What's new with the Wheelers

Sorry that I haven't updated in awhile. I have been traveling and I'm just now recovering from it. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post so this may be boring.
Three days after Danny got back from his trip to Utah for Brian's Graduation, I made almost the exact same trip to meet my sisters and my mom for BYU Women's Conference. I was out there Wednesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon and it was such a refreshing getaway. It was so nice to be with my mom and sisters without any of us having to worry about kids. We got to sit around and talk, eat a lot, and go to the different classes for the conference. I'm so happy that Danny was willing to stay with the girls so I could get away.
As I said above, I got back late Saturday afternoon and we left Sunday morning for Des Moines. Danny had a conference that he needed to attend and we went along. We figured Des Moines was an easy trip to tag along on since we still have a lot of friends up there. We had three busy days of running around Des Moines trying to see everyone that we wanted to see, swimming in the Hotel pool, and getting things done in order to finalize our move (closing our bank account, picking stuff up that we left at the house, etc). Danny spent this time at his conference and visiting with people that he used to work with. When we had Danny with us, we all enjoyed eating at restaurants that we have missed since we moved. Most people that read our blog already know this, but we closed on our townhouse in Norwalk two weeks ago, so the trip up there helped us to make our move final. Now we will just have to see if this makes O'Fallon feel more like home to us.
After returning from Des Moines, we got busy doing laundry, cleaning, and making our backyard presentable for the BBQ that we are having here tonight.
I had an awesome Mothers Day thanks to my wonderful husband and kids. I will try to be better at taking pictures this week and make our posts a little more interesting for you next week.

Our Week

Alyssa and Ashley just adore their Daddy. Well this week, Daddy went out to Utah for Uncle Brian's graduation from BYU Law School. He was gone for three days and I was worried about how we would all survive without those precious moments of Daddy playtime each day. Well, we did and this is how we did it:

1. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate Alyssa finally filling up her Do Good Chart again.

2. We had a couple of different play dates with kids that I didn't have a chance to get pictures of.

3. We went for nice long walks every day with time to play at the park afterwards.

4. Alyssa flew her first kite. I didn't get a picture of that either because I was concentrating on keeping the kite in Alyssa's hands, away from Ashley, and keeping Ashley somewhat close to us.

5. We had lots of talks with Daddy on the phone.

6. We had summer-like weather and spent a lot of time in the backyard with Casey and in the front yard drawing with chalk.

7. We took a trip to the Saint Louis Zoo. Admission to the Zoo here is free, but you have to pay to do a few of the things inside. However, some of those things are free for the first hour that the Zoo is open each day. So we arrived right at opening, managed to find a parking spot on the street to save us the $11 parking fee to park in their lot, and we did all of the free things first. The two that I was interested in were the Merry-Go-Round and an enclosed area called the Children's Zoo. Here are my favorite pictures from the excursion.

This jeep was inside of the Childrens Zoo. It didn't move, but the kids could climb in it and pretend to drive.

Ashley was excited to be able to get out of the stroller and run around on her own in this area.

I love this picture because Alyssa looks like she is a child model posing for a photo shoot. In reality she is trying not to slide down the back of this giant bug so I can get a picture of her.

Here is the only snake in the zoo that Alyssa wanted to be anywhere near. She was actually afraid of quite a few of the animals. I had to reassure her many times that the animals couldn't get to us because of the different barriers. She was still scared of them.

I had to include this picture because this Chimpanzee made me laugh so hard the way it was just chillin there on the ground. Alyssa was scared of him too, by the way.

It was almost a perfect day to be at the Zoo. It got to be a little too hot by the time we left and way to crowded. The first hour was perfect though. The girls were beat by the time we left. Ashley fell asleep in my arms as we were leaving and Alyssa took her first nap in who knows how long that afternoon after we got home. We all had a lot of fun.

This last picture was too cute not to include. Yesterday, Danny BBQed dinner for us and in order to keep the girls inside, we put on Dora for them. We looked at them a few minutes later and this is how we found them enjoying the show together. It is so nice to see them get a long occasionally.

The girls are both so happy to have Daddy home again and to have all the prizes that he brought from Gawbie and Great Gawbie, as we call them (Danny's mom and Grandma). We congratulate Brian on his graduation once more and are glad that Danny got to be there for it. But we are also very glad to have him home with us again.

We love you Daddy!

Easter Celebration

I love holidays now that we have kids that get excited for them. Alyssa absolutely loved Easter this year. It all started the first time I took her to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. I go walking at the mall every day, so Alyssa, of course, wanted to go see the Easter Bunny every day. Ashley even liked seeing the Easter Bunny. Then Alyssa got excited about the Easter Eggs. Here she is dying Easter Eggs with Danny.

We got an egg dying kit that had sticker faces to put on your colored eggs. Alyssa had a lot of fun with that. Here is the finished product.
Here are the girls discovering their baskets on Easter morning. Alyssa was so excited that the Easter Bunny came to her house.

We did an indoor and outdoor easter egg hunt for the girls. Here is Alyssa finding an egg on our front porch.

And here is the egg that Ashley found outside. She kept trying to eat them when she discovered that the real eggs don't pop open and spill candy.

Here they are with their empty easter baskets getting ready for the hunt.

