. It kind of grosses the rest of us out, but I've learned to look the other way.
When Alyssa started school again, we decided that it was time to give the girls their own rooms(they were keeping each other up too late which made for some grumpy girls in the morning). So we said goodbye to our nursery(which has been sitting unused for way too long)...

 and created this(the picture above is actually from the previous owners. We forgot to take a before picture with our stuff in the room. We did, however, have a crib set up and a changing table.)

 Ashley wasn't excited about sleeping in "the baby room" at first, but when we told her that she got to have whatever design/color in her room that she wanted she was a lot more excited about it. She chose some creepy/realistic looking bug wall stickers off of the internet and we found the leaf stalks at IKEA. We were all very pleased with how it turned out.