Pictures!!

 Here are the pictures from Ashley's party that I couldn't get uploaded last time I updated.

I put a picture of the ship I used as a guide to decorate my cake. That is Ashley's toy pirate ship from the show. I thought the cake turned out pretty good. My only disappointment was the bell. I bought a box of dots(the worst candy ever made, in my opinion) so that I could use a yellow one for the bell. When I opened the box up, there was not one single yellow one in the box. I was so mad. Anyways, I used an orange one instead. In the picture below, the paper cutout of Jake is right in front of the bell.



 Pinata time and cake time!

 Danny and I had such a relaxing and wonderful week in Cancun. We missed the girls like crazy, but it was so nice to walk on the beach, sit and read, eat, and swim without having to worry about keeping the kids happy. Here is the view from our balcony. Our resort was in a location that was surrounded on three sides by Caribbean Ocean.

 On the side of the resort pictured below with my toes, they had an area roped off that they kept available for snorkeling, kayaking, and swimming. They also had an inflatable climbing wall and trampoline for kids, although we never did see the trampoline out on the water. We did enjoy the kayaks one day and the snorkeling on three different days.

 The food was pretty good. They had five different restaurant choices, one of which was always set up buffet style. The buffet had a different theme every night including Mexican, Italian, Oriental, and Caribbean. There was a seafood restaurant which we could only go to once since I'm not supposed to eat more than 7 oz. of seafood a week. Our favorite restaurant was the Oriental one. We just thought they had the best menu choices out of them all for our tastes.

 

 Here is a picture of Danny pointing to the approximate location of our room. The resort had rooms in this tower, and then other rooms in a pyramid shaped structure located along one of the sides facing the ocean. The other side of the pyramid faced a lagoon which had about 6 dolphins in it. The resort is famous for these dolphins and if you pay $150 you can even swim with them. We watched people do it all week. The best part being when they got to hold onto the dolphin and go for a ride.

 We decided to use our first trip to Cancun as a time to enjoy the resort and the beach instead of taking time to explore other attractions in the area. Although, if I wasn't pregnant, we probably would have gone to "Xplor" which had zip lining, swimming in underground water caves, all terrain vehicles, and paddle boats through the caves. It looked awesome and we hope to be able to go back to Cancun sometime just to be able to go there. We would have also like to visit one of the Mayan Ruins, but couldn't commit ourselves to a 5 hour round trip bus ride and crowds, so we may try to do that on a future visit and choose to stay a little bit closer to one of them.
My Mom survived the week with the kids and only had one bad weather day. They were all very happy to welcome us back on Saturday night and as Mom was lost on the way to the airport she declared "I quit." She can be grateful that we didn't choose to go to Cancun this week as we have gotten at least 8 inches of snow today and snow is forecasted for the next two days also. The following picture is quite the contrast from the beautiful beach pictures above. However, since we did spent the past week is such a beautiful place it does make the current conditions a little more bearable.

Frustrated

How come when I make a goal to update weekly, suddenly blogger changes its format on me and won't give me the option to upload pictures from my computer?

So here is my pictureless post...

We celebrated Ashley's 5th birthday last week. Her birthday was on Thursday and we celebrated by making her favorite breakfast, letting her eat lunchables for lunch, and going to Chik-Fil-A for dinner(her choice). She had the hardest time leaving her stack of presents alone until dinner, so I let her open 1 in the afternoon. She also got to take a treat into her preschool class.

Two days later, we threw her her first friends Birthday Party. She chose a "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" theme and insisted on having her cake be the pirate ship (Bucky) from the show. I was really nervous about how it would turn out, but very pleased with the outcome. The party activity was a big treasure hunt where they collected treasure and played games along the way. It ended at the pinata which everyone got to hit 3 times before we had Alyssa step in to break it open. We then had cake and opened presents. Danny and I loved the way Ashley would go up to each of her friends after opening their present, hug them, and tell them "thank you." It was so sweet. There were 9 kids that showed up and they all seemed to have a lot of fun. I only wish I could figure out how to get some pictures on here, especially of the cake.

Danny and I are headed for Cancun on Monday to celebrate 10 years of marriage. We appreciate the help of my mom who will be flying in to stay with the girls while we are gone. After such miserable temperatures this month, we are looking forward to soaking up some sun.

Happy New Year

 I know that I have seriously been neglecting our blog over the past few months. One of my New Year's resolutions is to get back to my once a week updates. So, here it goes. I pulled all of these pictures off of my phone yesterday of all the things I should have posted about during the months of November and December. This first picture was taken at the new Scheel's in Sandy/Draper. I took Ashley there while Alyssa was still in school and we rode the Ferris wheel and explored the store. She thought it was one of the most fun stores she had ever been to. I thought this picture she took with the skunks was funny.

On December 8th, Front runner(the new high speed passenger train here) let everyone ride for free as a way of letting everyone know what it was like. We got on in American Fork and let Ashley choose our direction of travel. We headed up to Salt Lake and walked around Gateway for a little while before heading back. The girls loved riding on the train. The train opened up two days later to paying passengers.

 We had such a beautiful Fall. However, when the snow started it decided to keep coming and coming. One of our first significant snowfalls, Alyssa helped Danny shovel the driveway.

 Afterwards, he helped the girls build a snow couch. They are posing on it in this picture.

 One of the many nights that Danny was working late during December, I decided to let the girls build gingerbread houses. Last year, I made the gingerbread from scratch and used leftover Halloween candy which seemed to work really well, so I did it again this year. The gingerbread didn't work out so well this year, but thanks to a lot of frosting, I managed to glue the houses together. They had a lot of fun doing it, as always.

 Christmas morning came way too early this year with excited little girls who don't quite know the boundaries of normal waking hours. Alyssa first came into our room around 3:30am and announced that she was too excited to sleep. Danny managed to get her to lay down with him until around 6:00, but then she wanted to see if Ashley was up yet. We were all up and opening presents by 6:30 and finished before 8:00. I told Danny and the girls that next year we were setting the "no waking Mom and Dad up before 7am" rule. I can finally see the wisdom in my parents always setting that rule.

 Alyssa's big present this year was a cotton candy maker which we all enjoyed throughout the day. Ashley's big present was "Jake's Musical Pirate Ship" from a Disney Jr. show that she loves. She has been playing with it nonstop since the moment she opened it.

 We did our normal Christmas morning and then celebrate Alyssa's Birthday in the evening that day. Alyssa requested rice crispy treats instead of a cake, so I decided to form them in a bundt pan. She wanted chocolate icing on them which I agreed to for half of the cake(I wasn't sure how well it would turn out). I think it turned out really cute and it is the first time that we have actually finished off a birthday cake in our house.

 Due to a snow storm scheduled to hit during the night between Christmas and the day after, we decided to take off on our trip to California almost immediately after finishing the birthday celebration. We drove as far as Mesquite and then grabbed a hotel room shortly before midnight. We were very happy we did it and avoided driving all day in the snow. California was beautiful and we had so much fun with both of our families.

 The girls loved playing with their cousins and getting to play outdoors in their short sleeves.

We drove back to Utah on Sunday and have been spending the last few days enjoying our Christmas presents, putting away our decorations, and unpacking/doing laundry from our trip. The temperature is below 10 today and we are really missing the California sun.