Visit from Aunt Shannon

Shortly after our visitors from Des Moines left, Aunt Shannon came into town. We were so excited to have her visit us. In the middle of her visit, Danny had a three day buisness trip. Shannon and I took advantage of those days and took a mini trip up to Nauvoo. Shannon had never been to Nauvoo, so she was excited to finally see it. Here are Alyssa and Shannon in the Nauvoo Post Office.

Shannon and Ashley waiting for Alyssa to finish playing dress up with the pioneer clothes.
Shannon took the girls on an oxen ride. She said the girls loved it. Here they are in front of the oxen and covered wagon.

Here is Alyssa on the wagon.

And here is Shannon with Alyssa and Ashley on the wagon ride.

After Danny got back from his buisness trip, we took Shannon into Downtown St. Louis to see the Arch. She wanted to take a ride up in it, but Alyssa and Ashley weren't patient enough to wait the hour that it would have taken. Here is Shannon in front of the base of the Arch.

Here she is with Ashley on the steps leading up from the Mississippi River to the arch.

We had a lot of fun visiting with Shannon. We played lots of Dr. Mario and other games with her and it was fun seeing the girls warm up to her. We are glad that she was able to come visit us.

A Visit from Friends

A couple of weeks ago, some friends came to visit us from Des Moines. It was so much fun to spend some time with them and Danny was a sport to put up with it since it was two more women, five more kids, and no more males in the house. Alyssa loved having her friends come to visit. She used to play with a lot of little girls her age in Des Moines, which is something that she hasn't gotten to do since we've moved here. Here they are having a princess coloring party. Pictured below is Ashley, Briel, Alyssa, and Brynlee.
One of the days, we hauled everyone off to the zoo. Here is the group of kids. From left to right: Briel, Ashley, Alyssa, Noah, Adeline, Brynlee, Lewis.

Another mutual friend, Lauren(and her sister), joined us at the zoo which added two more boys and a girl to the mix of kids. Here they are listening to one of the zoo volunteers.

I included this shot of the hippos just because they were so entertaining. We sat and watched them for at least 15 minutes because these two were playing with each other so much. They kept swimming towards each other and then opening their mouths and pushing each other up out of the water. I had never seen anything like it.
It was fun visiting with Ashley(my friend) and Fayme, and Alyssa and Ashley(my daughter) loved having so many kids to play with.

Field of Dreams Movie Site

When we moved to Iowa in 2005, we thought it would be fun to go see the Field of Dreams Movie Site. However, with it being a 4 hour drive from Des Moines, we never made it there. We decided to take a slight detour on our trip back from Milwaukee and go see it. Here we are in front of the House.

Here is a view from the House looking out into the field.
Here are Danny and Alyssa next to the corn looking back towards the House.
And we couldn't pass up a picture in the corn. We took a video clip too, but I'm not going to post that.

We were glad to finally see it. Everything looked exactly how we thought it would. We were glad that we never made a special trip just to see it and the detour from Milwaukee worked out perfectly.

Trip to Milwaukee

Grandma and Grandpa Miner were in Milwaukee for a couple of days last week so we decided to take a road trip and go see them while they were within driving distance. We packed a lot of stuff into the few days we were there, but we all had a really fun time. The Padres were in town, so we couldn't pass up a chance to see them, especially since they were playing in the new Miller Park. Here we are in our nosebleed seats.

When the girls became too much of a nuisance to keep in our seats, I headed out to the concourse with Grandma and the girls. We were fortunate to find a play area for them to play in. Unfortunately, you had to have socks on to play. Luckily, Grandma thought the price of the socks in the gift shop was worth it to burn off some of the girls' energy.
One of the mornings, we headed out to a Childrens Museum close to our hotel. The girls both loved it and it was hard to convince them to leave. Here is Alyssa doing a puppet show.

Here is Ashley picking some corn.

Right next to our Hotel, there was a riverwalk with all kinds of sculptures. This was probably the most famous. They call it the "Bronze Fonz."

One of the cutest things was seeing Alyssa attach herself to Grandma Bev. When we were walking anywhere, she wanted to be holding Grandma's hand.

On the last night we were there, we took a picnic dinner down to Lake Michigan. There was a bike/walking path right on the water that I would have loved to see more of if we hadn't had to walk so far just to get down there. We found a table right on the water.

Ashley learned a new word... "Boat!" There were so many sailboats on the water. It was beautiful.

Here was the best shot we could get of us next to the water.

And here are our little princesses.

We had a really fun time with Grandma and Grandpa. We were glad that we made the effort to see them. It is always worth it when we can give our daughters more time with their grandparents. We also enjoyed some good card games in the evening after the girls were asleep.

Our Babies

I thought this was cute. And we wonder why these little doll strollers get broken so quickly.

On Thursday, Danny had a work outing at a bowling alley close to our house that families were invited to attend. Alyssa was pretty excited about going bowling since she has played with us on our Wii. Here she is throwing her first ball with Danny's help.
After her first attempt to roll the ball herself and it taking 5 minutes to get to the pins, we decided to use the ramp from then on.We didn't include Ashley in the bowling and as a result, it was quite a challenge to keep her entertained and close by. Here she is throwing a fit because we stopped her from running out onto the lane.

She layed there for at least 5 minutes, maybe longer. We all had to step around her and be extra careful not to drop our balls on her.

The bowling was fun for all of us as soon as we bought some M&M's to keep Ashley happy. I think the favorite part of the night for me was seeing this...

Little kid bowling shoes are so cute.

Kids Block Party

Last week, Danny had an event at his Convention Center that was a block party for kids. They had lots of stuff set up by different companies in the area. There were inflatable bounce houses, soccer, t-ball, basketball, a firetruck, face painting, hair curling (which was very popular with the little girls), karaoke, and dancing. Here is Alyssa getting a manicure.

They had the cockpit of what looked like some kind of fighter jet which the kids could climb into. There was also a tank.

Alyssa and Ashley both loved the people dressed up as animals.

Here I am demonstrating what we spent most of our time with Ashley doing-Chasing her as she ran around to keep her out of the way of other people. She did also spend quite a bit of time in one of the bounce houses, but we didn't get any pictures of that. That was nice because she was happy and confined.

They both had a lot of fun and it was nice to have somewhere free to take them especially when we noticed it was raining while we were in there.

Alyssa's New Phase

Lately, Alyssa has really gotten into the TV show "The Backyardigans." It all started when we checked out a Backyardigans video from the library. She wanted to watch one episode over and over again. After we returned it, she wanted to check it out again a week later. Towards the end of the second week, she started dressing up like the characters and dancing and singing with them. I took this video and was sad that she didn't dance and sing nearly as much as she normally does, but you can get the general idea from the video clip.

As a result of this, her interest in dancing at the Kids Block Party, and the fact that a lady in our Ward teaches dance lessons, we have signed her up. She had her first lesson this week and loved it.