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.