Although our pictures only show the commercial aspect of Easter, we really tried to help Alyssa understand the real reason we celebrate Easter. We read about the Resurrection with her and explained it to her a couple of different times. We hope that a little bit of it sunk in.

The Botanical Gardens

We had really nice weather on Saturday so we took advantage of some free tickets given to Danny a couple of months ago and visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens. We thought we had made a mistake when we got there and the parking lot was full. We later found out that admission is free before noon on Saturdays to City and County residents. Fortunately, the gardens are huge and we hardly noticed that there was a big crowd once inside. Here are Alyssa and Ashley in front of the Tulips, one of my favorite flowers.

All of their pools were reflecting pools. It was really pretty when there was something colorful like the tulips in the picture below reflecting in the water. I love this picture of Ashley.

And here is Alyssa and myself in front of another reflecting pool. (Can you tell who had the camera?)

They had a section inside called the Childrens Gardens. We had to pay a little extra to go in, but it looked like it was worth it. They had all kinds of fun things for kids to climb on and play with. Here is Alyssa going down a really big slide.

And here was Ashley's chance to finally get out of the stroller and walk around. This made her so happy.

Here is Alyssa going across a rope bridge.

And here she is playing in the fake grocery store. When we were getting ready to leave the gardens, she got really sad that she couldn't take this food home with her.

We were so happy that we went because it really was a nice day out and we all had fun. We were, however, glad for the free admission and we don't know that we would go back if we had to pay to get in.

Easter Play Group

Our ward had an Easter Play group this week. It was a nice chance to let the girls play and give them a taste of what an Easter Egg hunt is like with other kids around. They started by coloring these Easter Bunny pictures. Alyssa colored hers and Ashleys.
Next they played a game where they had to blow a cotton ball across the floor with a straw. Alyssa had a hard time blowing through the straw. She kept blowing out of her mouth. She eventually got the hang of it.

They also played "Bunny, Bunny, Rabbit" also known as "Duck, Duck, Goose." She kept wanting to get up and be it, and then didn't want to do it when she finally got chosen. Sometimes I don't understand what she is thinking. Here is Alyssa during the Egg hunt. She missed her basket with one of her eggs and it broke open and spilled the candy. I helped her pick it up, but not quick enough. She only ended up getting like 4 eggs. Fortunately, at the end the other kids shared their eggs with her and we came home with a basket full.

Here is what Ashley did during the egg hunt. She found her first egg, popped it open, sat down, and stuffed her face.

After the egg hunt, one of the boys emptied all of his eggs into his basket and left all of the open eggs in a pile on the ground. Ashley quickly walked over when she saw expecting to find a lot more candy. I think she was disappointed to find them all empty.

Game Time

Alyssa is into playing games lately, especially the ones that we call "Mommy and Daddy games." (Basically anything that doesn't have a cartoon on the box). She is constantly pulling them out and asking us to play with her. She especially likes Sorry, but only to get the Sorry cards and knock our pieces off of the board. She learned that from her Daddy. One night, she got out Rummikub and wanted Dora to play with her. We were doing something and didn't pay much attention to what she was doing until after she had gone to bed and I went to clean up the game. I had to take a couple of pictures because it was too cute.
I think she had planned on one of us coming to play with her, but we must have gotten distracted because as you can see in the picture below, our tiles aren't set up.

Here she is playing chinese checkers. I was especially impressed by how she set this one up. Look closely at the colors.

The best part about some of the games she wants to play with is that they keep her entertained for a very long time. One day, she came to me with dominoes. After she dumped them out, I tried to figure out something she would be able to do with them. I just told her to build towers. She got bored with that very quickly, but was kept busy for a long time putting the dominoes away one by one, in perfectly lined up rows.

Coloring Spree

Alyssa has been really into coloring lately. A few months ago, she was in a phase where she had to use every crayon in the box, but she would only draw one little line with each one. Then she decided it was fun to have a lot of color on the page and her pictures looked more like the one below.
Now, she is starting to actually color the different things on the page in different colors. Here is one that I gave her to color during Conference.

Here is another one from the Conference coloring packet. I hope that it isn't disrespectful to have a multicolored Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith.

And here is a Dora one that she colored when I first noticed she was actually trying to color the different things in specific colors. It is therefore, my favorite.

She did tell me that she messed up the lion in this one. I think she meant for it to be a single color. It is fun for us to see that her brain is developing more each day. She amazes us sometimes with the things that she tells us, especially during Family Home Evening.

Potty Training, Take 2

For those of you who don't remember, I tried to potty train Alyssa last year in August. It was a disaster, in my opinion. The unexpected problem that I encountered was that the little girl didn't have accidents to correct because she hardly ever went pee. As a result, I gave up. I also knew we would be moving soon and I didn't want that to cause problems. Well, when Grandma Wheeler was here, she got Alyssa excited about going potty on her potty chair. I didn't push it after they left, because I kind of decided from the last failed attempt, that Alyssa was probably going to have to figure it out herself. I know I don't have the patience to follow her around for 5 hours waiting for her to pee. We are now on her sixth day in a row without having any accidents. I didn't even suggest going potty for the first two or three days. She always came to me and told me she had to go. It's exactly what I have been waiting for her to do. I'm glad that it happened before I gave in and decided she was too old to be wearing diapers.