"Ring Around the Rosies..."

This statue is at the Childrens Museum that we have passes to. We have wanted to take a picture of the girls with it for awhile and we finally did it the last time we went. Danny is in it because Ashley didn't want to hold the statue's hand.

Christmas Party

We hosted a Christmas Party this week for all of the people that work for Danny in his department at work. Fortunately, we didn't have to do much cooking because it was a potluck. It was a challenge finding space for everyone to sit to eat and also for the white elephant gift exchange afterwards, but we managed to fit everyone. Here are the girls waiting for the guests to arrive. They were so excited to throw a Christmas Party (if you are wondering why we have so many stockings, the extra ones are for our Christmas visitors).
Here is everyone sitting and eating. As you can see, it was a tight fit.

Here is Alyssa coloring with Nick, the kid closest to her age in the group.

This was taken during the gift exchange. Ashley and Alyssa loved opening up presents. Alyssa picked one of the ones she helped wrap, so she was happy with what she ended up with - a coloring book and crayons. Danny was happy with the head scratcher that he got also. Ashley and I however, ended up with a remote key finder and a mouse/keyboard combo. Alyssa has enjoyed dragging the mouse around the house.

It was fun having people over and we are glad to have enough room in our house to do things like this. It didn't even take us that long to clean up afterwards.

Gingerbread House

We have never built a gingerbread house with our girls in years past, but we thought Alyssa would enjoy doing it this year, so we bought a gingerbread house making kit (I didn't feel like attempting to make the pieces from scratch). Here is Ashley with the kit in front of her (As soon as it was out of the box, she started crying for all of the different candies and cookies that she couldn't open herself. She almost got a hold of the house pieces which would have been a disaster).

First we iced all of the pieces together. We didn't realize that it would have to sit like this for a half and hour. We played games with the girls to entertain them.

After the 30 minute timer went off, we got to work on decorating. It was at this point that we saw the note in the instructions that said to decorate first and then assemble. I guess that is why the first couple of candies we put on were sliding down the wall and roof. After that, we had Alyssa use the lighter candies on the house and the heavy ones for the ground.

Here is Alyssa with the finished product. She had a lot of fun decorating it and eating candy and icing as she went.

Ashley was quite a challenge as soon as the candy was open. We gave her little piles of sprinkles to eat (small and time consuming to pick up and eat). As soon as she started pulling the bigger candy off of the house, we put her in front of "Dora" and worked fast to finish and get it out of reach. Here is Ashley with her Mommy at the end of the night.
Danny bathed the girls while I cleaned up the mess. It was fun to build the gingerbread house and it is fun to have it displayed on top of our TV(out of reach of little hands).

Dance Recital

Alyssa had her first dance recital on Saturday. She took lessons from a friend of ours and has really enjoyed going to the lessons. She has been pretty shy about showing us the dances at home, so we were excited to finally see them. They did four different dances with a costume change in between each one. The first video clip is actually the last dance that the girls did. Alyssa had some costume malfunctions due to the bun I put in her hair. None of the hats would stay on her head, especially the one in this video clip.

Alyssa was very careful to stay on top of the piece of tape with her name on it that marked her place to dane.

This was our favorite picture taken. She is in her beginning position for one of the dances.

Here are the two girls together right after the recital.
We signed Alyssa up to do it again starting in January. She is excited for that.

Random Cuteness

I found these pictures on our camera and had forgotten they were there. Alyssa convinced Ashley to sit in the baby stroller next to her and then asked me to take a picture of them (probably because I got such a kick out of it the first time I saw them do it).
We also had another visit to Chuck E. Cheese before Thanksgiving. Here is Ashley enjoying one of the rides.

I just loved how this picture turned out, so I had to include it.

We just love these two little girls. They really light up our lives and can be so cute sometimes.

Our Thanksgiving Visitors

We said "Goodbye" to Grandma and Grandpa Miner today. It has been fun having them visit for the past week and a half. Here are the highlights of their visit. We took a short overnight trip up to Nauvoo.

We took a day excursion to The Magic House (the childrens museum with which we have a membership)

My sister, Becky, and her family came for Thanksgiving and we all enjoyed watching the kids play together.

Ashley showed Tamma how to play with the dog.
We attempted the impossible - getting a good shot of the four kids together.
Conner helped Alyssa and Danny set up our Christmas Tree.
Grandma helped Alyssa and me decorate the Christmas tree while Grandpa helped Danny build a new computer desk.

Overall, we had a lot of fun with our visitors. Danny and I even had a couple of hours of peace while everyone else drove downtown to see the St. Louis Arch. We had a nice Thanksgiving and I enjoyed having help in the kitchen. Now we are looking forward to our visit from Grandma and Grandpa Wheeler and Shannon for Christmas.

Photo Shoot

We have been slacking in taking pictures for the past two weeks, but I really wanted to get rid of the Halloween post on our blog, so here is the only thing I could think of to talk about. We had a friend of ours do a photo shoot with the girls a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to try doing it outside and figured that the Temple grounds would give us the best backgrounds (we had the rainiest October in Missouri history so the ground was pretty soggy). Here are some of the best shots we got.

I don't know the first thing about taking professional looking pictures, so it was fun to let someone else practice on our girls and let us have the pictures. We did try taking some pictures with another background, but Ashley didn't want to cooperate by then so they didn't really come out.

We are doing well and looking forward to the upcoming visit from Grandma and Grandpa Miner and Becky and Jake and family.

Trick or Treat

Alyssa was really excited for Halloween this year. On Saturday she was asking us all day long if it was time to go trick or treating yet. We had guessed that the time to go out was around 6pm so we had them all dressed and ready to go a little before that so we could take some pictures. Here they are all ready to go.

Here they are again, still waiting to go. (Ashley was really trying to pick up that pumpkin)

Still waiting...

Obviously we guessed wrong on the time because they are still waiting. Can you tell that it is gradually getting darker in the pictures. We didn't want to knock on doors before people were ready. We still had to wait at the first two houses for them to get their candy ready. The first lady opened her door and left it open while she went to get her candy. Ashley tried to go inside their house and was upset when I stopped her. She didn't quite get what we were doing. She was screaming by the time the lady got back, but quickly calmed down when she gave her candy.

Ashley loved trick or treating. Her little legs walked a lot and she insisted on carrying her candy bucket the whole time, even when it was too heavy for her.

Alyssa loved trick or treating also and was even excited to help hand candy out after we got back to the house. Her favorite treat that was given to her was fortune cookies. She ate those first.

We just went out in our neighbor hood within a couple of blocks of our house and the girls got plenty of candy. I took the girls and Danny stayed to hand out candy. I was exhausted by the time we got back. Walking it wouldn't have been bad, it was the constant yank on my arm from Ashley tripping or carrying Ashley and both loaded candy buckets for the last 20 minutes that wore me out. I think I will let Danny take them next year.